Skype users will soon be able to “chat” with Cortana, Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s Siri. “You'll soon be able to use Skype to books trips, shop, and plan your schedule, just by chatting with Cortana,” The Verge reports. “Essentially, Skype will know which company or service you want to talk to, bring a new bot into your chat to help out, and then get rid of the bot when you're done.”

Despite its promise, Facebook is apparently worried about the monetization potential of Live. Regarding efforts to pump up the live-streaming service, The New York Times writes: “It is also raising some questions inside the companies about if -- and when -- they will see any meaningful money come from the push.”

Video producers are frustrated with Facebook over its failure to prevent “freebooting” -- when clips are taken from YouTube and re-uploaded without producers’ permission. “The creators, who make money selling ads against their work on YouTube, say this copyright infringement hits them in the pocketbook,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

To aid the visually impaired, Twitter is rolling out descriptions to images with screen readers, and braille displays. “If you enable this setting, every time you add an image to a tweet, you’ll have the option to add a description with up to 420 characters,” Mashable reports. “Screen readers and other tools help make the Internet more accessible to people who are visually impaired, but they can not ‘read’ images.”

Bloomberg Businessweek considers the potential of Tay -- Microsoft’s new chatbot software. Despite Tay’s recent snafu -- which involved briefly adopting the mentality of a bigot -- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella remains committed to the artificial intelligence technology. “Nadella urgently wants the company to figure out how to take advantage of the explosion of artificial intelligence,” Bloomberg reports.

Since its launch in March of 2015, Periscope has been used for more that 200 million broadcasts, according to Twitter live streaming unit. What’s more, “Periscope users also watch around 110 years (or close to 1 million hours) of live streams every single day, according to the company,” Variety reports. “This time watched metric only includes live streams viewed via Periscope’s iOS and Android app.”

After removing Replies a few months back, Tumblr is bringing back the feature, and rolling out an updated Notes design that makes it easier for the community to follow the commentary around a post. “The Replies feature’s removal was something that Tumblr’s user base has been upset about for some time,” TechCrunch notes.

Snapchat has reportedly agreed to buy Bitstrips -- the Toronto-based maker of personalized emojis known as bitmojis -- for around $100 million. “It is not yet clear what Snapchat plans to do with the company, although this could help better integrate the messaging service with smartphone keyboards,” Fortune writes.

Facebook is testing a new feature that automatically alerts users if and when it detects that someone has hijacked their name and profile photo. “When Facebook detects that another user may be impersonating you, it will send an alert notifying you about the profile,” Mashable reports. “You'll then be prompted to identify if the profile in question is impersonating you by using your personal information.”

NBCUniversal’s E! cable network is launching a daily talk show tailored specifically for Facebook Live. “The show, running 15-20 minute, goes live each weekday at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, and also is available on eonline.com and the E! Online app,” Variety reports. “Facebook in recent weeks has stepped up efforts to court TV networks and other media companies, sports leagues including the NFL, and celebrities.”