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Chris Paine is a filmmaker whose documentaries include "Who Killed the Electric Car?" ,"Charge" and "Revenge of the Electric Car. " The troubles of electric-car-maker Fisker Automotive have fueled another round of debate about whether plug-ins can live up to their promises. The California start-up, which had already halted production and laid off most of its employees, missed a federal loan payment Monday and told a congressional hearing on Wednesday that bankruptcy may be unavoidable . This is likely the end of the road...

What does Yahoo see in Tumblr? In a word: youth. That much was clear from Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer's remarks Monday about her company's decision to buy the blogging community for $1.1 billion. Mayer talked about how Yahoo's older and Tumblr's younger audiences fit together like "Africa and South America. " Put another way: The blogging site's main users are in the 18-25 age group, according to the analytics firm Quantcast — meaning that the youngest members of Tumblr's core audience were born in 1995, the same...

Jeffrey Nugent is the former president and chief executive of Revlon. I'm a member of the National Rifle Association and a former Army officer with assignments in the military police, artillery, and operations research and intelligence at the Pentagon. I'm also Ted Nugent's older brother. Ted and I recently attended the NRA convention in Houston, where he delivered the gathering's final speech and continued his ardent defense of the Second Amendment. Ted and I have hunted together for...

Facebook made its debut on the stock market a year ago on May 18 in one of the largest IPOs in history and the biggest for any Internet company. The social network's market value was more than $100 billion. Now, Facebook's stock is trading roughly 30 percent lower and has not hit its IPO price of $38 per share. Today, Facebook is valued at around $63 billion. In the year since its initial public offering, Facebook has launched a slew of new features, including search features and a deep...

Activist Adam Kokesh has asked 1,000 people to march across the Potomac on July 4 carrying loaded rifles. He calls it a protest against "tyranny. " Suppose the D.C. police, as they have promised, block the marchers from crossing into Washington? How should they respond? "With Satyagraha, " Kokesh, 31, texted The Washington Post. That is a term used by Mahatma Gandhi to describe his strategy of nonviolent resistance to British rule in India. Invoking Gandhi while advocating the carrying of...

Mayor Vincent C. Gray is set to introduce legislation that would allow illegal immigrants to obtain D.C. driver's licenses, following similar moves by Maryland and several other states. The legislation, according to a Facebook posting Tuesday night by the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Engagement, "would allow all eligible District residents the right to obtain a driver's license or DC identification card, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. "...

1) Facebook is blue because Zuckerberg is color-blind: According to a 2010 profile from the New Yorker , Facebook's main color is blue because Zuckerberg has a red-green color blindness. In the interview, he told reporter Jose Antonio Vargas that "blue is the richest color for me — I can see all of blue. " 2) He says he's not that interested in money: This is a well-known fact, but one that continues to surprise. In several interviews and goals statements, Zuckerberg has made it clear that making money is...

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg generated international attention last week for his entry into Washington politics. In launching a new political group, he positioned himself as a leading advocate to help aspiring entrepreneurs and other ambitious immigrants achieve the American dream. Yet behind the scenes on Capitol Hill, Facebook lobbyists were engaged in another form of politics: pressing to insert a few new words helpful to Facebook's business interests into a sprawling legislative...

Daniel Ray Carter Jr. logged on to Facebook and did what millions do each day: He "liked" a page by clicking the site's thumbs up icon. The problem was that the page was for a candidate who was challenging his boss, the sheriff of Hampton, Va. That simple mouse click, Carter says, caused the sheriff to fire him from his job as a deputy and put him at the center of an emerging First Amendment debate over the ubiquitous digital seal of approval: Is...

Vine has been cut out of Facebook — at least in part. The new app, which was designed by a Twitter-owned company, limits you to six-second bursts of film creativity and carries a menu option to find friends who are using Vine on its network. But when users tap their screens to find kindred spirits on Facebook, all they get is an error message. "Vine is not authorized to make this Facebook request," the message says. When asked about what, exactly, is keeping Vine from getting this authorization, a...

NEW YORK — It was supposed to be our IPO, the people's public offering. Facebook, the brainchild of a young CEO who sauntered into Wall Street meetings in a hoodie, was going to be bigger than Amazon, bigger than McDonald's, bigger than Coca-Cola. And it was all made possible by our friendships, photos and family ties. Then came the IPO, and it flopped. Facebook's stock finished its first day of trading just 23 cents higher than its $38 IPO price. It hasn't been that high since.

After a market debut marred by technical glitches and a deep dive in the company's stock price, Facebook has spent the past year focused on its biggest weaknesses: how to make money and keep its more than 1 billion users tethered to the social network. The results have been mixed. The company's stock price has recovered some of its worst losses, and Facebook has announced several moneymaking initiatives. But the circumstances surrounding the IPO are still under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and some...

SYDNEY — An Australian politician says he has learned a valuable lesson in social networking after he "liked" a Facebook photo without realizing that it showed a teenage prankster exposing himself. Western Australia Minister for Education Peter Collier said he clicked the "like" button under what he thought was an innocent photo of the then-16-year-old in late 2011. Collier apologized Thursday and said he had no idea that the teen, who was...

SAN FRANCISCO — Google is digging deeper into its technology toolkit to turn its social networking service into a more formidable threat to Facebook, sprucing up its photo features at a time when sharing snapshots online and on mobile gadgets is growing more popular. Many of the 41 new features being added to Google Plus beginning Wednesday will draw upon the computing power, machine learning, algorithms, semantics analysis and other innovations that established Google's...

It has been only a month since Mark Zuckerberg , Facebook's co-founder and chief executive, pulled together an impressive roster of tech executives to advocate for immigration reform through FWD.us , a nonprofit lobbying organization. But the group is already losing some of its star power. Some environmental groups are complaining that FWD.us has funded television ads supporting politicians who back construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and proposals to drill for oil...

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — LinkedIn and Facebook will celebrate the anniversaries of their IPOs just a few days apart this week. But their experiences as publicly traded companies couldn't be more different. LinkedIn Corp. promotes its service as a stepping stone to a more enriching career. As it turns out, the professional networking company's initial public offering was a great place to start a rewarding investment portfolio, too. LinkedIn's stock has nearly quadrupled...

Facebook is considering ways to invite children younger than 13 onto its social network, a controversial move that could bolster the company's bottom line but also spark concern among regulators over the safety of young Internet users. The move highlights what analysts say will be a recurring problem for the newly public firm: Facebook needs to find ways to increase revenue and please its shareholders, but those actions can stir privacy concerns . And few subjects have sparked as much debate as the social networking giant's...

LAST WEEK, Adam Conner, a lobbyist for Facebook in Washington, had some chilling words for the Wall Street Journal about the company's plans. "Maybe we will block content in some countries, but not others," Mr. Conner said. "We are occasionally held in uncomfortable positions because now we're allowing too much, maybe, free speech in countries that haven't experienced it before. " Such a remark — even when it comes from a 25- year-old lobbyist — is deeply disturbing and seems to reflect an alarmingly cavalier attitude...