US news and blog site the Huffington Post today announced the latest in a line of new editions in countries which has already included the UK, France and Spain, with the launch of L'Huffington Post in Italy. Huffington Post is working in partnership with the publisher of La Repubblica, Gruppo Espresso, to produce the new site, edited by Italian journalist Lucia Annunziata.

Independent.co.uk's monthly web traffic has grown 20.47% globally month on month to a unique user ABCe of 19.3m in August, up from 16m in July. Meanwhile, Standard.co.uk's monthly web traffic is also up 0.42% to a high of 3.8m in August. Standard.co.uk's ABCe headline figure for UK monthly unique users was up to 2.5m for the period 1 August to 31st August, up 5.44% on July's figure of 2.41m. The popularity of the site soared during the Olympics, further highlighting the London Evening Standard's success as the official paper of London 2012.

Planet Rock owner Malcolm Bluemel is exploring a sale of the loss-making digital radio station. The millionaire entrepreneur and rock music fan who bought the station from GCap Media in 2008 is understood to have had approaches from four potential buyers. Bluemel has invested around GBP3m of his own money into the station, which is currently believed to be losing between GBP200,000 and GBP300,000 a year.

Charity Age UK is launching a new radio station called The Wireless on DAB in London and Yorkshire, and online in the rest of the country. Fronted by David Hamilton and Graham Dene, the station is aimed at an older audience and will include features, topical discussions, and documentaries on a variety of issues as well as music.

Archant has revealed that is scrapping the print editions for the Journal series of titles in north London. The Journal titles in Hornsey & Muswell Hill and Tottenham & Wood Green are to cease print publication and move to digital-only format, the publisher said. The Hornsey Journal had a print circulation of 4,700 when it was last ABC audited in 2010.

Facebook is the most popular social media site in the UK, with 68% of internet users being active on the site, followed by Twitter (28%t) and LinkedIn (26%). The study conducted by InSites Consulting found that the increasing number of smartphones worldwide is leading to an increase in social media use; with 66% of smartphone users are active on social media on a daily basis, as opposed to 48% of people without a smartphone.

Virgin Media has joined with PeerIndex to offer social media influencers in film and cinema free tickets to PictureHouse cinemas, where they will see one of the Virgin Media Shorts competition films as a trailer to the movie. The film goers will then be encouraged to write reviews of the movie with the best, as judged by a professional film critic, being given VIP tickets to the Virgin Media Shorts awards ceremony in November.

More than 25% of UK journalists say they cannot work without social media according to the 2012 social journalism study by Cision and Canterbury Christ Church University. Alongside this growing dependence on social media, the study also reveals concerns from journalists about the impact of social media on productivity and privacy with 16% of respondents claiming that social media will 'kill journalism'.

The European Commission said on Wednesday that it was "inviting comments from interested parties" on a draft deal with the publishers. The four publishers are Hachette Livre, part of France's Lagardere Publishing; Harper Collins, owned by U.S.-based News Corp.; Macmillan, part of Germany's Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck; and New York-based CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster.

Twitter has overtaken Google in the annual CoolBrands list for 2012, thedrum.co.uk reports. The list, which ranks those brands viewed by the public to be the "coolest" on the market, saw Twitter climb to fourth, after not even ranking in the top 20 last year. Google, meanwhile, has risen from seventh place to fifth, whilst its YouTube platform came second. Overall winner, however, was Apple. Aston Martin fell to third.