Darian Shirazi — a former front-end software developer for Facebook who now runs Radius, a small-to-medium business sales intelligence company located here in San Francisco — talked to Bloomberg West recently. During the interview, the young CEO called Facebook (that social media doohickey with which you may be familiar) "the most important company of our lifetime." And you know what? He's probably right. How so? Well, Shirazi goes on to point out that it's "integrated into every almost application," adding that Facebook might even be "more important than Google." more ›

Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman rang the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange Friday morning as Yelp's sparkling IPO debuted. Shares of the stock climbed as astounding 61 percent to $24.15 in the first minutes of trading, after pricing at $15 on Thursday night. more ›

Just in time for spring training and the 2012 season, Tim Lincecum, your award-winning Giants pitcher extraordinaire and fellow In-N-Out admirer, is now on Twitter. Ta-da. What does his very first Twitter say? This: "@clint_dempsey @ussoccer just want to say congrats to you and the team on a great job and making the US proud, so pumped for you guys." more ›

Over in Massachusetts, authorities are warning girls that someone is stealing their "fully-clothed" photos from Facebook and placing them on an x-rated site. The incident happened to 17 girls at Bay Path Regional Vocational Technical High School in Charlton, Mass, reports CBS. The porn site in question, possibly based in another country, was already shut down once. more ›

Cornell-based research using Twitter posts suggests that people are happiest in the morning hours, with users using words like "awesome" and "super" most often from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Tweets, it seem, later turn remorseful and angry, with many users employing words like "annoy" from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. (Side note: not surprisingly, this is also when most blogs receive the crankiest commentary from the peanut gallery.) What does this all mean? Well, according to Money Watch, you should not make any big decisions after 3 p.m. more ›

Uptown Almanac brings to light several Facebook posts penned by alleged Mission rape suspect, Fred Dozier, 32. The most chilling part about Dozier's Facebook posts aren't his "Crime City" requests or his "2 thumbs up" for superb parenting, It's how seemingly normal they all are. (Typos notwitstanding.) For example: more ›

In Silicon Valley, vanity street names by tech mammoths are as common as racial disparity, wasteland boredom, and Chevys. Apple has 1 Infinite Loop, Genentech has 1 DNA Way, and Sun Microsystem used to call 1 Network Drive its home. Now Facebook, that social media platform where friends try to tell you how to vote and think, is getting a head-scratching new address. It came up with Hacker Way, Menlo Park, 94025, reports to TechCrunch. more ›

Jonathan Nolan, who wrote the short story "Memento Mori" (which later his brother, Christopher, turned into Memento) and helped pen The Prestige and The Dark Knight, has created some of the greatest cinematic works over the last few years using paranoia as a key theme. It should come as no surprise, then, that the envy-inducing writer has some major concerns with social media and Facebook -- brilliantly paranoid concerns, we might add. more ›

Tired of blocking followers who post relentless political campaign-related gibberish or blatant Gilt-esque advertising? We don't know about you, but we sure are. (Side note: if you're a campaign director who's hired a "social media consultant" [ick] to advise you that spamming your followers with aimless updates about your candidate is a good thing -- which counterproductively results in you and your updates getting blocked -- you should, one, fire that scam artist on the payroll and, two, stop it this very second.) Which is why (at least for now) Google Plus is a radical shot of fresh air. Like a VIP club or comfy booth inside the noisy, arena-like nightclub that is Facebook, the best part of Google+ is for sharing and discussing with a close circle of friends. more ›

Powered by Skype, Facebook announced a new video chat feature today. Which will be of interest to those of you who chat on Facebook, or to those of you who don't already use GMail's nifty video chat feature. So, what is it exactly? TechCrunch explains: "It’s a feature that’s been rumored for quite a while, and it’s one that Facebook is putting a lot of weight behind. Now, whenever you browse to a friend’s profile, you’ll see a new button nestled between the ‘Message’ and ‘Poke’ buttons that says ‘Call’. Click that, the other user will see a popup asking if they want to accept a call, and you’ll be immediately connected (you’ll need to install a small plugin the first time you use the service)." more ›

Gavin Newsom, an authority when it comes to social media and politics, made an important announcement via that most concise social medium this morning. And the news may come as a surprise: more ›

Word is out that Lieutenant Governor, former Mayor and adept twitter abbreviator Gavin Newsom just signed a deal with Penguin Books to pen a book about "the intersection of social media and government." Naturally, Gavin broke the news on his twitter account: more ›

Five years after founder Jack Dorsey unleashed the first tweet ever - "inviting coworkers," is all it said - Twitter now racks up an estimated 1 billion updates a week. "Five years after its inception, Twitter is now serving up an average of 140 million tweets per day, up from 50 million per day at this time last year," reports Tech Chronicles. "And that adds up to nearly 1 billion tweets each week." more ›

Myspace, if you remember, once stood as the social media platform for GIFs, autostart, sparkly animation, bands, and misunderstood types with eyeliner. Now, according to Valleywag, it's halfway in the grave. Just two months after their "my_____" relaunch, the company plans to lay off half of its staff. Not a good sign. Meanwhile, Facebook is worth an envious $50 billion. [Gawker] more ›

While many of you know about SFist's action-packed Twitter feed, some of you, sadly, do not know about your favorite SFist team player's personal 140-characters-or-less musings. Horrors! Allow us to us fix that slight at once: more ›

Path, a new "personal" network being touted as somewhat of an anti-social network, launched today. The San Francisco-based start-up limits your friend list to fifty people, enabling users to more freely share their photos and stories, since only their family and closest friends will have access to their profiles. more ›

Have you heard of this newfangled Facebook thingamajig the kids talk about these days? Sticky privacy issues notwithstanding, it's pretty neat-o. And that Twitter? That sure is fun. Have you also heard that SFist is on Facebook and Twitter? True. They're easy ways to keep up on our stories. If the mood should strike, check us out on Facebook and Twitter. more ›

"The carrot is don't get on these sites, and the stick is we will prosecute you," says San Francisco DA Kamala Harris -- who is also running for state attorney general -- who sponsored a bill to get sexual predators off your favorite social media sites (e.g., Facebook and MySpace). See, last month, Assemblywoman Norma Torres (D-Panoma) introduced the bill last month, "which would make it a crime for Californian's 63,000 registered sex offenders to use any social networking site," reported SF Chron. New York passed a similar law, which resulted in 3,500 sex offenders booted from the web, making it that more difficult for them to contact underage ilk. On the lighter side child rape, SF Weekly wonders what else we could strip away from convicted Chester Molesters. Let's just hope they don't take away our right to see which one of our crazy neighbors has a shady past. more ›

Today, Google unveiled some sort of Facebook-ish addition to your Gmail called 'Buzz.' According to the LA Times, it "incorporates social media tools such as photo and video sharing and status updates in Gmail." So, if you're not yet sated with Facebook and Twitter, add Buzz to your OL life. Oh, and here's a video explaining it all. In related news, whatever happened with Google Wave? [via Valleywag] more ›