Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi prince whose fortune is an estimated $19 billion, has invested $300 million—or 1.5% of his wealth—in the social networking service Twitter. He made the investment through his Kingdom Holding Company and Bloomberg News reports that Kingdom called it a "strategic stake": "A strategic holding means more than 3 percent, Ahmed Halawani, a Kingdom Holding director, said in an interview. That would give the San Francisco-based company a valuation exceeding $10 billion." more ›

Yesterday, Facebook announced that they were launching a new suicide prevention program, enabling users to instantly connect with crisis counselors through their Facebook chat. Suicidal teens won't only have to rely on Mountain Dew anymore. more ›

Facebook is great for so many things: ordering pizzas, picking up hookers, exchanging messages with underage kids, wishing death upon your students, and railing against gay marriage. But according to a new study, there's a dark underbelly to the social network: kids who regularly use it are more likely to do drugs! "The findings in this year's survey should strike Facebook fear into the hearts of parents of young children," said Joseph Califano, one of the researchers. more ›

Gwyneth Paltrow has finally joined Twitter and Facebook—probably not a bad idea for someone who "runs" a "lifestyle website" thing. She made the important announcement just an hour or so ago via a video that seems to have been taken right here in New York City. Such an exciting day! more ›

A few weeks ago, Bloomberg voiced his opinion on everyone's favorite social network, saying he believes he has better things to do with his time than posting photos of his crazy nights out and getting caught up in a ridiculous Lexulous standoff. And while talking about innovation at the Facebook headquarters yesterday, he dropped some knowledge on Zuckerberg: "Just being a game changer doesn't mean you'll be a success." Neither does being worth $6.9 billion, having 500 million active users, or having your life made into a movie. It's ok, Zuckerberg, you'll get your chance in the spotlight. more ›

Today the Post has an exclusive report on three teachers who've been fired for allegedly inappropriate contact with students on Facebook. Although some states such as New Hampshire and Ohio have implemented rules barring teachers from having any contact with students on social networking sites like Facebook, there are no such prohibitions in New York. And that's great for teachers like the one at La Guardia HS who gave extra credit to students who "friended" him on Facebook. (The teacher wasn't disciplined.) But some educators have reportedly been abusing their Facebook privileges! Here are a few of the worst offenders: more ›

Just when we'd forgotten all about Google Buzz, along comes a funny stupid intern story to remind us of its existence. Like the tinkerbell guy and the Manhattan Borough President's aide before her, Marissa Runco is the latest casualty of social network oversharing. Until yesterday she was a part-time paid intern for Brooklyn City Councilman Vincent Gentile. But her world came crashing down this week when she got caught bitching about her boss's constituents on Buzz. more ›

It's one thing to steal someone's laptop. It's another to sign onto the laptop owner's social network and have the real owner's friend take a Webcam picture of you! Suffolk County Crime Stoppers and East Hampton Town police released this image of a man—plus an image of his bedroom—who allegedly stole a laptop from a home over the summer. more ›

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo hit social networking company Tagged.com with a "notice of his intent to sue the company for failing to protect children from being exposed to graphic images of child pornography." A press release from his office notes that Tagged, which is aimed at teenagers, claims to be dedicated to "child safety and responsiveness to complaints," but an investigation found Tagged was slow to respond to complaints of "graphic images of children being sexually abused, inappropriate sexual communications between adults and minors, and content that advocates pedophilia." Ugh. more ›

Creating a social networking site isn't easy. It apparently took Mark Zuckerberg months of code writing and hacking to get the original thefacebook.com up and running, from which the mighty privacy killer we all know and love need once sprung. But four NYU students managed to raise the money for Diaspora*, what they're calling a "privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network" in just 12 days, thanks to people who are ready for their internet lives to be private again. more ›

