Washington, June 12 - Amid a raging controversy over a sweeping US Internet surveillance programme, top tech companies in a concerted move have asked the government ease the secrecy surrounding national security investigations.

Google, Facebook and Microsoft in requests echoed by a top official from Twitter also asked US officials Tuesday to lift long-standing gag orders covering the nature and extent of information collected about Internet users by the National Security Agency.

Washington, Mar 2 - Facebook Inc. announced that it has reached a deal with Microsoft Corp. to acquire its Atlas Advertiser Suite, a service that enables marketers and agencies to get the most out of their online advertising.

"We're pleased to announce that we have agreed to acquire the Atlas Advertiser Suite from Microsoft," Facebook said in a blog entry Thursday, without disclosing the terms of the deal.

The purchase of Atlas, a set of tools that help companies choose the placement of their ads on web sites and monitor their effectiveness, is part of Facebook's bid to battle Google for market share in the online display-ad business.

Washington, Feb 18 - The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is collaborating in the investigation of a "sophisticated attack" by hackers on Facebook last month, which, according to the social network, has not
compromised users' data.

The daily San Francisco Chronicle said Saturday that the FBI is working with Facebook to determine the origin of last month's hacker attack that hit the computers of some workers at the California company.

According to the newspaper, the social network said that "malware was installed on laptops used by Facebook employees when they visited a mobile developer's web site".

Washington, Feb 1 - A controversial new sex app called "Bang With Friends" claims to facilitate sexual encounters with users and their Facebook friends without the embarrassment of rejection.

"Anonymously find friends who are down for the night," the company website said.

"Your friends will never know you're interested unless they are too!"

The Bang With Friends app, aimed at 20-somethings, was created by three "college-aged" men from California, who are withholding their identities, according to US media reports.

Washington, Jan 16 - Social media giant Facebook has unveiled a new tool -- Graph Search -- to enable users in conducting targeted searches for people, places, photos and interests on the site.

"You should theoretically be able to ask Facebook 'Who are my friends who live in San Francisco?' and Graph Search should be able to return an answer to you," Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told reporters Tuesday.

Facebook's Graph Search photo component is the first of its kind for the California- based tech company.

Washington, Jan 15 - Facebook and other social networks tend to promote self-esteem but also lower self-control both on and offline, says new research.

The finding demonstrates that users who are focused on close friends tend to experience an increase in self-esteem while browsing their social networks; afterwards, these users display less self-control.

Greater social network use among this category of users with strong ties to their friends is also associated with individuals having higher body-mass indexes and higher levels of credit-card debt, according to the paper, the Journal of Consumer Research reports.

Los Angeles, Dec 21 - Facebook announced Thursday it was testing a fee-based messaging service that guarantees messages from strangers will arrive in the inboxes of intended recipients.

The test, the latest move in Facebook's campaign to generate more revenue, charges a dollar to ensure a message is routed to someone's regular inbox even when the person is not in the sender's circle of friends, reported Xinhua.

Currently, messages of dubious interest to recipients normally go into an "other" folder, which is often ignored.

Washington, Dec 17 : Photo-sharing app Instagram's CEO Kevin Systrom had verbally agreed to sell his photo-sharing company to Twitter Inc for 525 dollars million in March, weeks before he accepted a one billion dollars offer from Facebook, it has emerged.

According to a report by the New York Times, Twitter executives had handed Systrom a term sheet outlining the details of the proposed deal.

But Systrom later told California state regulators under oath that his company had not received any `formal offers or term sheets' from potential buyers aside from Facebook.

Washington, Dec 15 - "It wasn't me I was at work It wasn't me", wrote Ryan Lanza on his Facebook page soon after he was mistakenly named as the man who shot dead 28 people, including 20 children, at a US school.

The shooter has been identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, the younger brother of Ryan Lanza.

The elementary school shooting left 20 children and 8 adults dead in the US state of Connecticut, the second deadliest in US history only next to the Virginia Tech Massacre in April 2007, which claimed 33 lives.

Washington, Dec. 12 : Participating in online social networks can have a detrimental effect on consumer well-being by lowering self-control among certain users, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Washington, Dec 8 : Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg has sold shares valued at more than 26.2 million dollars, according to a regulatory filing.

Facebook disclosed in an SEC filing that Sandberg sold more than 946,588 shares at prices ranging from 27.39 to 27.90 dollars, a level that Facebook hasn''t traded at since August.

In fact, Facebook shares have been on a tear in recent weeks, as Wall Street has embraced the company''s we''re-all-about-mobile message and the biggest so-called lockups on insiders selling their pre-IPO shares have passed, CNET reports.

San Francisco, Dec 5 - Social networking giant Facebook has rolled out its new messenger app, allowing mobile phone users without Facebook account to sign up the service with a phone number.

With no Facebook account and email address required, app with the new feature will be first available to users of phones running on Google's Android platform in India, Indonesia, Australia, Venezuela and South Africa, reported Xinhua citing the company.

The sign up option using phone number will be rolled out globally and its version for users of Apple's iPhone as well as other smartphone platforms are also under way, said Facebook.

Washington, Nov. 16 : Facebook''s second attempt of settling allegations that the social networking company violated privacy rights is being considered by a US judge.

Earlier this year, a U. S. judge rejected a proposed class action settlement over Facebook''s ''Sponsored Stories'' advertising feature. But at a hearing on Thursday in San Francisco federal court, the judge was much less critical of a revised proposal and promised a ruling "very shortly."

Washington, Nov. 7 : Several users on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter had used social media to encourage or tell others to vote for President Barack Obama or Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 US presidential elections, a new study has revealed.

According to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, nearly a quarter of registered voters told their Facebook friends and Twitter followers in the last month who they were planning to vote for on Election Day.

Washington, Nov 7 - Facebook users in the US can let the world know they voted in the US presidential election Tuesday, with results displaying on a real-time map on the popular social networking site.

"This map is a representation of people on Facebook who clicked an Election Day prompt to share with their friends that they're voting in the 2012 US election," said the Facebook team in a post on the website.

While Facebook masks the identity of which users voted, other information on those who self-reported their trip to the polls is available, such as their age, gender, and geographic location.