LinkedIn’s ad business hit $154.1 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2016 – 29% year-over-year. Critically, “Sponsored content -- which includes posts that companies can pay to place in people’s feeds and pin on their own pages -- now accounts for 56 percent of LinkedIn’s ad revenue,” Marketing Land notes. “That translates to around $86.3 million, having grown by almost 80 percent over the past year.”

Michael Sippey, former head of products Twitter, just launched a new messaging app named Talkshow. “Talkshow ‘is texting in public,’ but it really feels much more like a public-facing Slack room,” Buzzfeed writes. Yet, “While all the chats on Talkshow are publicly viewable, only people you invite can join the conversation.”

In exchange for producing 20 posts per month over a three-month period on its platform, Facebook is offering top content makers about $250,000, Buzzfeed reports, citing a single source. “Facebook is already paying media companies and celebrities to post video via its Live product,” it writes. In response, Kayvon Beykpour, CEO of Periscope, says he is open to the possibility of paying content creators.

Twitter is now letting users flag abusive accounts by attaching multiple tweets to their report as evidence. As The Verge notes, “It’s been more than a year since former CEO Dick Costolo acknowledged to employees that the company ‘sucks’ at dealing with abuse -- a problem that has made it even harder for Twitter to grow its user base.”

Vox Media is launching a new gadget blog named Circuit Breaker primarily as a Facebook page, rather than a separate website. This is first for the publisher, The York Times reports. Yet, “Vox Media will not be the first major media company to tailor a publication to a social platform,” it notes. “Vox, the politics site, alongside 19 other publishers, operates a channel on Snapchat, with which it shares ad revenue.”

Snapchat is dropping paid replays. “As of today’s update, every snap can be replayed once, but you can no longer buy extra replays,” TechCrunch reports. “That means people with more money can’t break the rules of Snapchat any more.” Snapchat launched $0.99 replays on top of the one free one users got per day.

By 2018, the EU will require social networks to get parental consent from users under the age of 16. “While parents may face awkward questions, the likes of Facebook and Snapchat will have the logistical and legal challenge of abiding by the new law,” The Financial Times reports. “If they do not, they run the risk of fines of up to 4 per cent of global turnover.”

Quora is testing ads on its question-and-answer platform. “To address worries about site experience, Quora plans to ensure that the content of each ad meets the quality of content of the question and accompanying answers,” Venture Beat reports. “As for ethical concerns, each placement will be labeled with ‘promoted by’ to avoid confusion.”

Facebook is reportedly exploring ways for users to profit from their posts. “A user survey distributed this week hints at a broad range of ways that users could make money or promote a cause, including a tip jar, branded content, and taking a cut of the ad revenue Facebook earns from posts,” The Verge reports.

Amazon plans to offer its video-streaming service as a stand-alone option for the first time. "A monthly subscription will cost $8.99, a dollar less than the most popular plan from Netflix," "The Wall Street Journal" reports. "The move pits the Seattle online retailer more directly against Netflix."