Across Silicon Valley, diversity has been hailed as one of the tech industry's greatest problems. Facebook, for example, has publically acknowledged its struggles with gaining a diverse employee base. But diversity isn't quite the same challenge for one Bay Area-based tech company: Yelp.
This week in social media, Facebook launched a new app as CEO Mark Zuckerberg impressed everyone with his Chinese language skills. Meanwhile, Twitter is planning to kill the password for good, Skype launched its own Snapchat clone, Snapchat launched its first ads, Tumblr embraced video in a big way, and upstart Ello got attention by legally promising to never advertise on its social network.
In this week's Threat Level Thursday we get another dose of Edward Snowden, see emails getting safer, which mobile operating system trumps the other in keeping the baddies out, and the Air Force joining the cyber fight.
Yahoo has made a new acquisition, this time of a more behind-the-scenes asset than a Tumblr or Blink. Yahoo has made a deal with mobile analytics company Flurry, and despite the fact that you've probably never heard of the company before, it could be one of the largest Yahoo buys under CEO Marissa Mayer.
Argentine model Maria Belén Rodriguez is currently entangled in a lawsuit against Google and Yahoo, which she claimed linked her name and modeling photos to pornographic websites.
This week in social media, Pinterest emerged as a serious competitor in the social media industry. Meanwhile, Foursquare rolled out its new Swarm app, Yahoo bought a Snapchat clone called Blink, Snapchat itself was named one of the worst companies for data privacy, Twitter almost got banned in Russia, and Facebook tested a new location-based notification system that's a bit like Foursquare, with a little Google Now thrown in. It's time for Social Media Saturday!
Do you remember the day the internet went on strike against a bad piece of legislation? It may happen again. The internet dream team behind 2011's SOPA protests has sent what may be the opening salvo in another pressure campaign, this time to stop the Federal Communications Commission's reportedly proposed "Open Internet" rules.
In the wake of leaks about new, weaker, Open Internet rules proposed by the Federal Communications Commission, and soon after Netflix had to pay two internet service providers for better access to their customers, Netflix has taken its concerns directly to the FCC. Meanwhile, Google, Yahoo, and other internet heavies may be planning a SOPA-like grassroots protest for net neutrality.
After a year of learning about the U.S. National Security Agency's internet spying programs, at home and abroad, frustration has led major U.S. technology companies to defiantly change their transparency policies. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook have all announced they're updating their policies to inform users when the government requests a seizure of their data.
It seems like everyone agrees that Yahoo's homepage is a mess, but thankfully the web giant has a better graphic design team for its mobile weather application.