Everyone's #1 addiction social networking site, Facebook, has been getting some bad press thanks to its new privacy settings. The site recently rolled out "social plug-ins" and "instant personalization," which enable users to share information like which websites they've visited or articles they've commented on—even if they don't want to. Everyone's profile would be automatically set to share this information, and users would need to opt-out through their privacy settings. Sen. Charles Schumer and three other senators are now calling for Facebook to make it easier for users to protect their privacy, saying, "They have sort of assumed all their users want their information to be given far and wide, which is a false assumption." more ›

NY is building membership for a city-wide skills share program to encourage service and volunteerism. Participants will ante up their own talents, bike repair, say, and then get a credit to take the lesson of their choosing. The Time Bank, as it's called, will cover a great range of talents and activities, which, in commune or co-op fashion, will be purchased with its own currency, "time dollars." What's next, name tags? more ›

Today's NY Times has a cute feature on the Facebook meme where "friends" ask each other to share 25 random details of their lives and then pass it along to 25 more people, like a chain letter. The Times says the list "seems to be a creative way to indulge in social networking without coming off as needy or shamelessly self-absorbed." They then reveal items posted by people they spoke to for the article (in a way that makes them more engaging than the lists themselves) that are among the nearly five million notes on people’s profiles have been created in the last week. Meanwhile at Time Magazine today, columnist Claire Suddath rips the lists a new one, saying she's "finally found something more stupid than Twitter." She says the lists of mundane details about people's lives have taught her that, "Most people aren't funny, they aren't insightful, and they share way too much." We're guessing that at some point she's noted this sentiment in her Facebook status. more ›

Bad news, honey: DList, the simply fabulous social networking website for gay men, will go offline sometime next month. DList creator Daniel Nardicio tells New York Press the site "is pretty much dead. I moved on emotionally when I realized I’d partnered with the wrong person. So I’m developing the next, new exciting version of what I wanted for DList! It'll incorporate all my original ideas from DList, but move the whole venture into live, real contact." Considering the amount of "contact" facilitated by the original site, this could get interesting. And Nardicio wants everyone to know that just because DList is done, that doesn't mean NYC nightlife is over, too: "God I'm so sick of faggots having to declare everything is ‘over’ so they can be perceived as ahead of the game. This self-induced ennui at 20, now that’s over." Meow! more ›

On the day that MySpace agreed to work with 49 states to stop sexual predators from using the social networking site to find young victims, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown was announcing a disturbing 56-charge criminal complaint against a couple accused of rape, sexual abuse, and forcing two young teens into performing sexual acts at a Manhattan strip club. Julio Rojas, a stripper, is being held on $500,000 bail while his wife, Sophie Soto, also a stripper, is being held on $250,000 bail. more ›

Brooklyn is all "Fuhgeddaboutit," but Staten Island can be "Hey, what about us!" at times. Take, for instance, a recent angry letter from the Richmond County Young Republicans who have asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to recognize the borough in its software. You can read the entire letter here (PDF), but check out this excerpt:We often send out event invitations to members of The Richmond County Young Republicans' Gacebook group, but we have come across... more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery at 1 Broadway in Manhattan, a person under a train at the Queensboro Plaza station in Queens, and a child struck by a city bus on Parkside Ave. in Brooklyn.
• Thieves are targeting open houses across the Upper West Side--stealing personal possessions after gaining access to homes. Oddly, one of the two woman thieves is suspected to actually be a man in drag.
• Chants of "No justice, no noodles!" were heard outside of Ollies on West 84th St. this week as workers protested substandard wages.
• NJ Governor Jon Corzine said that he'd risk his job to ensure the state's fiscal stability. Essentially, he's willing to raise state tolls even if it costs him the next election.
• A chart shows the relative sizes of different social networking sites (Yahoo! Mail is HUGE!).
• Who orders bacon with their veggie burgers?
• A survey conducted by the Government Accountability Office testing airport security at 19 facilities across the country showed that bomb-like materials could be smuggled through checkpoints at every airport.
• These pictures make us want to lobby for U.S. currency with NYC buildings on them.

