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Paleontologist Lee Berger displays the skull and partial skeleton of a juvenile male Australopithecus sediba. Photo by Kate Wong During a recent reporting trip to South Africa for a forthcoming feature article on a new fossil human species called A ustralopithecus sediba , I asked readers to submit their questions about this dazzling find. Inquiries about the nearly two-million-year-old hominin–which has been held up as a possible ancestor of our genus, Homo –came in via Twitter, Google Plus and the comments section of this blog.

Google Plus' stringent real-names-only policy appears to be hurting the new social networking site's popularity among activists worldwide. Will Google ever change their approach?

There has been quite a lot of discussion (again, groan, I know) about pseudonymity and anonymity online, due to Google Plus decision to delete accounts that seem (to them, within their cultural frames) to be pseudonymous. [More]

Professionally edited new media feeds kept concerned citizens informed, without having to sift through an unfiltered global reaction. This past year, social media replaced traditional news outlets as an unrivaled source of information for at least a few era-defining stories: Twitter broke the Osama Bin Laden story and YouTube became the window into the Arab Spring .

One of Google Plus's most unique features, Circles, initially attracted users to the service and set it apart from competitors.

Eric Schmidt maintains Google Plus isn't in competition with other social networks; LinkedIn's Jeff Weiner isn't convinced the two can coexist. Who's right? Google Plus's overnight success has sent the tech press and Google 's competitors into a frenzy over how much market share the new social network will grab

As Friendster , MySpace and many other social-networking sites have discovered, a successful business finds a niche that draws in a large number of users and offers intriguing, easy-to-use services that keep those users interested. Whereas Facebook , LinkedIn and Twitter have excelled at this formula, Google's efforts in this area-- Buzz (2010), Wave (2009) and Orkut (2004)--have faltered. The search-engine giant hopes its search is over with this week's introduction of the new Google+ ( Google Plus ) network