Warner Music-owner Len Blavatnik has invested $130m (GBP81m) in subscription streaming service Deezer. Blavatnik's Access Industries, which also holds stakes in Top Up TV and digital sports company Perform, has taken an undisclosed stake in Deezer. Deezer, which has its roots in France and counts mobile phone giant Orange as a shareholder, would only say that the deal makes Access Industries a "cornerstone investor"

The daily that claims to have the largest circulation in Spain, is cutting pay and reducing editorial staff because of a serious drop in revenue. Juan Luis Cebrin, president of the owning conglomerate, PRISA, said the measures are essential to ensure the viability of the company in the face of a contraction of advertising income. El Pas's editor, Javier Moreno, also spoke of the future of newspapers necessarily involving a radical digital transformation.

The regional court in Mannheim ruled that Motorola Mobility, part of Google, did not infringe a Microsoft patent which enables applications to work on different handsets. This allows application developers to avoid writing separate codes for each handset saving time and development costs. Germany has become a major battleground in the global patent war between makers of mobile phones, tablet computer devices and their operating software because court actions there have proved relatively cheap and quicker than in other jurisdictions.

It is two years next month since Wired.co.uk began podcasting from a Conde Nast store cupboard. Ninety-five episodes later and the weekly round-table discussion-style podcast gets between 20,000 and 30,000 downloads per week. And it has all been done on a budget of GBP350. Wired.co.uk is moving its podcasting infrastructure over to SoundCloud when the site re-launches, probably later this year.

The partnership between BBC and commercial radio which has aimed to put UK radio in one place, has launched a new mobile app. Available from Apple app store and shortly on Android phones via Google Play Store, the app has featured a 'station scroller' search engine, which gives access to both live and catch-up radio. The app has also included features which allow the user to set up their favourite station, and browse radio that's local or trending, and share via social media.

Social shopping may be in its infancy, but it's only going to grow. The impact that it will have on the way people shop, and as a result the impact on a retailer or brand's bottom line, is set to be huge. In fact, new research from eBay estimates that in the next two years the value of social media for retail will more than double from GBP1.5bn to reach around GBP3.3bn. The Guardian's research predicts that UK retail sales directly via social media are forecast to grow to GBP290m by 2014 from GBP210m (a rise of 44%) as more …

The report by political UK think tank, Parliament Street, examined how MPs interact with voters on social media sites like Twitter. The study analysed the frequency and content of tweets published against the number of followers. It found that the top ten MPs had a twitter following of nearly 23,000 while the average for all MPs is usually under 4,000. Some of the top politicians were found to tweet 40 times per day on average while other MPs with fewer numbers are less enthusiastic.

Many of the major web services have been expanding to emerging markets over the last few years. Google's travails in China are well documented, for example. Now Google's YouTube is setting up shop in Europe's fastest growing internet market with official sanction - but that may call up the same kind of ethical concerns its parent has seen elsewhere. Turkey says it has successfully convinced YouTube to operate at youtube.com.tr - a fact that means the video site will have to comply with the country's own domestic laws on such things as censorship.

News International has settled its dispute with former Sun features editor Matt Nixson 14 months after he was sacked on the orders of News Corp's Management and Standards Committee. Nixson was summarily sacked without notice pay in July 2011 prompting him to sue for unfair dismissal and to lodge a separate legal case against the News Corp Management and Standards Committee for wrongful dismissal in the High Court.

Under the Cabinet Office scheme people wanting to apply for services ranging from benefits and tax credits to passports will be able to access them using their logins for websites such as Twitter and Facebook. Once they have logged on via computer or mobile phone, the social networking site will send an email confirming their identity to the relevant government agency, the Cabinet Office said. The government has denied that the scheme is equivalent to an identity card.