CREEPY.

Enter Viddy and Socialcam, two of the hottest start-up apps, both of which have the buzz of being the “Instagram for video.” The pair have exploded in popularity over the past few months, with each garnering user bases in the tens of millions seemingly overnight.

But the growth of one of these apps is not like the other.

Using a combination of fortunate timing, Facebook’s Open Graph influence and a new way of playing the system, Socialcam has effectively gamed Facebook, YouTube and the App Store to keep a strong grip on that ever-so-valuable user base. In the short term, at least, the three-man Socialcam start-up team has discovered a method to beat the 20-plus person outfit that is Viddy.

The method is so effective that Socialcam skyrocketed from around 1.4 million monthly active Facebook users to a whopping 40 million in a span of little more than two weeks. Socialcam surpassed Viddy in the Facebook app rankings last week, and currently sits fat atop Apple’s powerful App Store as one of the most downloaded free applications.

Fascinating take-down of a truly unscrupulous practice employed by new "Instagram-of-Video" upstart SocialCam, an app you've likely seen clogging up your Facebook news feed recently.

Mike Isaac of AllThingsD dives into the story, shownig some surprisingly cutthroat tactics at play in the social sharing app space, empowered by Facebook's black-box dominion over the news feed.

In many, many ways, the best thing to ever happen to Android will be Google’s acquisition of Motorola. Google can now defend its mobile operating system with Motorola’s patents and create dynamic devices with Motorola’s hardware. At the same time, the E.U. and U.S. have put in measures concerning litigation around essential patents and China has ensured that Android will remain open and free. There will be losers in the Android ecosystem, among them several mobile manufacturers and maybe mobile carriers, depending on how much control Google can exercise over the sale of the devices. 

When the Motorola deal was announced last August and Page said that Google wanted to “supercharge” Android, he was not being facetious. Google has a tremendous opportunity in front of it. The path is paved with daggers but the benefit to the entire ecosystem at this point outweighs the risks. 

In a lawsuit seeking class action status, filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Facebook shareholders are suing the company, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and several banks including lead underwriter Morgan Stanley.

The lawsuit claims shareholders were duped by the hiding of Facebook’s weakened growth forecasts.

Write Reuters’ Dan Levine and Jonathan Stempel:

The defendants were accused of concealing from investors during the IPO marketing process “a severe and pronounced reduction” in Facebook revenue growth forecasts, resulting from increased use of its app or website through mobile devices.

Only 12% of your friends see your average status update, but Facebook is testing an option called “Highlight” that lets you pay a few dollars to have one of your posts appear to more friends. Highlight lets the average user, not Pages or businesses, select an “important post” and “make sure friends see this." A tiny percentage of the user base is now seeing tests of a paid version of Highlight, but there’s also a free one designed to check if users are at all interested in the option.

Facebook is playing with fire here. The service has always been free for users, and a pay-for-popularity feature could be a huge turn off, especially to its younger and less financially equipped users who couldn’t afford such narcissism.

Google always pitched Google Drive, which launched in April after a considerable period of hype, as a replacement for Google Docs. What many users didn’t realize, it seems, is that Google will indeed completely replace Google Docs with Drive later this year. While Drive is still opt-in at this time, it looks like the forced transition is coming soon, as Google has started to alert users that their Google Docs account will soon be “upgraded to Google Drive.”

What’s coming next, according to Google’s official transition documents, is an opt-out phase similar to what the company has done when it transitioned to the new Gmail interface recently. Judging from the messages that many users are now seeing in Google Docs, this phase is going to start soon.

Finally, Google says, “users will be fully transitioned to Google Drive, with no ability to opt out.” Overall, Google expects the transition from what it calls the “Google Documents List” to Google Drive by late summer 2012.

This is absolutely blowing my mind. 3 cheers, Disney Research!

Computer interfaces with NO input screen or device? Using my body as a touchscreen? Sounds too amazing to be true. Except of course, for the inevitable second coming of the 'cellphones cause cancer' backlash.

I'm surprised they saved the best for last, though. A TV that turns on as soon as I sit on the couch? This is truly exciting stuff. Everyone in America would want this killer feature. (Everyone that hasn't accidentally locked themselves out of their house by closing the door too hard, that is.)

Ok... everyone as lazy as I am, that is.

Valve's anti-hierarchical structure and self-directed job responsibilities look empowering, challenging, and absolutely amazing.

It's like the Montessori school philosophy, put to work. And clearly, based on their success and out-of-the-box products, it's worked pretty well.

Investigators at the FBI supposedly aren't happy that social networks like Facebook or Google+ don't have the same kind of facility for wiretaps that phones have had for decades. If claimed industry contacts for CNET are right, senior staff at the bureau have floated a proposed amendment to the 1994-era Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) that would require that communication-based websites with large user bases include a backdoor for federal agents to snoop on suspects.

Creepy.