social networking - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• Free security product vets Twitter links

  As Twitter becomes increasingly abused by hackers, Finjan Software released on Tuesday a free browser add-on with a new feature that scans links and warns if they point to a page containing malware.

• High profile Twitter hack spreads porn Trojan

  Former Apple Macintosh evangelist Guy Kawasaki posts Twitter messages about a lot of different things, but the message he put up on Tuesday afternoon was really out of character.

• LinkedIn Primer: everything you need to know about the social network for professionals

  Our LinkedIn guide delivers expert advice on how to build a strong profile, practice good etiquette, manage connections and recommendations, and stand out to recruiters and employers with the social networking service. You'll also find analysis on how to take your LinkedIn use to the next level with company profiles, free applications, and more.

• LinkedIn vs. Facebook: Is the "Boring" Underdog Poised to Beat Its Flashy Competitor?

  During the past two years, Facebook became the darling of Silicon Valley, watching its user base grow exponentially as its founder bombastically turned down billion dollar acquisition offers. But as the sobering realities of a tightening economy set in, it turns out LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals, might be on track to build a more stable and immediately profitable business model that, unlike Facebook, doesn't rely solely on advertising and never-ending injections of venture capital.

• LinkedIn's Most Unusual Members: Meet The Super-Connected

  Steven Burda, 27, says he can guess what you'll think about him at first. The former Soviet Union resident who now lives in a Philadelphia suburb has more than 34,000 immediate contacts (known as "connections") on LinkedIn, the online social network for professionals. "The perception is that someone like me must have too much time on my hands," he says. "I've heard that a few times." In fact, Burda is rated number four among the most-connected LinkedIn members — and belongs to a controversial group of LinkedIn users called open networkers. But dismissing him as an Internet eccentric would be wrong.

• LinkedIn's New Free Apps: Review, Part Two

  In part one of our review of the LinkedIn applications platform, we looked at presentation, file sharing and travel applications that helped you collaborate with your fellow connections on the professional social network.

• LinkedIn's New Free Apps: Review, Part One

  The late October launch of LinkedIn's application platform ushered in new capabilities for the social network aimed at professionals. LinkedIn decided to start small, adding a list of nine free applications aimed at boosting your productivity and sharing Web content.

• New LinkedIn Apps: All Work, No Play

  The launch of LinkedIn's applications platform on Tuesday indicates that the business-focused social networking site plans to proceed carefully with rolling out new technologies to its professional user base, avoiding the laissez-faire approach espoused by consumer competitors such as Facebook and MySpace.

• LinkedIn Recommendations: Five Ways to Make The Most of Them

  Within your LinkedIn profile, recommendations, which you must seek out and approve from contacts of your choosing, give employers a fuller view of you as a direct report, boss, colleague, or client. They make your LinkedIn profile more dynamic and personal than the fairly static information (where you worked, what you did) that appears in your general resume.
  

• How to Improve Your LinkedIn Profile: Stand Out to Employers, Recruiters

  As the economy falls deeper into recession, many people have turned to LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, to job hunt and connect with contacts who might help them land a new gig. But career experts say your LinkedIn job-hunting efforts will all be for naught if you don't build your profile page properly and ensure that it is search-friendly for potential employers and recruiters.

• LinkedIn Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts

  Building a strong profile on LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, has taken on greater importance as the economy slips deeper into a recession. What information you decide to include, or exclude, could affect future job opportunities as well as your overall identity on the public internet.

• Twitter Tips: URL shorteners do more than save space

  Since Twitter limits messages to 140 characters, users have quickly come to depend on "URL shorteners." These free services take the long URLs for links that we find on the Web and shrink them to a manageable, eye-friendly size. Some shortening tools even allow you track the performance (i.e. number of clicks) that a URL receives from Twitter and other social networking services. But all shorteners aren't alike; as I'll show you, some offer more advanced features.

• Yahoo brings social news site Buzz to India

  Yahoo introduced on Thursday to India its <a href="http://in.buzz.yahoo.com/">Buzz social news site</a>, which identifies the top news stories and blog posts based on user votes and search patterns.

• Twitter hit with phishing attacks

  Twitter users who thought friends were directing them to a "funny blog" Thursday ended up experiencing something completely different: a phishing scam.

• Bugs hit Facebook application verification program

  Facebook's Application Verification Program, controversial due to its concept of charging developers to have their applications certified as "trustworthy," has run into technical problems.