The Guardian reports on an interesting case of journalistic censorship in the age of Twitter, and one in which it is intimately involved. After the newspaper was banned from reporting the contents of a parliamentary question regarding a toxic dumping scandal yesterday -- apparently legal in the UK -- the topic was widely picked up and aired on Twitter. Indeed, Trafigura, a London-based oil trader connected with the dumping, was the most used word on the micro-blogging platform this morning. The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, tweeted the gagging order with the question "Did John Wilkes live in vain?" …

Here's some good news for venture capitalists, who no doubt have had a rough year. According to draft legislation, Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank has rejected a Treasury plan to subject venture capital firms to "systemic risk" regulation. To put the legislation into content, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner recently urged Congress to force VCs to register with the SEC as investment advisers. The best policy, according to the Journal, would be for Washington to drop the legislative effort until it better understands the issue. Indeed, Frank's draft directs the Securities and Exchange Commission to define appropriate reporting requirements for such …

Forget about those national debt clocks. Blogger Gary Hayes has created a continuously updating widget, which displays the real-time use and adoption of various social media platforms and applications. See how many blog postings were published in the last five seconds; how many people have joined Facebook; how much money has been spent on virtual goods; how many videos watched on YouTube; how many tweets sent via Twitter; etc. While such data is fascinating, and could come in handy during, say, a client pitch, what we'd like to see in real time is how much revenue each social media service …

Next month, The Atlantic Monthly is printing its first annual list of Brave Thinkers, and many of the nominations are destined (designed?) to cause plenty of controversy. First off, there's New York Times publisher Authur Sulzberger, who's demonstrated bravery, according to The Atlantic, by resisting broad layoffs in the face of the company's collapsing stock price. He's also credited with providing the paper's online extensions with the resources to meet its traditionally high journalistic standards. In particular, The Times employs 11 people to moderate online comments -- more than twice the number of reporters on the masthead …

Since Facebook acquired FriendFeed this summer, traffic to the social media aggregator has "plummeted," according to prolific PR technology blogger Steve Rubel. Calling the decline "unsurprising," Rubel explains: "I still see a big space in between in between blogs and Twitter that allows you to have a hub and spoke strategy and post in multiple formats ... That's one reason I am bullish about both Posterous and Tumblr." But, apparently, not FriendFeed. Facebook paid nearly $50 million for the company, which was founded in 2007 by four former Google software engineers as a way for users to keep …

Ahead of Google's third quarter earnings report on Thursday, analysts are expecting the search giant to the street's expectations. Bernstein Research, for one, said it expects earnings per share of $5.44 compared to Wall Street's consensus of $5.36. Google has certainly kept busy this past quarter, rolling out new Search Options to let users refine search results, adding search by hour and date range functions, as well as the ability to sift through books, blogs and news. In September, it introduced Google Fast Flip to offer users a different way to browse magazines online, and unveiled its Sidewiki …

Challenging Apple's plans for world domination, UK broadcaster BSkyB next week is expected to launch a digital music service to rival iTunes. The satellite broadcaster has signed deals with music suppliers EMI, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music, as well as a number of independents including The Beggars Group and PIAS Entertainment Group, which represents more than 100 independent labels and digital distributor The Orchard. Sky Songs, so-called, will be a subscription-based model, and charge users a fee each month to get access to song downloads in contrast to iTunes' track-by-track purchasing model.

This is shaping up to be a pretty bleak year for venture capitalists, according to new data from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. Just 17 VC firms raised new funds in the third quarter of 2009 -- the smallest number of number of firms in any quarter since the third quarter of 1994. To be exact, only $1.6 billion was raised by the 17 firms, which is the lowest level of dollars committed since the first quarter of 2003 when $938 million was raised. While venture capital firms typically raise money every three or four …

Further severing ties between Google and Apple, Arthur Levinson on Monday resigned as a member of Google's Board of Directors, effective immediately. The chairman and former CEO of biotech firm Genentech also sits on Apple's Board. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission began an antitrust investigation into the ties between the two boards. As a result of that inquiry and building contentiousness between the two companies, Google CEO and chairman Eric Schmidt recently stepped down from Apple's Board. Increasingly, the two companies are competing against one another on a number of fronts, including mobile and e-commerce.

In the wake of several reports touting the health of email, The Wall Street Journal requires nearly 2,000 words to make the opposite case. Indeed, "Email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet -- logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts," it writes. Now, however, "A new generation of services is starting to take hold -- services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world." The paper concedes that while email usage is in fact continuing to grow, other …