The Kardashians shared their official 2012 Christmas card via Twitter yesterday, and it doesn't disappoint. While there's visible Photoshop work and everyone looks too be happy to be true, they do their duty as America's leading TV family and look stunning in all-white. Also noteworthy is the presence of the kitten Mercy (that Kanye bought for Kim), who is no longer alive. Yeezy doesn't make the card, but maybe next year?

Last night, President Barack Obama delivered his acceptance speech to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. He gave a passionate, at points poignant, speech, returning to ideas of hope from his original campaign, emphasizing his focus on access to education, and defending the progress he made while in office in the last four years. He also drew the contrasts between his and Republican contender Mitt Romney's platforms, contending that the two had vastly different plans for the nation's future. At 52,757 tweets per minute, Obama's speech set a new political record on Twitter. Sadly, an unsettling portion of that conversation overlooked policy, politics and common sense, and descended into crude stereotypes, ignorance, and blatant racism. [See & Read More]

Last night, at a few minutes past 10pm, Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan took the stage at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. He gave a speech that concentrated on deriding President Obama's inability to deliver on his promises, repeatedly patted Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney on the back, and made a weak attempt to articulate his own plans for the nation once he took office. He also tossed off a few (mostly corny) jokes along the way, and fired off a zinger or two in the direction of the Democrats. Predictably, Twitter lit up with the opinions of people who watched the speech and had a few zingers of their own. [See & Read More]

 It didn't take long for Philadelphia Police to catch a suspect after a woman boarded a bus and punched an unsuspecting passenger 10 times in the face, head, neck and shoulders. But it wasn't just traditional police work that nabbed the suspect — it was YouTube. Only two days after detectives posted video surveillance from the Route 23 SEPTA bus on YouTube, the footage had 117,950 hits, and a tip came in that led to the arrest of a suspect. [Watch & Read More]

There isn't a major social media platform that model Ashley Sky hasn't already conquered. Seriously: Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and Instagram; she's got it all covered. The 21 year-old Brazilian and Native American beauty has become one of the most prolific hotties on the Internet, thanks in part thanks to her own self-marketing but also because of the faithful fans who keep clamoring for more of her. [See & Read More]

New York Knick's player J.R. Smith has been fined by the NBA for posting a semi-naked photo of Joe Budden's ex-girlfriend on Twitter.The baller confirmed that he is now dating the hip-hop honey by sharing a photo of Tahiry from behind (checkout the photo after the jump), baring her derriere, with his fans on Twitter. [See & Read More]

Twitter's transformation from startup to power player has hit its rocky adolescent stage. In the past six months, more than a dozen high-level employees have departed.

The sudden exodus set Silicon Valley chattering: What's going on at Twitter? [Read More]

Tyson Balcomb quit Facebook after a chance encounter on an elevator. He found himself standing next to a woman he had never met — yet through Facebook he knew what her older brother looked like, that she was from a tiny island off the coast of Washington and that she had recently visited the Space Needle in Seattle.

“I knew all these things about her, but I’d never even talked to her,” said Mr. Balcomb, a pre-med student in Oregon who had some real-life friends in common with the woman. “At that point I thought, maybe this is a little unhealthy.” [See & Read More]

When Facebook isn't intentionally destroying your privacy, it's doing so unintentionally. That even goes for founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Two years ago, the Facebook CEO's once-private pictures were exposed to the world after the social network changed its privacy defaults. [Read More]

The Federal Trade Commission announced its settlement yesterday with Facebook over privacy violations dating back to December 2009, and the social network looks to have emerged from the situation a ‘roided-up slugger who lives to swing another day. 

The charges against Facebook included publicizing private content, failing to delete content deleted by users, and worst of all, over-sharing data with third party apps, the latter of which it most likely leveraged for profit. [Read More]