Judging by a leaked prototype, Facebook is developing new service dubbed Memories, which lets users browse prior site activity. "Memories utilizes a navigation bar to lets user jump between years and view counts of each year's status updates, added friends, Likes, and Events," reports Inside Facebook. "Details on the product are scarce since it was only up for a few minutes, but we also know a link to a user's check-ins was temporarily available." The would-be service is in line with increasing efforts by Facebook to better organize the vast amounts of data that users upload to …

On news of new funding at a $3.7 billion valuation, the industry is reflecting on the year Twitter had, its prospects for the future, and whether it's really worth all that money. "The moves are big ones for Twitter, which is moving fast to upgrade its management and business model under CEO Dick Costolo," writes BoomTown's Kara Swisher, who first reported the additional $200 million in funding. "A big slug of cash will surely help the start-up's expansion efforts and essentially declares it is not for sale to bigger companies such as Google (quite yet, …

Even among "spendthrift" youth, "dumbphone's" days are numbered, according to Fast Company, citing new research from Nielsen. Presently, among those 15-to-24 worldwide, the U.S. still lags behind with just 33% of young people owning smartphones. The U.S. is also an exception in male-female share of smartphone ownership, which favors young men pretty much everywhere, except in the U.S., where 55% of young smartphone owners are women, notes Fast Company. What can Nielsen's research tell us about next year? For one, "Android's push to sell more, cheaper devices is likely to succeed, and push up ownership among younger users everywhere," …

We guess it's fair to say that advertisers' fear of social media is dead. Indeed, beating previous projections, Facebook is now on track to generate about $2 billion this year, sources tell Bloomberg. "The love affair of consumers with social networks is an abiding one," Karsten Weide, an analyst tells Bloomberg. "All the big brands are there." Facebook's A-List advertisers now include Coca-Cola, JPMorgan Chase, and Adidas. "People are learning and they're figuring out how they can work with Facebook," Christian Juhl, a president at digital ad agency Razorfish tells Bloomberg. "You can prove success without a massive expenditure." …

Social news reader Flipboard just relaunched it popular iPad app with various new features, like the ability to post Facebook status updates, tweets and photos from anywhere within the app, as well as easily share content across networks. Now, users can also browse photos from their Flickr streams and stories from Google Reader as well as items shared by Facebook and Twitter friends -- "all in Flipboard's signature magazine-style format," as Mashable notes. "It's also easier to navigate between and zoom in on items shared across these networks." But for Flipboard -- recently named the iPad app of the …

With the help of a little facial recognition technology, Facebook has unveiled a new photo tag suggestions feature. "When users upload photos, faces which match ones tagged in their existing photos will show a suggestion of who to tag," Inside Facebook reports. "Similar photos are grouped for easy tagging," while "Users can opt out of being identified by the facial recognition software in their privacy settings." The update is expected to roll out nationally over the next few weeks, and will likely lead users to be tagged in photos far more frequently. Other photo editing tools like Apple's iPhoto …

Seeking the creation of an Internet "privacy bill of rights" for U.S consumers, the Obama administration is calling for the formation of a Privacy Policy Office. "The U.S. Commerce Department's report stopped short of calling directly for specific privacy legislation," reports The Wall Street Journal. "Instead, it recommends a 'framework' to protect people from a burgeoning personal data-gathering industry and fragmented U.S. privacy laws that cover certain types of data but not others." To date, as The Journal notes, the U.S. government has taken a largely "hands off" approach to the Web. The Commerce Department report, however, suggests that …

Capping off a colossal year for Facebook and its young CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has been named Time magazine's Person of the Year. "For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them," Time explains. "For creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives." Indeed, "Zuckerberg's accomplishments in 2010 are truly outstanding," writes Mashable. "He cemented Facebook's status as the biggest social network and one of the hottest Internet companies" -- not to mention being one of the world's youngest billionaires, and just recently pledging to …

In 2010, corporate decisions at Yahoo caused more head scratching than New York City's bed bud epidemic. Adding to a year of confusion, Yahoo Video -- which TechCrunch calls Yahoo's "YouTube-like video site" -- is no longer letting users upload video, and it plans to delete all user-generated content by next spring. "After careful consideration, we will be removing all general user-generated content upload capability and user-uploaded video from Yahoo Video," the company explains in an email to Yahoo Video users. Careful consideration of what? "Unable to compete with YouTube and even Facebook for traffic to its video site, …

Google on Wednesday appointed Milo Medin to head its various broadband initiatives as VP of access services. Medin -- co-founder of what Mercury News calls the first major U.S. residential broadband provider, @Home Network -- will first help Google decide where to build a high-speed Internet "demonstration network." Citing overwhelming interest in the network -- along with unexpected complexities -- Google is waiting until early next year to name the lucky U.S. city or town. "Google struck a nerve in February when it said it was looking to choose at least one community that would get a high-speed broadband …