social media

Life, death, and free culture in the Mission

Ilya Zhitomirskiy was supposed to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. He had the startup, the crowdfunding, the loyal following. And then everything fell apart.

By Matthew Shaer

FORTUNE -- At 8 p.m. on Nov. 12, 2011, a San Francisco entrepreneur named Tony Lai received a call from a number he did not recognize. Lai had recently returned from a trip to Costco to pick up party supplies -- he and a friend MORE

Dave Morin: The mobile answer man

Companies are desperate to understand - and profit from - mobile users. Dave Morin already knows a thing or two.

FORTUNE -- Dave Morin is methodically thumbing the chain links on his silver bracelet as he parses the difficulties of designing products for mobile devices. The conversation careens from one big idea to the next until Morin hits on something profound: "With mobile, life has become the platform," he says earnestly.

Morin, MORE

What Twitter had to say about Apple's iPhone 5 event

The results of a survey of 1.7 million post-launch tweets

FORTUNE -- Here's one way to measure the reaction of the public -- as opposed to the press or the Street -- to Apple's (AAPL) new iPhone.

Crimson Hexagon, a Boston-based social media research firm that uses technology developed at Harvard (get it? Crimson?) gathered and analyzed nearly 1.7 million responses to the iPhone 5 launch posted on Twitter between Wednesday morning MORE

Michael Saylor: MicroStrategy's boy king grows up

He became a punch line 12 years ago. Now Michael Saylor is back - and with juice from Facebook.

By David A. Kaplan, contributor

FORTUNE – There's unfiltered, there's unvarnished, and then there's Mike Saylor.

He's the 47-year-old archetype of dotcom-era lunacy and the CEO of MicroStrategy (MSTR), a midsize business-intelligence software company based in the suburbs outside Washington, D.C. At lunch we've been discussing his company's record revenues, his fascination with MORE

Burberry's Angela Ahrendts: High tech's fashion model

Ahrendts is making Burberry (yes, Burberry) into an innovation machine.

By Beth Kowitt, writer

FORTUNE -- Last May, Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts flew to California from her London headquarters to introduce herself to an executive she thought could be critical to the future of her business: Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. When the two met at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, they stood in the hall batting around ideas for 15 MORE

Why LinkedIn fiddles as Facebook burns

The professional social network was seen as sexless compared to Facebook. Now it just seems safe.

By Kevin Kelleher, contributor

FORTUNE -- Amid the anger this week of Facebook investors, the embarrassment of the company's underwriters and the schadenfreude of its detractors, a question has been bugging me: If so many investors are skeptical of Facebook's (FB) overvalued IPO, then why are they still so positive on LinkedIn (LNKD)?

Like Facebook, LinkedIn MORE

Big business loves Instagram

Fortune 500 companies are looking at the big picture as they embrace social media.

By Colleen Leahey, reporter

FORTUNE -- About a year before Facebook bought the photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion, General Electric (GE) joined. Instagram users take and share pictures on their smartphones and "follow" other users' photostreams. GE (No. 6 on the Fortune 500) has 86,066 followers. Instagram's retro-filters can make GE's photos look like a history MORE

Inside Facebook

How does the social media giant really work? Read this story before you buy the stock.

By Miguel Helft & Jessi Hempel

Editor's note: This article originally appeared in the March 19, 2012 issue of Fortune magazine. A shorter version appeared on Fortune.com on March 1, 2012.

FORTUNE -- On a Friday morning not long ago, Mark Zuckerberg gathered his troops for a much-anticipated all-hands meeting at Facebook's brand-new headquarters. It was billed as MORE

Renting rooms on Airbnb for fun and profit

How does listing your space on the site really work?  Our intrepid reporter found out with a little help from her folks.

By Caitlin Keating, reporter

FORTUNE -- I put my home on Airbnb.

Let me clarify. I put my parents' apartment on Airbnb. As a 22-year-old recent college graduate living back at home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I thought listing our spare room on a rental site would MORE

Airbnb: More than a place to crash

The web startup has thrived by making it easy to list and find rooms to rent. But CEO Brian Chesky thinks the site can be an eBay for the social age.

FORTUNE -- The house-sharing website Airbnb lists 4,881 apartments for rent in Paris, but CEO Brian Chesky is paying a lot of attention to listings like the one for a parking spot in Île-de-France for $20 a night. Strange things MORE