With a hint of envy, Buzzfeed takes a closer look at Social Chain – a British startup that appears to have mastered the art of social virality. “Despite only having been going for just over two years, Social Chain’s influence over British social media is remarkable,” Buzzfeed writes. “But this success has also been accompanied by numerous accusations of large-scale plagiarism and potentially troubling advertising practices.”  

Researchers at MIT Media Lab are intrigued by a small town in Spain, and its use of Twitter as a civic communication platform. “Since launching the initiative in 2011, [Mayor] Rodríguez Salas has been recruiting his 3,500 townspeople to not only join the social network but have their Twitter accounts locally verified at town hall,” they write on Medium. “In the most basic scenario, a citizen who has a question, request or complaint tweets it to the mayor or one of his staff, who work to resolve the matter.”

Vijaya Gadde, general counsel for Twitter, admits that the social network has not enough to sideline trolls. Echoing earlier comments by Twitter CEO Dick, Gadde writes in The Washington Post: “Even when we have recognized that harassment is taking place, our response times have been inexcusably slow and the substance of our responses too meager.” In response, she said: “We need to do a better job combating abuse without chilling or silencing speech.” 

To Mark Zuckerberg’s chagrin, his Internet.org initiative isn’t going over so well in India. “At the heart of the row is Internet.org's policy of ‘zero-rating,’ whereby telecoms providers agree not to pass on the costs of handling the data traffic so that consumers can receive services for free,” BBC News notes.” As a result, several Indian firms have pulled out of the project. 

Scott Forstall, the former Apple head of iOS division, is quietly serving as an advisor to Snapchat in exchange for .11% of the social network’s stock. The revelation came to light in a leaked email from the Sony Pictures hack. “When asked about the company’s relationship with Forstall, Snapchat didn’t deny the connection,” TechCrunch reports. 

Did you hear the one about Snapchat using strategically placed geo-location filters to poach Uber employees? “This place driving you mad?” read the filter, which can be applied to Snapchat photos before a user sends a disappearing message to friends,” Forbes reports. “The photo filter, which can only be found if a user is in the vicinity of Uber headquarters, also shows a web address to Snapchat’s jobs page.” 

Facebook appears to be experimenting with the its own version of the away message. “Starting Wednesday, the social network began experimenting with what it calls the sidebar status, which is an away message that shows up in the current sidebar pane of Facebook’s mobile apps and disappears after 12 hours or whenever someone updates their status,” Mashable reports. “The sidebar status will appear to all of someone’s Facebook friends by default.” 

Snapchat has reportedly stopped selling its original ad format, Brand Stories. “It appears that the company is going back to the drawing board and may change how the ads look,” Re/Code reports. “What’s interesting about Snapchat halting Brand Stories is that it wasn’t from a lack of interest -- advertisers were still eager to pay Snapchat for the ads.” 

Twitter is reportedly telling celebrities and top publishers to use its live-video app Periscope in place of rival Meerkat. “Sources also say Twitter has been in touch with media companies that use Meerkat, going so far as to imply that if they don’t exclusively use Periscope, it could cut off their access to Amplify,” TechCrunch reports. “Amplify, in short, is Twitter’s answer to commercial TV.” 

Spotify is creating artist-specific ads that it hopes users will tweet to their Twitter followers. “The Tweet the Beat feature started appearing on the weekend, and it automatically displays a fullscreen pop-up ad for mobile Spotify users with pre-populated text and a button to tweet Rihanna with a thanks for her ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’ single,” The Verge reports.