Fareed Zakaria has been suspended by Time and CNN for plagiarism, following revelations that he lifted text for a column on gun control which appeared in the August 20 issue of Time magazine from an article on the same subject by Jill Lepore which appeared in the April 23 issue of The New Yorker earlier this year. The transgression was discovered and publicized by NewsBusters, a conservative Web site which keeps watch for liberal media bias, hypocrisy, and general malfeasance. As a result of the NewsBusters expose, Time has suspended Zakaria's column for a month, and CNN has suspended him as a contributor …

Underscoring the growth of mobile devices in the last two years, NBC's coverage of the London Summer Olympics had generated three times the number of live streams as the Beijing Games four years ago. In a video the network posted Friday, Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development for NBC Universal, said live streams had tripled to 45 million from 14 million in 2008, when tablets weren't even part of the media landscape and smartphones weren't widespread. The network didn't provide figures for on-demand streaming.

Yahoo has struck gold again at the Olympics. The Web giant said today its coverage of the London Summer Games had so far (through Aug. 6) generated doubled the page views of both the Vancouver and Beijing Olympics combined. Yahoo's Olympics-related content, anchored by a dedicated Olympics site, has drawn 2 billion page views across the desktop, mobile phones and tablets. Through the end of July, which spanned the opening days of the Games, …

Say Media announced Thursday that tech industry veteran Anna Baird has been named as the new CFO. The hiring comes just weeks after former Time publishers Kim Kelleher joined the company as president, and Say's closing of $27 million in new venture funding. The company also promoted Alex Schleifer to creative director, overseeing design and implementation. Prior to joining Say Media, Baird was a partner at Connor Group. Before that, she was a senior …

The Federal Trade Commission announced this morning that Google has agreed to pay $22.5M to settle charges that it circumvented Apple users' privacy settings.

After introducing subscriptions for apps on a limited basis last month, Facebook on Wednesday announced it was making subscriptions available to all developers with apps on the social network. The feature allows developers to set prices based on local currency (e.g. U.S. dollars, Japanese yen) and offer different levels of subscriptions. Users pay with a credit card or PayPal account, and can cancel from their Facebook payment settings. Among the initial group of developers offering game subscriptions on …

Social networking on mobile devices is going mainstream. Some 82 million U.S. mobile users, or 25.9% of all Americans, will access a social networking site on their phone at least monthly this year, according to a new estimate by eMarketer. Not surprisingly, most of that activity will happen on Facebook. Nearly 70 million people, or 85.4% of those social networking on phones, will visit Facebook each month in 2012. That share will climb to 87.4% by 2014. Virtually all (95.5%) users will be checking social sites on a smartphone, and smartphone users are about twice …

Coca-Cola trumps Pepsi when it comes to generating mobile scans, according to new second quarter data from barcode technology provider ScanLife. Out of the total number of barcodes scanned for the two brands, Coke accounted for 67% and Pepsi, 33%. Overall, ScanLife reported 16.2 million scans of UPC and 2D barcodes took place through its ScanLife app or other 2D scanning apps. That total included 5.3 million in June, a monthly record. QR code campaigns promoting beverages had the most scans in the quarter. Other top industry categories in terms of scanning activity included quick-serve …

As part of its effort to ramp up mobile monetization, Facebook has launched a service in beta that will let app developers run ads in mobile news feeds. The company in May opened its App Center to help promote developers' wares, and says that in the last 30 days alone it has sent users to Apple's App Store and Google Play 146 million times to download titles. “Mobile ads are an additional way to drive people to apps. When a person clicks on one of …

Starbucks has struck a partnership with mobile payments startup Square to use its technology to process payments at its 7,000 U.S. stores. The coffee chain already allows customers to use its own branded app to pay for items, but it will now also accept payments from people using the Pay With Square app. Under their agreement, Square will also take over processing debit and credit card transactions for Starbucks. Given Starbucks' national footprint, the move should help accelerate adoption of mobile payments more widely. In a blog post today, …