Mainstream media has still been first in offering people fresh major news stories, beating social networking sites including Twitter, according to a new study. Researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow developed a software algorithm that tracks Twitter activity and studied about 51 million tweets for 11 weeks and compared them with the output from major news websites for the same period.

Rapper Psy's Gangnam Style video has now been watched more than 1.7bn times on YouTube, and his channel has more than 6m subscribers. But he's still not the king of Google's online video service. A 23 year-old Swedish gamer named Felix Kjellberg, whose PewDiePie channel is devoted to "sharing gaming moments on YouTube with my bros", is currently the most-viewed channel on the service.

YouTube's funding of its original content channels in the UK is in doubt following its spend of GBP500,000 on its original content strategy last year. Speaking at Broadcast's Commissioning & Funding Forum earlier this week, Rachel Ball, content partnerships manager for YouTube said that the Google owned video distribution platform wanted to "be out of the funding business."

Vine has announced its biggest refresh of features since launching earlier this year, reports bbc.co.uk. Many were expecting Twitter, owner of the six-second video app, to make some form of announcement after the Facebook-owned Instagram decided to launch a video-sharing function. This has come in the form of a raft of updates, including those for shooting video and protecting posts.

Detectives from Scotland Yard are attempting to obtain the secret recording of Rupert Murdoch raging against police "incompetence" and saying payments to public officials from journalists were part of "the culture of Fleet Street". According to the Guardian, a police offer involved in the Operation Elveden investigation into illicit payments from journalists has made a formal request to Exaro News to hand over the tape.

Social media marketing has been hailed as one of the most effective tools currently available to British businesses,silobreaker.com reports. A new report conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB UK), found that social media marketing can demonstrably improve brand sentiment, customer engagement and brand loyalty. Furthermore, where the bottom line is concerned, it can drive ROI of more than 3:1 - or put more simply, every GBP1 spent on social media can typically generate GBP3.34 value in return.

Campaign group Hacked Off, which was involved in the late-night negotiations with political leaders that produced the cross-party royal charter on press regulation, has welcomed Lord Prescott's decision to quit the privy council in protest at its "highly political" role in the debate about press regulation. "He is expressing the frustration felt by very many people, including victims of press abuses, at the stalling of much-needed change on grounds related to the supposed procedures of this obscure body," a spokesman for the group said.

The tale of former CIA staffer Edward Snowden and a top-secret NSA surveillance program known as PRISM has captivated much of North America - and even spilled over into Europe - since the story first broke in June. While that frenzy of interest has raised all kinds of questions about national security, privacy and "access journalism," it has also sharply boosted the profile of The Guardian, the British newspaper whose blogger-journalist, Glenn Greenwald, has led much of the reporting on the PRISM story and its aftermath.

The new building will merge Google's London operations into a single building, replacing existing offices in Holborn and Victoria. Google has submitted a planning application to the Camden Council in the UK to build a new GBP650 million UK headquarters at King's Cross Central in London. The new one million ft building is designed by architects Allford Hall and Monaghan Morris and ranges between seven and 11 storeys in height.

A group of competitors are reported to have rejected Google's proposals, which were submitted in April this year, to resolve antitrust investigation. The Guardian reported that the European Commission VP in charge of competition policy, Joaquin Almunia must now decide whether to accept Google's suggestions, seek new concessions, or instead move to a statement of objections leading to legal enforcement on the company.