The world's most popular social network turns 12 today. To celebrate, Facebook has declared today “Friends Day,” and released a few new tools it says are designed to help “further encourage our community to rally around their friends today.” They're basically just simple diversions, but they really show the size and scale of how big Facebook has become in a dozen years.
Google's been many things to many people: search engine, email service, social network. Now the folks from Mountain View are branching out into a brand-new arena by launching a mobile phone carrier, Project Fi.
Marissa Mayer, the new-ish CEO of Yahoo, announced this morning (though the purchase had been approved by Yahoo's board a few days earlier) that Yahoo will purchase Tumblr, the image-centric blogging and social network beloved by, mostly, teens. Her post was illustrated with a GIF, and posted on Tumblr. David Karp, the very young CEO of Tumblr, announced the acquisition on the staff Tumblr, ending with the salutation "Fuck yeah," because he is very young.
Anyone who has ever owned a telescope understands the feeling of anticipation that comes with a cloudless, moonless night. Whether it's humid and mosquito-y or freezing cold, when the stars show themselves, you do what it takes to prepare for a night outside. What should I look for tonight? Maybe a nice globular cluster; maybe Jupiter at opposition, looking graceful through new colour filters.
A German nonprofit, called MyMicrobes, is hoping you'll want to get your gut bacteria's genomes sequenced. It's expensive, but you'll get access to one of the most exclusive social networks around, where people worldwide can, um, talk about their gastrointestinal difficulties with like-minded people. Two grand seems cheap when we put it like that!
