By Joe Brock JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Google and Facebook are at the forefront of a scramble to win over new African Internet users, offering freebies they say give a leg-up to the poor but which critics argue is a plan to lock in customers on a continent of 1 billion people.
Read more(Reuters) – Ride-sharing company Uber has been ordered by South Carolina regulators to cease operations in the state while it remains in the process of seeking permission to legally do business there. The San Francisco-based company, valued at about $40 billion in its latest fundraising, has touched a raw nerve in many parts of the United States and other countries by threatening to open up often tightly controlled and licensed taxicab markets.
Read more(Reuters) – Ride-sharing company Uber has been ordered by South Carolina regulators to cease operations in the state while it remains in the process of seeking permission to legally do business there.
Read moreBy Natasha Baker TORONTO (Reuters) – Consumers concerned about over-sharing on public social networks are turning to private messaging apps to share texts, photos and videos with a limited group of people. Downloads of private social messaging apps increased 200 percent in 2013 over 2012, making them the fastest-growing category of apps, according to San Francisco-based mobile analytics firm Flurry. The apps provide more private connections and allow users to express themselves without worrying about how they are perceived by their entire networks.
Read moreBy Alastair Sharp TORONTO (Reuters) – Chinese hackers are attacking activists, journalists and human rights groups using many of the same techniques they apply to steal state secrets and spy on corporations, a Canadian technology research group said on Tuesday.
Read moreBy Malathi Nayak SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Zynga Inc reported better-than-expected third-quarter results as the maker of “Farmville” set its mobile gaming push in motion with releases such as “New Words with Friends.” Shares in the San Francisco-based mobile gaming company, were up about 8 percent in after-hours trading on the Nasdaq after ending Thursday's session up a cent at $2.36.
Read moreBy Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) – A Texas man who operated Bitcoin Savings and Trust was charged on Thursday with bilking his investors, in what prosecutors called the first federal criminal securities fraud case arising from a bitcoin-related Ponzi scheme. Trendon Shavers, 32, of McKinney, Texas, was charged with misappropriating about 146,000 of the 764,000 bitcoin, then worth more than $4.5 million, that he raised from September 2011 to September 2012 by promising investors “absurdly high” interest rates, U.S.
Read more