Beware: a Facebook poke could land you behind bars. Just ask Shannon D. Jackson of Hendersonville, Tennessee, who faces that very real possibility. Jackson was arrested and transported to Sumner County Jail on September 25th with a bond set at $1,500 after she violated an order of protection by allegedly poking a woman on Facebook…

Earlier in the year Tony La Russa got sue happy with Twitter, only later to drop the charges , and yesterday we learned that a woman was sued over a defamatory tweet (though there does seem to be some cause ). It appears as if social media is making people uncomfortable enough to sue. In…

The web’s response to the passing of music legend Michael Jackson has been staggering . Social media was pounded with tributes last Thursday after the news broke, but next Tuesday could be a huge test for the entire infrastructure of the web, when the memorial for Michael Jackson will take place. The tribute and…

Today a fire hit a major datacenter in Seattle, taking money processor Authorize.Net down . This has caused many web-based financial transactions to grind to a halt, but Authorize.Net isn’t the only website that’s gone offline today. Another popular website has fallen, Geocaching.com , a worldwide…

Michael Jackson’s online popularity continues to soar: we reported previously that 2.6 million Michael Jackson songs were downloaded this week; Nielsen SoundScan says that no artist has ever sold more than 1 million downloads in a single week. But Jackson is dominating in online video, too. Visible Measures , which goes beyond YouTube views and instead…

Ever have one of those conversations that culminates in someone saying “I’d give you $20 to _____”? That’s the premise of a new site PayPal has launched: Do Stuff For Money . The site is rather straightforward: input your name, who you’re offering money to, how much you’re offering, and what that person has …

Celebrity deaths dominated the news this week, and these tragic stories became the source of much social media chatter. While many used these tools to pay tribute to lost stars, others started new rumors that made it hard to separate fact from fiction. Iran, meanwhile, dominated the social media buzz early in the week. We…

A tribute song to Michael Jackson featuring The Game, Chris Brown, P. Diddy, Usher, Mario Winans, Boyz2Men and other leading artists has resulted in an unprecedented number of downloads today from Box.net, the file sharing site we’ve been tracking for over 3 years. The song was spread largely through social media: …