Facebook is hoping to tap into a brand new audience: those under the age of 13.

Currently, Facebook bans anyone under the age of 13 from joining the social network. However, it is estimated that nearly 7.5 million preteens have circumvented this rule—even with their parents’ approval.

This week it was leaked that Facebook is considering allowing kids younger than 13 to use the service with parental supervision.

Among the options would be to connect kids’ accounts to their parents’ accounts and giving mom and dad control over what their children can do on the site, such as who they can “friend” and what apps they can use.

Of course, the benefits of “Under 13” users are not lost on anyone, including Facebook executives. Lowering the age limit would help the social networking giant tap younger users, who advertisers are eager to reach.

Kids are also avid gamers—a huge moneymaker for Facebook. About 12% of Facebook’s $3.7 billion in 2011 revenue came from games such as Zynga’s FarmVille or Tetris Battle.

Although lowering the age limit is not official, Facebook is drawing ire from parents and Internet regulators alike.

Many are worried that kids under 13 are not ready for the grown-up world of social networking, where older children have already fallen prey to online predators, bullies, or exposed to inappropriate content and online ads.

Facebook Camera—New innovation or Instagram redux?

Facebook launched their new photo-sharing app, Facebook Camera on Thursday.

Facebook hopes the app makes photo sharing more fun and accessible for the social media giant’s 900 million users, specifically smartphone users.

Facebook Camera app lets users take pictures and upload them directly to the app. Users can also crop photos, add colorful filters and upload multiple pictures at once.

However, the Facebook Camera announcement has left a lot of people in the tech industry scratching their heads.

The shocking news comes only weeks after Facebook spent $1 billion to acquire Instagram, a similar (to say the least) photo-sharing app. It also comes just days after its IPO got a lukewarm reception from Wall Street.

So far, the Facebook camera app gets generally good marks from early reviewers, who say it’s much faster than the primary Facebook app and displays photos in a large, crisp fashion.

And while there are definite similarities between the two apps, clearly the audience of each is different.

Ellis Hamburger from The Verge says, “Had the Instagram deal never occurred, Facebook Camera wouldn’t really be much of an Instagram competitor anyway, lacking any mobile-only social circles, hashtagged sharing, tilt-shift, and interesting filters.”

Despite the half-hour delay in trading, Facebook’s IPO kicked trading off with a bang Friday morning.

Facebook announcd it share price at $38 yesterday afternoon, and in early trading the social network’s stock has jumped 12% to $42.50.

Facebook share have even hit a high of $43.20. Faithful users of another social media giant, Twitter, predict that Facebook will close the trading day at $54 a share.

With the $38 per share opening, Facebook was able to raise a whopping $16 billion—also making it the largest Internet IPO of all time. Facebook has sold 421.2 million shares, putting it’s valuation at $104.1 billion.

Trading in social media industry seemed to come to a grinding halt with the introduction of Facebook to the market.

Zynga, the social gaming company that enjoys a healthy symbiotic relationship with Facebook, saw it’s stock fall 13%, or $1.10 a share, bringing it to an all-time low of $7.17 a share.

LinkedIn is also down 2.2% and Groupon has fallen nearly 6% as well.

It looks like our feathered friends have reached an important milestone.

Rovio, the developers of the wildly popular Angry Birds game series, announced today that over one billion Angry Birds games have been downloaded.

That’s a lot of fowl-flinging, pig-slaying action!

The one billion number counts downloads from all of the Angry Birds games, including the original Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, and the latest installment, Angry Birds Space.

To date, this is the first game app that has achieved such a milestone.

Additionally, the feat proves that video games do not always have to cater to a hardcore audience to be successful, selling games for low prices can still be profitable with a good product, and that solid gameplay and level design can easily compete with high-end graphics and game engines.

As a thank you to the Angry Birds faithful, Rovio put out a short video which hints at more exciting things to come.

If you named the top iPhone games you play, what would make the list?

Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Draw Something or Words With Friends would probably make everybody’s list. While there’s nothing wrong with those games, it can be limiting after a while.

The mobile landscape is teeming with varied, beautiful and inventive games just waiting for someone to play them. The best part? Most of these games are available in cheap—or sometimes free—packages.

From brain-busting puzzles to zombie-killing fun, check out these 5 iPhone games today!

• Puzzle Juice: Are you a big fan of Tetris, Bejeweled, and word searches? What if you combined all 3 of those games into one? That’s what Puzzle Juice is all about! Puzzle Juice combines all 3 awesome games for 1 challenging—yet entertaining—classic puzzle game.  Available on iTunes for USD $0.99.
• Plants vs. Zombies: Speculation about the zombie apocalypse is rampant—but who would’ve thought backyard plants could save humanity? Plants vs. Zombies is a fun-for-all-ages strategy defense game where you need to harness sunlight to grow these vicious (but saving) plants. Available on iTunes for USD $2.99
• You Don’t Know Jack: Jack is back! You Don’t Know Jack was pretty big in the ‘90s, and not much has changed with the trivia format game since then. Quick-hitting multiple choice pop culture trivia is delivered via TV game show format, and the narrator adds color commentary and jokes as always. Available on iTunes for USD $2.99
• Beat Sneak Bandit: Warning: May not be suitable for the rhythmically challenged. Beat Sneak Bandit is a platform game that requires rhythm-tapping to move you bandit stealthily around a mansion, hunting for clocks while avoiding security. Available on iTunes for USD $2.99
• Triple Town: Consider it a greener, simpler version of SimCity. Triple Town’s task is simple—populated a town by matching up grass, trees, and buildings while contending with limited space issues and nature. Available free on iTunes, but in-game purchases can help you get an edge.