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a scaffolding collapse on Vernon Blvd. and 51st Ave. in Queens, an unstable building on East 102nd St. in Manhattan, and a homicide on Tompkins Ave. in Brooklyn. Probably one of the worst group of employees one should try to steal IDs from for bogus credit cards is cops. A civilian employee of the NYPD was arrested for doing just that at her second job as a clerk at... more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery at the Washington Mutual on Sheepshead Bay Rd. in Brooklyn, a worker fell into the water off Pier 11 on Governor's Island, and a bank robbery on 57th St. and Broadway in Manhattan.
• Additional charges could be in store for the woman who allegedly shot a Staten Island commune leader before fleeing to Philadelphia.
• Maya Rudolph is not returning for the new season of Saturday Night Live
• New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office is cruising Facebook.com for underage hookups, in order to file charges against the online social networking site.
• Is there a mad firebomber in Park Slope, endangering Subarus, garbage cans, small animals and Eve Ensler's privates? Brownstoner readers are worried.
• A 28-year-old woman was killed while crossing Houston St. this morning. A truck knocked the young woman out of her shoes and pinned her as she was crossing 6th and West Houston at 7:15 a.m.
• Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens was scratched from the series against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, including tonight's start. Kei Igawa will start in place of the high-priced hurler with the hurt hamstring.
• Six New Yorkers were awarded MacArthur Genius Grants.

Unfortunately, what happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas. Last night MTV took over the Strip and filled it with up and comers, the standard rock, rollers and rappers and of course...the token has beens. more ›

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a picture displaying the woes of cruising in a tacky limo on the streets of San Francisco. more ›

The Wall Street Journal has an absolutely hysterical/mortifying column today about what happens when one's boss wants to be your "friend" on an online site like MySpace or Facebook. Normally reserved for friends or total strangers, members feel free to share compromising photos or statements on the site. more ›

sends each co-rider an e-mail and an SMS message with the phone number and first name of the other rider so they can connect to share a cab. more ›

If you missed Saturday Night Live this weekend, you're in luck. The best part about the show was the cold opening - a plea from Borat Sagdiyev to visit Kazakhstan and to see his film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan - and the video is available on NBC.com. There are also some other skits from Saturday's episode: A requisite Halloween skit - is it us or has Bill Hader played Frankenstein about 100 times now - and one about farting. more ›

This week brings us a few new techno-food finds: more ›

- Ask for a nude photograph, and if they wouldn't agree, he would threaten to "plaster the bikini or lingerie shots around their schools unless they complied"Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau said, "Students think that because they're on a secure Web site like Facebook that they're safe from online predators. They're not." We cannot wait for Dateline to do a "To Catch a Facebook Predator" show! more ›

- The Place restaurant is engaged in a dispute with their landlords, Edith Rappy and Taube Management, who have decided not to renew The Place’s lease without any explanation. The community is rallying behind owner Alexander Achilleos and his restaurant at www.savetheplace.com; we encourage you to sign the petition if you'd like to help out this local favorite, which gives 10% of its proceeds to charity. The Place at W.10th Street is not impacted by this dispute and remains open. more ›

Just before the New Year, Extra Tasty a new site by The Skinny Corp (perhaps best known for the tee-shirt site Threadless) launched so "you'll never be sober again." Besides cataloging recipes by tags, liquors, mixers and garnishes, the site lets you build your own bar and spits out recipes of what you can make with, say, only rum and coffee liqeur (answer: Black Cuban). Of course, in order to build your bar you need to set up a free account, becoming part of a network able, in theory, to submit recipes to the database (be a hero and add Mai Tai intead of the current MyTai), rate recipes on a five star system and comment on other recipes. We say "in theory" because Extra Tasty is still pretty beta- all you can do at present is submit recipes and see a "Commenting will be pretty neat when we make it work!" message when you attempt to comment. more ›

Duncan Watts, Columbia Professor more ›