An image posted to the Oreo fan page shows rainbow layers betwixt its biscuity wafers, instead of the usual dollop of white cream. The photo was accompanied by the message “Proudly support love!”.
Most users praised the (unfortunately unavailable in stores) rainbow cookie, but a few swore off parent company Kraft
Facebook’s initial public offering has many people asking: “If I want to buy shares, how do I do it?”
We at CNNMoney wondered the same thing, so we decided to find out the direct way: by trying to buy a small handful of Facebook shares.
Interesting experiment from CNN Money - on the other side of things, here’s Dominic Rushe’s five reasons not to buy Facebook shares
Over seven days The Guardian is taking stock of the new battlegrounds for the internet. From states stifling dissent to the new cyberwar front line, we look at the challenges facing the dream of an open internet
Day two: the militarisation of cyberspace
Internet attacks on sovereign targets are no longer a fear for the future, but a daily threat. We ask: will the next big war be fought online?
Day three: the new walled gardens
For many, the internet is now essentially Facebook. Others find much of their online experience is mediated by Apple or Amazon. Why are the walls going up around the web garden, and does it matter?
Day four: IP wars
Intellectual property, from copyrights to patents, have been an internet battlefield from the start. We look at what Sopa, Pipa and Acta really mean, and explain how this battle is not over. Plus, Clay Shirky will be discussing the issues in a live Q&A
Day five: ‘civilising’ the web
In the UK, the ancient law of defamation is increasingly looking obsolete in the Twitter era. Meanwhile, in France, President Sarkozy believes the state can tame the web
Day six: the open resistance
Meet the activists and entrepreneurs who are working to keep the internet open
Day seven: the end of privacy
Hundreds of websites know vast amounts about their users’ behaviour, personal lives and connections with each other. Find out who knows what about you, and what they use the information for
While Leonardo da Vinci turns in his grave, behold the Mona Lisa – as the artist never intended. The Lo-fi gives the subject a little more colour in her cheeks, as well as a snazzy border and a weird green line behind her head. Goodbye, art!
See more famous images as viewed through Instagram’s filters - in hommage to the company which has been bought our by Facebook here.
Yesterday we published a comment piece about Facebook’s recently leaked documents, which appear to reveal Facebook’s image and post approval system. As the author Rowan Davies points out, right there, sandwiched between “depiction of sexual assault or rape” and “bestiality, necrophilia and pedophilia” is “breastfeeding photos showing other nudity, or nipple clearly exposed”. In other words - pictures depicting babies being breastfed can be removed. This appears to be an active policy, as illustrated by the picture below (but please note, male nipples in any shape or form seem to be allowed):
Not surprisingly, this irritated a lot of people on our desk. We wanted to see if these feelings were shared, so we called on our readers and asked them to send us pictures of them breastfeeding. This quickly became one of our most read article on our Facebook app, with most readers agreeing with the writer.
We received a staggering amount of replies to our appeal for photographs (in the hundreds overnight), something which makes our project – posting said pictures to our Comment is free Facebook page – quite difficult to handle: we cannot possibly post hundreds of photographs … nor was it ever our intention to overwhelm Facebook’s small moderation team - the last thing we want to do is behave like trolls; as Rowan Davies says, it’s not difficult to have some sympathy for the gigantic task that is moderating a site with 845 million users.
Instead, we decided to use Tumblr to create a gallery (unfortunately limited to ten pictures) of some of the many wonderul pictures which were sent to us by many mothers from all over the world - from Argentina to the US, France and Sweden. We hope that someone at Facebook will look at our gallery and agree that Facebook is the real loser here: who could possibly be offended by what they see here?
If we hear from Facebook we will let you know - in the meantime, we’d like to thank all the women who participated and sent a snapshot of their lives to us.
The power of Comment is Free on Tumblr and Facebook - also some great discussion on Facebook’s guidelines continued on the comments on its article about these images that’s worth checking out
An image of a burning bus in Tottenham was one of the first to spread rapidly via Twitter. Photograph: GA/Rex Features
We’ve posted a number of pieces on guardian.co.uk as part of our Reading the Riots study about how social networks and technology were used during the UK unrest in August. Here’s a round up of some of our coverage:
See all the reports from the Reading the Riots study here.
We found that regardless of how much we improved the product or the marketing message consumers’ memories about the brand were too strong to allow them to view Myspace with fresh eyes and an open mind,” he added. “We could not escape their images of animated GIFs… I don’t think a large consumer campaign would have significantly changed the outcome for Myspace,” he said. “In the end, I believe Myspace would have had a better chance for success if we had relaunched it as an entirely new brand.
The former chief executive of Myspace on the demise of the once-dominant social network. Read more here.
A selection of stories, photos, quotes, video and audio from guardian.co.uk, curated by James Walsh, Hannah Waldram, Carmen Fishwick and the Guardian's editorial team. We are also editors of the news tag.
