Less than a month before he took a $1 billion buyout from Facebook, reports are circulating that Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom verbally agreed to sell his photo-sharing startup to Twitter for $525 million. “During negotiations with Instagram, Twitter executives had handed Systrom a term sheet outlining the details of the proposed deal,” Reuters writes, citing a report in The New York Times. However, Systrom later told state regulators under oath that his company had not received any "formal offers or term sheets" from potential buyers other than Facebook.

The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly dropped its charges that Google manipulates its search results in favor of its own services. “As the negotiations [between Google and the FTC] now stand, Google would make a set of voluntary commitments,” The New York Times' Bits blog reports. “In addition, it would be sued and sign a consent decree, agreeing to license patents deemed essential for wireless communications on reasonable terms.”

As the app wars continue to heat up, Facebook is reportedly testing a new messaging app, which lets users share digitally-perishable pics. In other words, the app will be very “Snapchat-like,” AllThingsD writes, referring the photo-sharing app that popularized the sharing of photos with short shelf lives. “Facebook plans to launch the app in the coming weeks,” AllThingsD reports, citing sources.

Sure to make some mobile marketers uneasy, the Senate Judiciary Committee this week voted in favor of Senator Al Franken's Location Privacy Protection Act. “The bill would require companies to get a customer's consent before collecting or sharing mobile location data,” The Hill’s Hillicon Valley blog reports. “It would also ban mobile applications that secretly monitor the user's location -- a feature that Franken said allows for stalking and enables domestic violence.” 

Hoping to give advertisers more confidence in mobile monetization, Google this week debuted a “confirmed clicks” feature for all in-app image and mobile banner ads. An accidental click “ultimately is a bad experience for the user, the publisher, and the advertiser who pays for clicks that may not be valuable,” Allen Huang, product manager of mobile display ads for Google, explained in a blog post. 

Despite its initial success, the Guardian is shutting down its “social reading” app on Facebook, and will instead direct users to its Web site. “We have decided to switch our focus to creating more social participation for our users on our own core properties,” Anthony Sullivan, a product manager at the newspaper, writes in a blog post. GigaOm attributes the decision to changes in the way Facebook handles social-reading apps. 

It’s clear to Wired.com that by releasing better versions of Google Maps and Gmail for iOS, Google is cementing the iPhone’s position as the best smartphone on the market. But, why would the search giant do such a thing when its Android mobile OS competes directly with Apple? “Advertising,” reasons Wired. “Android … has always been incidental to Google’s ad business, the source of virtually all the company’s profits.” 

Yahoo is reportedly ready to shake up its board of directors. Max Levchin, a former senior executive at PayPal, will likely join the mix, The New York Times’ DealBook blog writes, citing sources. “The board is also expected to announce the departure of two directors: Brad Smith, the chief executive of Intuit, and David W. Kenny, chief executive of the Weather Channel.” 

Sen.Claire McCaskill of Missouri is calling on the Federal Aviation Administration to let consumers use their connected gadgets during flights. Frequent fliers are “growing increasingly skeptical of prohibitions on the use of many electronic devices,” McCaskill wrote in a letter to the head of the F.A.A., The New York Times Bits blog reports. 

Since Microsoft debuted Windows Phone 8 in October, the company says it has seen a sustained 40% increase in Windows Phone app submissions. To keep up with demand, Microsoft plans to keep the Windows Phone Store open for business over the holidays. “We hope the company will be paying its staff overtime to keep up with the increased app submission volume,” The Next Web remarks.