“The key differentiator of Super-Aggregators is that they have three-sided markets: users, content providers (which may include users!), and advertisers. Both content providers and advertisers want the user’s attention, and the latter are willing to pay for it.”
An investigation into the Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency.
The trouble with the all-but-obligatory networking site, “an Escher staircase masquerading as a career ladder.”
The social network positioned its plan to bring the internet to millions of Indians as a gift. The country saw a catch.
A murder case in Mississippi catches the eye of amateur sleuths on Facebook, who proceed to harass everyone involved in the case.
On the man who has turned the grunt work of packing into a social media phenomenon.
On the service’s multiple origin stories.
“None of this should have ever happened. It makes absolutely no sense at all. It’s truly crazy.”
“I laugh off 90 percent of the stuff I’m sent,” Wu says. “But it’s the 10 percent.”
How a young entrepreneur built a media empire by repackaging memes.
Creating, and then attempting to dismantle, a fake persona based on a man who died in 1984.
How Facebook ‘likes’ landed Jelani Henry in Rikers.
“Traffic was never the problem. Everything else was.”
A teenager orchestrates his own attempted murder via an Internet chatroom.
An investigation into the ill-fated text messaging platform ZunZuneo.
“I guess what you post on Facebook matters.” An 18-year-old faces 10 years in jail for a sarcastic threat on Facebook.
Finding personal stories buried deep in the YouTube comments.
Searching for the real reason why a bunch of kids partying at the empty home of an NFL player became a national story.
On Twitter’s pleasures and perils.
After two cycling-related deaths, the social fitness network becomes a target.
What happened to “one of maybe 20 girls who became famous in the mid-‘00s for posting photos of themselves on image boards.”
A post-acquisition profile of Tumblr’s David Karp.
A woman starts a new job with a massive, all-knowing social media company; an excerpt from Eggers' The Circle, coming in October.
"Mae looked at the time. It was 6 o’clock. She had plenty of hours to improve, there and then, so she embarked on a flurry of activity, sending 4 zings and 32 comments and 88 smiles. In an hour, her PartiRank rose to 7,288. Breaking 7,000 was more difficult, but by 8, after joining and posting in 11 discussion groups, sending another 12 zings, one of them rated in the top 5,000 globally for that hour, and signing up for 67 more feeds, she’d done it. She was at 6,872, and she turned to her InnerCircle social feed. She was a few hundred posts behind, and she made her way through, replying to 70 or so messages, RSVPing to 11 events on campus, signing nine petitions and providing comments and constructive criticism on four products currently in beta."
What the rapidly changing world of teenage hook-up culture means for young women.
The prevalence of online threats against women and why the people who make them go unpunished.
