Social Media

Twitter is to start sharing ad revenue generated by videos with the people who create those videos. The monetization model will start in the US for now, but it opens up a platform that was previously only available to big names such as the NFL and CBS.

All of the key players in social media are focusing their efforts on video, and in giving users the opportunity to make money through their footage, Twitter is really upping the ante. It's a move that pits the company against the likes of YouTube, and one that will be seen as a desperate bid to attract more users.

Facebook's Trending Topics feature has faced a good deal of criticism in recent months, including claims that it showed a liberal bias. A little while back the company announced that it was to change how the feature works, and now there is a further change which sees human headline writers being defenestrated, and algorithms ushered in the front door.

What this means is that the Trending Topics list will no longer feature an explanation or description next to it, only the topic heading or hashtag will be displayed. Facebook will no doubt hope that this will help to eliminate future complaints of human intervention into the topics that are pushed on the social network.

WhatsApp's plans to share user data with Facebook are to be investigated by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in the UK. The change in privacy policy goes against a previous public commitment not to share data in this way.

The ICO has the power to regulate how companies make use of data belonging to people located in the UK, even if the companies themselves are located elsewhere. A key concern is whether there will be compliance with data protection laws.

The ever-popular messaging tool WhatsApp is to start sharing more user data with its parent company Facebook. The updated privacy policy means that WhatsApp will now share users' phone numbers with Facebook to "offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads".

The updated policy also communicates the fact that end-to-end encryption has rolled out, but it is the privacy side of things that will be of greater interest to many people.

Facebook has become so ubiquitous that even your mum is using it. This is just one of the many reasons the social networking giant has lost any vestiges of coolness, but the company is keen to try to claw some back.

The latest attempt to get down with the kids is a new social app called Lifestage. Aimed at 'high schoolers' the app is available for iPhone and iPad and for those with a profile it "makes it easy and fun to share a visual profile of who you are with your school network". It looks and sounds godawful, and comes across as a privacy nightmare.

There are many complaints levelled at Twitter, but two crop up time and time again. The first is that if you follow a lot of people, you're likely to be overwhelmed with notifications; the second is that there's just too much crap out there.

Twitter is introducing a couple of changes to address both of these problems with an update that's rolling out today. Arguably the more interesting of the two is the "quality filter setting".

Twitter continues its drive to clean itself up, purging unwanted content and users from the service. Today the company announces that in the last six months it has closed down 235,000 accounts relating to extremism.

It's part of the company's plans to scrub as many accounts from existence as possible that push "violent threats and the promotion of terrorism". With the recent spate of terrorist attacks around the world, Twitter's resolve has been hardened.

Facebook is starting to take gaming far more seriously. Not content with funneling the likes of Candy Crush through its servers, the social network is now joining forces with the company behind the Unity game engine to create its own desktop gaming platform.

The aim is to tap into not only the millions of gamers that are already on Facebook, but also to gather more from the PC-gaming community. It's a new venture that very clearly treads on the toes of Steam, and is likely to cause ripples in the gaming world.

Emoji are used for everything from basic communication, to diversity promotion, and even as a means of learning to code. While dismissed by some as the language of the millennial or the hard-of-thinking, emoji have their place in the modern lexicon, and an Australian company has launched a tool to show how they are being used.

Ad agency The Works has created a real-time emoji tracker that reveals how the handy little icons are being used right now. The company says of the recent additions to our language, "this is not a bastardisation but the next evolution of how we communicate". So what's the most popular emoji at the moment?

Professional social network LinkedIn is suing 100 anonymous individuals for data scraping. It is hoped that a court order will be able to reveal the identities of those responsible for using bots to harvest user data from the site.

The Microsoft-owned service takes pride in the relationship it has with its users and the security it offers their data. Its lawsuit seeks to use the data scrapers' IP addresses and then discover their true identity in order to take action against them.

Online hate crimes are to be targeted in the UK by a new specialist police team. Based in London, the small team of five officers will be tasked with identifying online abuse and helping victims.

In addition to this, the taskforce will use its two-year pilot program to educate and train other police officers and community groups about how to deal with online abuse and harassment, particularly on social media.

Following on from Facebook's decision to override users' ad blocking tools, Adblock Plus has fired one more shot, saying that it will continue the fight for the right to an ad-free social networking experience.

After finding a way to prevent Facebook blocking ads, which Facebook then bypassed once again, Adblock Plus says that while the game of cat and mouse may continue, it wants to use what it describes as "probably be the last time we talk about it for a while" to say that the open source community will fight the good fight for users.

Facebook's constant tinkering with newsfeed algorithms has a tendency to leave people asking what on earth is wrong with a simple chronological display of posts. But the social network -- driven by ads -- feels that it knows better and likes to play with the code that determines what you see.

Having made changes to ensure that you see more posts from the people you know (well, Facebook is supposed to be about friends and family...) the latest change sees the social network aiming to bring you posts that are "more personally informative".

Facebook's announcement that it would start to punch through ad blockers to make sure everyone sees ads was met with understandable condemnation and consternation. One of the best known ad blockers, Adblock Plus, soundly criticized the move, saying that it was an example of 'cat-and-mouse games'.

And so it begins. Facebook may have said that it will circumvent ad blocking tools, but now ad blockers are fighting back. The open source community has worked is magic and come up with code that circumvents Facebook's circumvention. How meta...

Facebook's plans to show adverts to everyone regardless of whether they are using an ad blocker was always going to prove controversial. The decision to bypass the privacy and security tools that many people have put in place has riled one company in particular -- Adblock Plus.

Describing the social network's latest move as being 'all anti-user', Adblock Plus's Ben Williams says that it is an 'unfortunate move' that 'takes a dark path against user choice'. He goes on to pooh-pooh the idea that Facebook made the decision based on what users want.