SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook and lawmakers have warned employers against requesting Facebook passwords while screening job applicants, a controversial practice that underscores the blurring distinction between personal and professional lives the era of social media.

The practice has reportedly grown more commonplace as companies increasingly regard profiles – or embarrassing photos from wild nights out – as windows into a prospective employee’s character.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook and lawmakers have warned employers against requesting Facebook passwords while screening job applicants, a controversial practice that underscores the blurring distinction between personal and professional lives the era of social media.

The practice has reportedly grown more commonplace as companies increasingly regard profiles – or embarrassing photos from wild nights out – as windows into a prospective employee’s character.

March 22 (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers sent letters on Thursday
requesting information from more than 30 popular iPhone
applications developers as part of an inquiry into how software
companies collect private consumer data.

Recipients of the letter, including Twitter, Facebook
, Foursquare and Path, were asked to provide information
about the user data that is collected when consumers download
their apps — and how that data is used.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – San Francisco’s mayor suspended embattled Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi on Tuesday and initiated misconduct proceedings to remove him from office after the sheriff admitted to restraining his wife during a quarrel on New Year’s Eve.

Mirkarimi, who in January became the city’s first new sheriff in three decades, had faced pressure to resign since pleading guilty last week to a lesser misdemeanor charge in his domestic violence case, in a deal his supporters had said would allow him to keep his badge and gun.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Peter Thiel, the superstar Silicon Valley investor, has famously dismissed university as a waste of time and money, and even offered students cash to drop out.

But his views apparently do not apply to himself – or to Stanford University.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A video calling for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the fugitive leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army militia group in Uganda, swept across the Internet this week, attracting a wave of support on Twitter and Facebook along with a skeptical backlash against a little-known team of filmmakers based in San Diego.

The 30-minute YouTube video was the centerpiece of a campaign that spread on Twitter beginning on Tuesday via hashtags such as #Kony2012 and #stopkony. By Thursday, the YouTube video had been viewed almost 40 million times, while Tweets about Kony had become the No. 1 trending topic worldwide on Twitter.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook’s original friends are moving into politics.

Small investments in NationBuilder, a political campaign software startup, by a tight-knit group of Facebook alumni suggest how they might spread their wealth around Silicon Valley in coming months, especially after the world’s largest Internet social network goes public.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 5 (Reuters) – Over the past year,
Gilt Groupe, the luxury flash-sales website, has tried to
finally turn a profit by listing its goods at full price,
partnering with a lifestyle magazine and even laying off the
head of one of its men’s clothing divisions.

Now it’s trying something new: Going viral.

The company announced Monday that it would offer a week’s
worth of sales in partnership with Klout, the service that
assigns social media users a number between 0 and 100 based on
how much influence they wield on platforms like Twitter and
Facebook. Klout users can also see which topics they are deemed
influential in, and who most often re-tweets their content.

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Wayin, the new
social media venture backed by Sun Microsystems founder Scott
McNealy, announced it has raised $14 million in Series B funding
from U.S. Venture Partners.

If there’s an element of déjà vu to the news, it’s because
the funding round closed almost 30 years to the day after
McNealy founded Sun, in 1982, with U.S.V.P. as its first major
investor.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Dropbox unveiled on Thursday a new photo uploading feature for Android smartphones, potentially sharpening its competition with Google, Apple, and a host of other companies battling to rule the burgeoning market for online storage solutions.

With a single click, the feature will allow users to wirelessly upload high-resolution pictures straight from their smartphones onto the virtual “cloud,” where the files can be accessed from any computer or mobile device.