Stories by Mike Elgan

A vulnerable person. A sociopath or two on social media tormenting that person without consequence. That's trolling in a nutshell.

In order to understand the strange but spectacularly profitable world of Google and Facebook today, it's important to start in the fall of 2010.

Mike Elgan would like to find a social network that doesn't lie to users, doesn't experiment on users without their clear knowledge, and delivers by default all the posts of the people they follow.

In their quest to copy competitors, social sites and apps increasingly drop features that are part of the popularity and identity of their products, says columnist Mike Elgan.

The humble lockscreen is about to become the most important interface on your smartphone, says columnist Mike Elgan.

There has never been a search engine that accurately reflects the Internet.

Google bought Songza this week. The company makes a music app that competes with Pandora, Rdio, Spotify, Beats Music, iTunes Radio and other music services.

Columnist Mike Elgan tested a smartwatch with Android Wear and said he has experienced a culture-changing platform.

Apple's iBeacon location technology used to be ignored or used on boring retail applications. Now it's showing up in consumer apps and being deployed in increasingly fun places.

The consumer electronics industry has spent the last 20 years making everything connect wirelessly to the Internet -- from PCs to TVs, cameras to speakers.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal is brilliant because it takes the U.S. as far away from net neutrality as possible by presenting the killing of net neutrality and making it sound like the opposite.

An unexpected trend is emerging in technology. Information presented to the user is growing vague. Columnist Mike Elgan explains why.

Facebook's Anonymous Login is designed to create scarcity in the user data market, which increases the value of that data, and forces more small companies to get that data through Facebook's ad network, rather than from the users directly.

The social networks are falling apart -- breaking up into multiple sites and apps that do in a scattered way what used to happen centrally.

In the past few years, the public has been confronted with hitherto unimaginable levels of personal privacy invasions.