A new report says Facebook has acquired 750 patents from computer-systems giant IBM. The news comes shortly afterYahoo sued Facebook for patent infringement over 10 of its software patents.

A “person with knowledge of the transaction” tipped the news, though the deal hasn’t been made public yet.

Compared to other tech companies, Facebook’s arsenal of patents is rather meager: The company has just 56 patents compared with the thousands stockpiled by the likes of Microsoft and Apple.

However, the report says, Facebook has applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for at least 500 more. Apparently it didn’t want to wait for those to be approved and chose to take a shortcut in stocking up its patent portfolio.

The lawsuit from Yahoo, which has recently had a wholesale change in management and is expected to announce layoffs, likely provided the motivation.

Source: Mashable

Although it is required by law for Facebook users to be at least 13 to join the network, many believe the age limit should be higher, a new study says.

According to a poll conducted among 2,000 consumers on the opinion-based community SodaHead.com, about 34% of respondents said Facebook users should be at least the age of 13 to join. However, most voters selected ages older than 13 as a minimum requirement, as 29% want ages 14 – 17 to be the earliest and 19% said the site should be limited to those over the age of 18.

Only 13% said users between the ages of 10 and 12 were acceptable for the site, followed by 5% approving of people joining between the ages of 7 and 9.

Child privacy laws necessitate Facebook’s age minimum of 13 years old.

Source: Latest News on Social Media

“Don’t judge a book by its cover?” Well according to a new study, it seems that’s exactly what social media users tend to do with Facebook pictures.

“Photos seem to be the primary way we make impressions of people on social networking sites,” said Brandon Van Der Heide, lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University. “If your profile photo fits what they expect, observers may be unlikely to look very closely at the rest of your profile – they have already decided how they feel about you.”

“People will accept a positive photo of you as showing how you really are, but if the photo is odd or negative in any way, people want to find out more before forming an impression,” said Van Der Heide. “If your photo is not quite normal – either positively or negatively – people are going to pay a lot more attention to what you wrote.

Source: Mashable

Facebook‘s growth in the U.S. will drop for the first time to the single digits this year, but Twitter‘s presence will expand by 20% or so, according to a report.

EMarketer estimates that Facebook grew 13.6% in 2011, which comes after a 38.6% surge in 2010. By contrast, Twitter grew 31.9%, which comes after a 23.5% jump in 2010. The relative growth numbers are greatly influenced by the respective sizes of the networks.

At the end of 2011, Facebook claimed nearly 133 million U.S. users out of a total population of around 308 million. Twitter had a U.S. user base of 24 million.

However, while Facebook’s growth seems to have hit a plateau, Twitter’s size will double by 2014, eMarketer predicts.

Read Full Story here!

Source: Mashable