Twitter’s average ad rate dropped 18% in the last three months of 2013, Quartz reports, citing the social network’s just-released annual report. “Twitter’s advertising rate keeps falling,” Quartz writes. “Total revenue still grew last quarter as more advertisers bought more ads to show more users … They just paid less to do so.” Bigger picture, “the average ad rate has been declining since at least the beginning of 2012.” 

Henry Blodget’s Business Insider just raised another $12 million led by Amazon head Jeff Bezos. “The site plans to use the money for growth efforts including hiring more journalists and photographers, as well as to help finance a launch into the U.K.,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “The money will also go to expanding the site's subscription research and advertising staff.” Sources tell WSJ that Business Insider banked about $20 million in revenue, last year -- an 80% increase over 2012. 

Facebook doubles as a massive global marketplace for guns. The social giant, however, is trying to regulate such activity. “Pages advertising guns for sale, for instance, will be shielded from minors,” The New York Times reports. Yet, Facebook faces an uphill battle as it tries to balance free speech with the concerns of law enforcement and advocacy groups. “If the company hoped its announcement would satisfy everyone and make the issue disappear, the plan backfired,” NYT reports. 

In the name of independence, Yahoo will no longer let users access it services by signing-in with Facebook or Google usernames and passwords. “The move marks the latest change to Yahoo by Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, who is striving to spark fresh interest in the company's Web products and to revive its stagnant revenue,” Reuters reports. Services to be affected include Fantasy Sports, Flickr, and, of particular interest to NCAA college basketball fans, Yahoo Sports Tourney Pick'Em. 

For obvious reasons, Facebook is giving users new ways to share news and feeds from its Paper app. “New options to share articles by text message, email, or Facebook Message automatically include a ‘Shared from Paper. fb.com/trypaper’ link,” TechCrunch reports. “Users can also now ‘Create stories in languages that use multi-stage input, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean.’” 

Without the help of a single hacker, Twitter set off a minor security scare on Monday. “We unintentionally sent some password reset notices tonight, due to a system error,” a Twitter spokesman tells Re/code. Intentional or not, security breaches are becoming more common for Twitter users. “Last year, the company disclosed that its systems had been attacked by an unidentified group of hackers, potentially exposing the usernames, email addresses and other sensitive information of approximately 250,000 of its users.” 

Like Howard Hughes, today’s tech titans are obsessed with the skies. First, Jeff Bezos unveiled his farfetched plan to deliver packages via drone, and now Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly ready to buy Titan Aerospace for $60 million. As TechCrunch reports, Titan’s near-orbital, solar-powered drones could help Facebook bring affordable Web access to the 5 billion people in the world without connectivity as part of the Internet.org initiative. 

It looks as if Apple has chosen Tumblr to market the iPhone 5c among younger users. “The campaign is called ‘Every color has a story,’ and the Web page called ‘ISee5c’ appeared within the past couple of days,” 9To5Mac reports. “The advertisements are videos portraying different iPhone 5c phone colors and case colors. While there is no absolute proof that Apple is behind these iPhone 5c videos, there is evidence that points to Apple likely being behind the new advertising campaign.” 

Ellen did it. Hosting the Academy Awards, last night, Degeneres and some of her famous friends attempted to take the most retweeted selfie ever. Realizing their dream, the tweet had been retweeted over 2.6 million times as of Monday afternoon. The stunt is a big win for Samsung, which sponsored the Oscars and provided the phone used by Ellen, and Twitter. “Unfortunately for Samsung, Ellen also swiftly switched to her iPhone for backstage pics,” Venture Beat reports.