Can a man with a tiny electronic device hack into the multitude of jumbo screens in Times Square and play videos from his iPhone? Maybe, if you believe a YouTube video that has been watched by more than half a million viewers in the last four days. The video was posted on YouTube on Monday under the...

In Egypt, the tried-and-true tool for opponents of President Hosni Mubarak in recent years has been Facebook. Most recently, it was on Facebook – which boasts 5 million users in Egypt, the most in the Arab world – where youthful outrage over the killing of a prominent activist spread,...

These days, no popular movement goes without an Internet presence of some kind, whether it’s organizing on Facebook or spreading the word through Twitter. And as we’ve seen in Egypt, that means that your Internet connection can be the first to go. Whether you’re trying to check...

In an age of commemorating birthdays, weddings and anniversaries on Facebook and Twitter, it was perhaps inevitable that live Web-streaming funerals for friends and loved ones would be next. It is no surprise that the deaths of celebrities, like Michael Jackson, or honored political figures, like the...

It was a miserable morning in New York, rain falling heavily and a 30 mph wind that made holding an umbrella difficult. Yet a man walked briskly up Fifth Avenue, balancing his umbrella and dodging pedestrians as he texted from his smart phone. As a sheer physical act, it was almost Olympian in the...

As Facebook was negotiating a half-billion-dollar investment from Goldman Sachs recently, MySpace, once the dominant Web site for social networking, was preparing to fire nearly half its staff. The layoffs, which cut nearly 500 employees from a payroll of close to 1,100, were announced Tuesday. The...

Under criticism that her political rhetoric had helped create a climate for political violence, Sarah Palin addressed the issue in trademark fashion: via e-mail to the conservative commentator Glenn Beck. “Our children will not have peace if politicos just capitalize on this to succeed in portraying...

A counterfeiter at a Georgia state prison ticks off the remaining days of his three-year sentence on his Facebook page. He has 91 digital “friends.” Like many of his fellow inmates, he plays the online games FarmVille and Street Wars. He does it all on a Samsung smartphone, which he says he bought...

Eric Sheptock has 4,548 Facebook friends, 839 Twitter followers, two blogs and an e-mail account with 1,600 unread messages. What he doesn’t have is a place to live. “I am a homeless homeless advocate,” he often tells people. That’s the line that hooks them, the one that gives...

Facebook made oversharing with a small army of friends a mainstream activity. Now, one of its early architects is swinging in the other direction. Dave Morin, who helped build Facebook Connect and the Facebook Platform, left the company this year to start his own venture, called Path. He says it...