Internet, Apps | featured news

Users and privacy advocates have expressed concerns about Facebook’s planned redesign, the way the change will affect third-party apps and the network’s general approach to privacy. Third-party apps will be fully integrated into a user’s profile page, with updates about activity on each app. That means that users won’t actively click to share updates from apps — the apps will add that information to a user’s page automatically.

What was born just before YouTube and Twitter, powers whole websites with open source code and has now been downloaded 25 million times? Joomla! The popular Content Management System with an exclamation point in its name passed a major milestone this month and now says its future will be based on helping developers build all kinds of other apps.

Skype WiFi is a new app for iPhone and iPad that lets you pay for internet access by the minute rather than by the hour or day.

A boom in apps has fed longstanding tensions between Twitter and the developers over whether they are partners or competitors.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the social network has plans to “launch something awesome” next week. There’s no official word on what will be announced, but we suspect it’s going to be the new iPhone photo-sharing service that we saw just last week.

Social gaming company RockYou has named Chief Operating Officer Lisa Marino as its new CEO. as the company seeks to get on track after a rocky transition from other businesses.

Amazon just revealed its own specially curated version of the Android Marketplace, but has chosen to label it the "Appstore."

Citizens of the cyberworld breathed a collective sigh of relief Thursday, when Facebook banned a new app that notifies you of relationship status updates for others -- an app widely described as a cyberstalking tool.

This is a historic moment for social games. “FarmVille,” the hit Facebook game among all hit Facebook games, is no longer the top app on the social network. For the first time since claiming the top spot more than a year ago in August 2009, FarmVille has fallen to second place in terms of monthly active users on Facebook, according to AppData.com. Coming in at no. 1 now is the app “Phrases.”