The independent news website New Matilda is set to close, citing a difficult financial situation and increased competition from other media outlets. Marni Cordell, editor of New Matilda and owner of the business which publishes it, said she could no longer run the site, which "probably means the end of NM". In a letter to readers, Cordell said she had not taken a regular wage since January, passing income from New Matilda's paid subscribers to younger staff in the hope they could help the site thrive.

BuzzFeed, Epic Digital and DigitasLBi have teamed up to create a program called 'BuzzFeed in Residence'. The project will see both sides work on strategies to create digital branded content, based on breaking news and trends. BuzzFeed currently uses branded content as the only form of advertising on the site - there are no banner ads or home page takeovers.

To use the feature, you first have to connect your Twitter and Amazon accounts, which you can do through your social settings. Then, all you have to do is reply with #AmazonBasket to any tweet that contains an Amazon product link, and it will be added to your shopping basket. With one eye on localization, the service is actually called #AmazonCart for US shoppers, which makes sense. The feature only appears to be live in the US and the UK for now, however.

According to technology news site The Verge, selected users running Twitter's Apple iOS and Google Android apps reported seeing the feature appear. Unlike the block function, which is designed to stop communications with an undesirable user completely, muting is intended to be temporary. It will mean users can block out people who, for example, live tweet football matches every weekend.

Pageviews often dominate the conversation in terms of measuring a website's performance, but is this the correct way to measure a news organisation's online success? And if no, what alternatives are there? Speaking at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, these questions were posed by Pier Luca Santoro, a social media editor at La Stampa and founder of Data Hub.

Which social media platforms do young people value the most? According to a survey of 1,544 UK 16-to-24 year olds by Voxburner, 53% of those asked said they 'love' YouTube. Lets take a look at the other figures. Whatsapp came in at 33%, Skype at 31%, Facebook at 27% and Instagram at 24%.

British carriers are gradually letting their customers go fully high-speed when they cross borders within the European Union. Users are well-advised to make sure they're signed up to a roaming plan, though, at least for now. So far, Vodafone and EE are the only U.K. operators to let users go fully high-speed while on the mainland, rather than keeping them on 3G.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is expanding its book empire with the GBP246m acquisition of a romantic publisher. Canadian-based Harlequin, whose many titles include Her Cowboy Hero and 10 Ways to Handle the Best Man, will become part of the HarperCollins book publishing operation.

Facebook accounts for a quarter (24 per cent) of mobile referrals to top news and entertainment publishers, while Twitter only accounts for seven per cent, research from Quantcast has found. The company also found Facebook generates more mobile referrals to news and entertainment publishers than all other social media sources combined.

Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson has posted a video on Twitter to deny using racist language following a report by The Daily Mirror. Clarkson posted the direct to camera statement on Twitpic explaining that the footage of him quoting a nursery rhyme than included the N-word was shot three times, and that he was against the use of the word.