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News Byte

Facebook Beats Its Own Quarterly Lobbying Spending Record

Mike Isaac in Social on July 23, 2012 at 1:03 pm PT

Facebook spent $960,000 on lobbying Congress in the second quarter, according to a recent disclosure filing. That’s the most the company has spent on lobbying in a single quarter, as National Journal notes. Among the issues lobbied were various consumer privacy acts, do-not-track legislation and the Global Online Freedom Act. Google also broke its own second-quarter record, spending close to $4 million.

News Byte

Twitter Tailors Your “Who to Follow List,” but Only if You Want It

Mike Isaac in Social on May 17, 2012 at 4:18 pm PT

Twitter began rolling out tailored suggestions for users to follow on Thursday, aiming to give Twitter newcomers better direction in learning how to navigate the somewhat abstruse microblogging platform. The suggestions stem from a tracking cookie Twitter sends to new users, allowing the company to see sites visited within the past 10 days. Twitter then uses that information to recommend who to follow. Users can also opt out of this service.

News Byte

Twitter Enables “Do Not Track” Feature Across Supporting Browsers

Mike Isaac in Social on May 17, 2012 at 9:59 am PT

Twitter users on supported browsers can now opt out of being tracked by third-party sites and cookies by enabling the “Do Not Track” feature, Twitter announced on Thursday. Federal Trade Commission CTO Ed Felton championed the feature at a conference in New York on Thursday morning. Since Mozilla first introduced the feature for its Firefox browser last year, the company claims nearly 10 percent desktop-user adoption of DNT, and almost 20 percent on Firefox for mobile.