The Times Group plans to tie journalist compensation directly to their Twitter activity. In a recent email to employees, India’s largest media conglomerate states that journalists’ “performance will be measured based on the activity on [their] official Twitter handle.” And, as sources tell Newslaundry, employees’ performance pay will be linked to activity on their Twitter handle. 

Periscope is now letting users take screenshots of their video stream, and easily share it with the broader Twitter universe. “It's essentially the app's version of a retweet,” Engadget writes. Twitter-owned Periscope has also updated its Private Broadcast function. “Users can now select either individual ‘mutuals’ (people that you follow and who also follow you) from the invite list or select everybody on it with a single click.”

Kickstarter has decided to reincorporate as a “public benefit corporation,” a legal change they tell The New York Times will ensure that fantasies of vast riches won’t corrupt its core mission. “We don’t ever want to sell or go public,” Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter co-founder and CEO tells The Times. Notes The Times: “Public benefit corporations are a relatively new designation that has been signed into law by a number of states.” 

While the Chinese market remains elusive, Facebook just opened its first office in Thailand. “More than 34 million people in Thailand log into Facebook's 1.5-billion user network each month,” Reuters reports, citing figures from Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. “Facebook is blocked out of China, the world's largest Internet market, but still experiences its fastest growth in Asia at 57%.” 

Raising fresh concerns for LinkedIn, Facebook has big plans for its at Work service. Designed specifically for business types to communicate with colleagues, Facebook reportedly plans to launch a freemium version of the service before the end of the year. “When, exactly, Facebook will launch the product is still unclear,” Re/code reports.

Demonstrating the dubiousness of online “reputations” and social scores, Fusion’s Kashmir Hill explains how -- in a few hours and for less than $100 -- she created a fake business with 19,000 Twitter followers, great Facebook and Yelp reviews and an “impressive” online reputation. “I made it up and paid strangers to pump up its online footprint to make it seem real,” she writes. “I wanted to see firsthand how the fake reputation economy operates.” 

After working with Google on its new mobile Web alerts standard, Facebook is letting users of its m.facebook.com site opt to receive push notifications via Chrome. Push via Chrome is “a great lever for re-engagement to the site [from]…people who might not use Facebook as much,” Jonathan McKay, Facebook’s product manager on browser partnerships, tells TechCrunch.

Amid a refugee crisis of historic proportions, Facebook has agreed to work with the German government to cut down on related hate speech. “Facebook will work with Germany's ministry of justice, internet service providers, and other social networks to form a task force aimed at flagging and removing hateful content more quickly,” The Verge reports. “Facebook also pledged to help finance organizations that track online hate speech.”

Trying to regain a shred of its former relevance, Flickr is testing a virtual reality experience that it hopes to integrate with its photo service. With an Oculus DK 2 hooked up to a PC, Yahoo’s photo-sharing service hopes everyone with soon be able to enjoy their panoramic photos in one 360-degree gulp, Engadget reports.

The Guardian tells us how a reporter for German newspaper Bild used Periscope to give individual Syrian refugees a voice. “Paul Ronzheimer travelled with a group of Syrian refugees from the Greek island of Kos across Europe to their ultimate destination of Germany,” it writes. “Although he was filing copy as he went, he was also broadcasting live video using Twitter’s Periscope app.”