Britney Spears’s album, Femme Fatale, landed at number one on the Billboard charts last week, but the singer didn’t get there all by herself. The buildup for the album had a pretty serious social media component that may be used as a blueprint for future album rel...

Social media has created a human filter for quality content. The social web, like the old water cooler, favors conversations around news and even in-depth journalism that may not otherwise receive the exposure it deserves. Recent analysis of the most-tweeted stories ...

Sup? Look at you strutting your stuff! You’ve now shared 25 stories. That’s quite the swagger you got there. Keep on struttin’!

The popular Flip video camera is no more, with Cisco announcing on Tuesday that it “will exit aspects of its consumer businesses,” which includes shutting down the Flip. In a statement, Cisco says that it is realigning its consumer businesses to "support four of i...

A group of volunteer bloggers has filed a class-action suit against The Huffington Post, its founder, Arianna Huffington, and AOL, which acquired the digital media company for $315 million in February. The bloggers, led by Jonathan Tasini, a union organizer who ha...

Twitter has extended its Local Trends feature to 70 more cities and countries, including Japan, South Africa, Santiago, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. Now, users in more than 100 international locations can discover what topics are trending in their region. To ...

The nominees for the 15th Annual Webby Awards were announced Tuesday morning, with Justin Bieber, the Old Spice Guy and Angry Birds among the list of nominees. The Webby Awards are dedicated to "recognizing achievement in websites, online film and video, m...

The course of social media never did run smooth -- not for long, anyhow. And for some Web 2.0 companies, it's running less smoothly than ever. It goes without saying that Facebook is the network du jour, but even though the reigning champion's user stats keep soar...

Mitt Romney has thrown his hat in the ring with a YouTube video announcing the formation of an exploratory committee for a 2012 presidential bid. In the 150-second video, Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, contrasts his business experience -- he...

The Public Interest Registry (PIR) has announced it will waive renewal fees for .org websites based in Japan that are unable to renew registrations for their domain names. Users must re-register their domains on a regular basis or risk losing them. The Japanese ea...

Facebook is using its marketing dominance to demand higher prices for ads, prompting a 40% jump in cost-per-clicks in the first quarter, according to researcher Efficient Frontier. Efficient Frontier, a digital marketing firm, based its data on its Customer Index...

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss must accept their $65 million settlement from Facebook and move on. A U.S. appeals court ruled Monday that the settlement -- which was featured in the movie The Social Network -- still stands, despite the Winklevosses' claim that Faceb...

A new video -- posted on Pepsi's YouTube channel -- shows soccer star David Beckham kicking three balls into three distant trash bins on a California beach. The video has caught the attention of Beckham's fans as well as skeptics, who are discrediting the authent...

Google is partnering with The New York Times for a new game that adapts trivia to the age of Google. A Google A Day, announced Monday on Google's blog, is a puzzle that asks crossword-style questions in a way that defies a simple Google search. For instance, one ...

Real men don't buy girls, and real celebrities donate their talent to a good cause. The Demi and Ashton Foundation (DNA) just launched a series of high-profile online videos to raise awareness about the harsh reality of child sex slavery. The campaign, called...

About 800,000 U.S. government employees are facing an unpaid vacation if Congress does not agree on a budget bill by midnight on Friday. The government shutdown could halt military pay, national park and museum operations, financial regulation and many other operatio...

I'll take “Current Events” for 25, Alex. By following 25 topics, you’ve graduated to a new level of smarts. You’ll be taking on Ken Jennings in no time!

Mashable Comics are illustrated every week by Kiersten Essenpreis, a New York-based artist who draws and blogs at YouFail.com. More Mashable Comics: - Top 5 Comics From the Mashable Caption Contest - HOW TO: Survive Those Awkward Online Moments - Pitc...

Rebecca Black's not the only one who thinks there's something special about Friday. Two separate pieces of research out this week show that the end of the work week is the best time to get traction on status updates and tweets. Analyzing more than 200 of its clien...

You’ve shared your 10th story - Gesundheit! Or, as pandas like to say, “Muuuuuueehhhrrrrr.”

Now that the iPad 2 boasts a camera, we're seeing even more creativity in the iOS photography arena. One concept that has raised a smile here at Mashable is the iPad self-portrait. We've selected 10 top examples of iPad owners having fun with both versions of the ...

Now that Instagram has a public API, developers can dream up alternative ways to showcase the stylistically filtered photos iPhone users love to share. Developer Chad Etzel has done just that with GramFrame, an iPad app that turns Instagram photos into an...

Forget FarmVille. Cracker brand Triscuit is attempting to build a social network around actual farming. Launched quietly earlier this year, homefarming.com claims about 14,000 members. The site features information about recipes related to farming, as well as inf...

Gone are the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's color-coded terror warnings. Two new types of warnings will take their place starting April 27, and they'll be coming to you via Facebook and Twitter. Instead of the five threat levels that were originally implem...