Q: What do James Bond, Batman, and Inspector Gadget have in common?

A: A cool watch with seemingly every gadget needed to get them out of trouble while fighting evil!

While the new Pebble Smart Watch might not help you fight crime, it might just get you out of a few jams.

The Pebble is a slim, water resistant, scratch resistant watch with an e-paper display. It connects via Bluetooth to your iPhone or Android, so it can do everything your smart phone does.

The Pebble can send alerts to your wrist, or run apps to monitor your exercise, or even let you check your email!

The Pebble’s e-paper display (similar to a Kindle) is easily visible in daylight and boasts a 7-day battery life charged via USB.

Alerta, the company behind the Pebble, has received overwhelming support for this gadget. Alerta asked for just $100,000 on Kickstarter, but has received over $3 million dollars to date.

Support the Pebble project for $115 and you’ll receive an actual watch when it debuts.

Fire up those smartphone cameras—Facebook is about to get filtered.

Facebook announced Monday that they had acquired Instagram, a photo-sharing service, for $1 billion cash and stock deal.

Instagram is a 2-year old app that has attracted more than 30 million users with its Twitter-style photo sharing service.

Facebook has made smaller acquisitions in the past, but many of them have been so-called “acqui-hires” where smaller companies are bought to acquire their engineering talent.

The Instagram acquisition is completely different, as Facebook potentially takes out a rival and takes over a company with a growing and devoted user base that has succeeded in a field that Facebook has struggled with.

Photo sharing has long been a hot button for Facebook, with most critics citing their privacy policies as the major downfall. However, Facebook users still upload upwards of 250 million photos a day.

Instagram has developed an offering that has proved attractive and compelling to a diverse group of users, and Facebook no doubt hopes to capitalize on the photo sharing app’s expertise.

While both Facebook and Instagram are hopeful for their new union, many pundits set the social media world ablaze with the criticisms of the mega-merger.

Many fear that Facebook would prohibit Instagram’s 30 million users from sharing their pictures with other social networks, such as Twitter and Tumblr.

So far, no word has come from Facebook regarding this exclusivity, but for most early adopters, it’s a done deal. Some even posted instruction of how to protect or delete your Instagram accounts.

Dear Android faithful—stop being jealous of those Instagram photos! Now, you can join all your iPhone-using friends in the latest photography craze.

Instagram for Android, a new version of the popular photo-sharing app, is now available for download at the Google Play store.

“We’ve put an incredible amount of effort into this app to make a first-class experience for Android users everywhere,” Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said.

Instagram—touted as “a beautiful way to share your world”—is a free app that allows you take pictures with your smartphone device and share them on a Twitter-like site.

You can also “frame” your photos, or choose from one of several gorgeous filtered lens effects to transform your everyday moments into works of art to share with friends and family.

Instagram first launched in 2010, and Instagram’s iPhone app has been a smashing success with over 27 million iPhone users downloading the app.

Over 400,000 have signed up for the Android App since Instagram opened pre-registration on March 25.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Zygna appears to be doing just that in their latest acquisition of OMGPOP.

The final purchase amount of the gaming startup is undisclosed, estimates circle around $200 million.

Who is OMGPOP? Well, until about 6 weeks ago, they were somewhat unknown.

And then Draw Something happened.

Draw Something is the runaway game with friends that is akin to Pictionary. The smash hit has garnered 35 million downloads in 6 week.

It even passed Zynga’s Words With Friends game as the most popular game on Facebook by daily active users.

So that left Zynga with 2 options—create a drawing game to compete, or lend their expertise to those who might want it.

Luckily for Zynga, the 40-person OMGPOP decided to hand over the reins. How this move will affect the future of both Draw Something and OMGPOP remains to be seen …

The Angry Birds are exploring space: the final frontier.

In Rovio’s latest installment, our fowl friends are boldy going where no bird has gone before.

Angry Birds Space promises to bring new challenges and fun to users, and rekindle the fling for those who might have grown tired of the fowl-flinging formula.

Angry Birds Space puts a new spin on things with gravity-oriented physics.

Instead of flinging birds in one direction, an Angry Bird might curve around a moon or get caught in orbit. Other times, you’ll need to fling a bird below a target, or even left instead of right.

Angry Birds Space has 60 levels of fowl fun, and even throws in a few surprises along the way.

One surprise is the “golden eggsteroid”—if you hit the asteroid mid-level, users will travel through a wormhole and into a separate mini-game. Mini-games include more pig-alien smashing challenges, including a parody of Space Invaders.

Angry Birds Space is now available for Android, iOS, PC, and Mac. The HD version is USD $2.99, while the non-HD version costs USD $0.99. Of course, there is always the ad-supported version available for free.