Two thirds of UK online publishers are planning to increase the number of digital roles "on the back of product growth expectations", the Association of Online Publishers reported today, compared to 55 per cent which saw growth in 2011, which adds that the new figure is the largest since 2008. Just more than half plan to recruit people to work on apps and almost half on mobile. Publishers say app and mobile are key skills for investment this year.

And they owe it all to Twitter. Earlier this month, as part of its ad campaign Faces For Radio, the company ran a promoted trends and tweets campaign on the social network, #nowplaying, to promote its pledge not to repeat the music it plays during the day. Absolute Radio asked listeners to tweet using the hashtag, @absoluteradio and also the song playing to win a prize. The effort was also tied to outdoor activity that showed real time tweets by listeners on billboards.

The web site, which was the UK's first social network and its largest before Facebook came along, will be a "digital scrapbook," where images to share with friends and family will be collected around "remember when" moments, giving some wider context to pictures created by users. Friends Reunited has deals with image libraries to offer up copyrighted photos as well. Plans are to offer users 10 million "memories" in the form of 6 million photos, 2 million events and 2 million places to tag alongside content. Importantly, privacy will be of the utmost importance, it says.

All of Australia has the option to store, manage and view bank statement and bills and store important documents in a personal digital vault. It may sound like an email account but a spokeswoman says it is more secure and is designed as a personal management system. People may connect with service providers and receive statements and bills, set reminders and make payments online or by mobile. Australia Post said it was an obvious step as more and more Australian move their lives online.

England leads the way in mobile news consumption with 46 of smartphone owners access news websites and apps at least once a month, according to comScore. The European average, including Brits, is 37%. Next up is France, at 37% and then Spain, at 32%, representing a 127% growth rate in the year in Spain. British mobile news services enjoyed annual growth of 63 per cent. The trend in part reflects the rapid growth of the smartphone market. More than half of Britons now use an internet-enabled mobile, according to Ofcom.

Following reports of such demands in the U.S., the Information Commissioner's Office is warning employers against asking existing or potential employees for Facebook login and password details. A spokesman for the ICO said: "The UK Data Protection Act clearly says that organisations shouldn't hold excessive information about individuals, and it's questionable why they would need that information in the first place." Doing so could put employers in breach of that act. "We would have very serious concerns if this practice was to become the norm in the UK," said a spokesperson.

The city-centric free newspaper's first consumer marketing campaign comes ahead of parts of London's Tube and Overground becoming wi-fi enabled. It centres on digital outdoor with print ads in Metro and digital ads on Spotify and hopes to get commuters into the habit of downloading the digital edition of the paper on tablets. Outdoor screen ads will encourage people to photograph the day's tablet edition and their location for a chance to win a tablet with winners' names "up in lights" across the transit stations. Print ads running in the paper will contain another chance to win a tablet with …

This week, the joint Commons and Lords committee is expected to recommend that Britain does not need a privacy law as it simultaneously upholds the granting of privacy injunctions. It will, however, recommend in its report that gagging orders should routinely be served to websites like Facebook and Twitter as well as newspapers. The cross-party panel of MPs and peers was set up to examine the balance between privacy and freedom of expression in the wake of the Ryan Giggs scandal.

Despite having the most followers, the Financial Times has only a weekly average of 670 Google+ 1 recommendations for its content while The Sun, which has no Google+ page has 827 +1s. Research also shows that, despite ranking fourth in terms of followers with 35,490, Mail Online gets the most +1 recommendations, at 10,493. Improving search rankings is the main attraction to Google+, publishers say.

Although it isn't mandatory to reveal the numbers, Australian publishers will have to start reporting digital circulation data in May, following historic changes to their audit rules. The figures will show unduplicated sales for digital as well as print editions of newspapers and magazines. The Audit Bureau of Circulations members there voted on the media sales reporting changes, which are the most significant since auditing began in 80 years.