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Facebook‘s first quarterly report is inspiring few new friends. The social network swung to a loss in the most recent period, casting fresh doubts on the company’s ability to monetize its giant user base. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company posted a $157 million, 8 cents a shares, loss in the quarter, down from a $240 million profit. Excluding hefty stock compensation charges, Facebook earned $295 million, 12 cents a share. That meets the Wall Street forecast.

While some Twitter users reported intermittent updates via TweetDeck dashboard applications, the short-message website was down for many late Thursday morning.

Foursquare is rolling out its first revenue product as the company moves from focusing on user growth to generating cash. The new Promoted Updates enables businesses to send promoted content to users. These updates will appear at the top in a prominent position in the “Explore” tab in Foursquare. That’s the section of the app that is for users to find businesses nearby. The Promoted Updates, like Google search ads, there is “intent” there while users are looking for a restaurant, bar or other business nearby, says Steven Rosenblatt, Foursquare’s chief revenue officer. Businesses pay on a “cost per action” performance basis for these ads. In some ways these updates are also like Twitter’s promoted Tweets.

Wal-Mart's Facebook page has more than 17 million fans and the company also pays to advertise on Facebook. Expanding its reach online is key for Wal-Mart as shoppers increasingly shop on their computers, tablets and smartphones.

YouTube has added a tool which automatically blurs out the faces of people appearing in uploaded videos. It said the function would be of use to activists wishing to share footage of protests involving participants who wanted to remain anonymous. It hinted other features would follow, describing the move as "the first step towards providing visual anonymity".

At least, that’s what the statistics say. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), Google+ scored a 78 percent customer satisfaction rating. Facebook, on the other hand, languished below the rest of the social media competition at just 61%.

A new study has found that YouTube is emerging as a major platform for news, one to which viewers increasingly turn for eyewitness videos in times of major events and natural disasters....

Facebook now uses your name to post the things you "liked" maybe long ago, in a way that can get you in hot water in the here and now.

Digg rose to prominence years ago by changing the way people share news online. But its subsequent downfall – and $500,000 sale to Betaworks on Thursday – underscores the swift evolution of technology that is helping people discover content online.

Sun Valley and self-driving cars aside, the story of the day today is that social news site Digg has sold its remaining assets for $500K to the NYC-based tech firm Betaworks. While that number is indeed in the ballpark, we’re hearing from multiple sources that the total price of the Digg acquisition was around $16 million, including the price paid for IP by a previously unreported acquirer, LinkedIn.