College is a time for experimentation, they say, and that applies as much to social media as anything else, as college students continue to create new social networks, many with a local or "real world" focus that distinguishes them from universal platforms like Facebook or Twitter.

Advertisers have long recognized the value of video, with its combination of sight, sound and motion, and they are eagerly embracing social media sites like Facebook and Pinterest -- but curiously when it comes to YouTube, where social and video intersect, big brands have lagged behind.

With typical self-involvement, the media is buzzing about media -- specifically, the new media guidelines for parents from the American Academy of Pediatrics, outlined in an article titled "Children, Adolescents and the Media." Many news outlets are reporting that the AAP is encouraging pediatricians to advise parents to restrict their children's social media use, thus playing on our collective anxiety that this social media thing is getting out of control in a way that will virtually ensure plenty of people click on the link. The thing is, it's not true.

Facebook: is there anything it can't snoop? If anyone needs additional proof that Facebook knows way, way to much about its members, just consider the findings of a study by researchers at Cornell University and Facebook, who demonstrated that the social network can figure out who you're dating -- even if you don't reveal that you're in a relationship by making it "Facebook official."

Roughly two out of three (64%) U.S. adults use Facebook, and nearly half of these (30% of total) get news from the social network, according to a new survey of 5,173 adults conducted by Pew in August and September. However, they're not necessarily doing it on purpose: among those who get news on Facebook, just 22% think of it as a useful way to get news, while 78% say they encounter news while doing something else.

Pinterest's business model and advertising strategy may still be works in progress, but the image-based social network's basic value and growth potential are clear enough to investors who ponied up $225 million in Series E funding this week, valuing the company at $3.8 billion.

Given the heavily regulated nature of the medical profession, it's no surprise that doctors have been a bit reluctant to embrace social media, considering the risk of privacy breaches and new areas of liability. But doctors also recognize its potential as a tool for communicating with patients and each other. Now the profession's governing bodies are trying to make it easier to adopt social media by issuing guidelines that remove at least some of the uncertainty surrounding it.

If anyone can explain this, please feel free to leave a comment enlightening me, because I just don't get it: it seems Facebook has decided to allow users to post graphic videos of people being beheaded -- but still refuses to allow pictures or video containing nudity, including images of women breastfeeding.

The world was still reeling Monday after a temporary outage prevented some people from updating their status on Facebook for a period of several hours. The outage, which the company blamed on network maintenance, left many people searching for answers: is God angry at us? Does He even exist, for that matter? Or are we basically alone in a cold, uncaring universe?

Parents and prosecutors are taking a more aggressive stance towards cyber-bullying, with new legal measures to uncover the identities of online bullies and punish them -- and perhaps their parents -- for the harm they cause to their victims.