Snapchat is reportedly in talks with a number of brands and media companies about carrying their content -- and ads -- on its popular messaging platform. The discussions center around a new service, dubbed Snapchat Discovery, which would “show content and ads to Snapchat users,” The Wall Street Journal reports. Sources tell WSJ that Discovery is scheduled to debut by November. So far, “at least a dozen media companies, including newspapers, magazines and television networks, have discussed providing content.” 

Facebook is losing its VP of product management, Sam Lessin. “He originally joined Facebook when his startup, a storage company called Drop.io, was acquired by Zuckerberg in an all-stock deal back in 2010,” Re/Code reports. Along with a lot of kite-surfing and skiing, Lessin is expected to help his wife, journalist Jessica Lessin, with her new subscription-based news publication, The Information. 

Twitter is clearly embarrassed by the harassing messages directed toward Zelda Williams following her father’s suicide -- so much so that the company plans to change its policing policies. “We are in the process of evaluating how we can further improve our policies,” Del Harvey, Twitter's vice president of trust and safety, said in a statement received by The Washington Post. “This includes expanding our policies regarding self-harm and private information, and improving support for family members of deceased users.” 

Ask.com, a unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp, just bought Ask.fm, a popular question-and-answer site. “The move signals Ask.com’s first significant push into social networking,” according to The New York Times’ Bits blog. “After years of trying and failing to compete against Google in search, Ask.com turned to become more of a Q and A site for the Web, similar to Yahoo Answers or, more recently, the once-buzzy Quora, a Silicon Valley start-up.” 

Social networks can be terribly hostile environments for the targets of “abusers, trollers, griefers, harassers and others,” Boing Boing writes. One solution to is so-called “collaborative blocking,” which simply consists of groups keeping lists of bad-actor accounts. “The services add blocked or muted accounts on a continuous basis to each subscribed account, throttled against Twitter's rules for frequency of updates.” 

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t like brands -- or at least those under its purview -- “liking” unapproved claims on Facebook. In one case, as the Regulatory Affairs Professional Society reports, the FDA reprimanded a supplement marketer for “liking” customer claims that its products could cure cancer. Now, RAPS suggests that the FDA is setting its sights on similar activity on Twitter. 

Twitter paid $134 million in cash and stock for social data provider Gnip, back in April. “The package, outlined in a 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, included more than $107 million in cash and as much as one million shares of restricted stock and other equity awards to Gnip employees,” Re/Code reports. Prior to the deal, Twitter had already become a reliable consumer research tool for agencies and brands. 

With the forthcoming changes to Twitter’s direct messaging product, TechCrunch’s MG Siegler says the company has the power to turn digital communication on its ear. “The one thing Twitter has always gotten right with DMs is the connection model,” he notes -- pointing out the “fact that you cannot receive a message from someone unless you’re following them.” Adds Siegler: “By following someone on Twitter, you’re opting in to the ability to receive DMs from them … Imagine this in the context of email.” 

Facebook is reportedly taking to some Hollywood honchos about creating content for its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. “Among the ideas discussed would be to eventually get filmmakers and major media companies to develop ‘Oculus experiences’ that could act as a companion to feature films,” The Information reports. “Eventually, full-length movies could be released directly to the device,” the subscription-based news service reports, citing sources. 

Suggesting what might seem obvious so some, author Evgeny Morozov is calling Internet.org -- the effort by Facebook and other tech giants to comment the developing world -- something of a Trojan horse. “Aside from a handful of useful apps, it delivers only Facebook, and any services -- from education to banking to health -- that agree to make Facebook their middleman,” Morozov writes in the an opinion piece for The New York Times.