Tablets may be the new chic, but Samsung USA’s latest marketing ploy leaves a bad taste, after the firm took a page out of Burger King’s book and ran an ad to win a new Galaxy Tab by unfriending contacts on Facebook.

A little while ago Google announced they had purchased the g.co domain name, and were planning to use it exclusively for linking to Google-owned sites. Their existing URL shortening service, goo.gl, was to remain for user-generated links to any URL they pleased.

VoIP firm Skype has reportedly paid $85 million for smartphone group text messaging service GroupMe, to put itself on competitive footing with rival messaging services from RIM, Apple and others.

Germany has a long, storied history of being both swift and overzealous in their enforcement of privacy and intellectual property laws. Today Germany’s Independent Centre for Privacy Protection has issued a blanket ban on the Facebook Like button.

Bing, Microsoft’s play in the search market, has been with us for just over two years now. Although the division continues to lose money, Microsoft’s seemingly infinite marketing budget has seen their service steadily encroaching on arch-rival Google’s territory.

Google’s latest service and social network du jour, Google+, has today had a major update to add games to its already-impressive repertoir.

Facebook has released its own separate group messaging app for Android and iOS, though initial impressions from early adopters today were overwhelmingly negative.

Most of the UK has been transfixed by the rioting and looting that has been taking over our capital for the past few days – with many of the media pointing the finger at Twitter and BBM. Today London’s citizens showed that social media is indeed capable of organising large groups of people – but for the right reasons.

BlackBerry may be down and out, but it still has clout, or Klout, rather, with the phone’s aficionados scoring higher than either Android or iPhone users on average.

As London burns and gangs of hooded youths take to the streets to loot shops for sneakers, phones and Xbox 360’s, the tech press has tut-tutted and blamed….Twitter. And BlackBerry messenger.