We're keeping our eye on five interesting developments this Thursday.
Hackers Take Down Visa, PayPal, MasterCard & More
A group of anonymous hackers took down a number of websites in the name of WikiLeaks for several hours Wednesday, including those of Visa, Mastercard, Swiss bank PostFinance, PayPal, Senator Joe Lieberman and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, all of which had recently terminated service with or criticized the organization in some way. All sites appear to be up and running at this time, although we’ve received word that attacks against Amazon and PayPal are currently being carried out.
Twitter Accused of Censoring WikiLeaks
Following numerous accusations that Twitter has been purposely keeping WikiLeaks and related terms out of its Trending Topics list, a spokesperson for the microblogging service issued a more thorough explanation of how Trending Topics are determined. In essence: Twitter favors novelty over popularity.
Facebook Unveils New Profiles
Facebook unveiled new profile pages late Sunday, just hours before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on 60 Minutes.
Tumblr Struggles Under 24-Hour Outage
Popular blogging platform Tumblr returned to the web Tuesday after more than 24 hours offline during a planned maintenance gone awry. The exact reasons for the outage are unknown.
Disney Celebrates 100 Million Facebook Fans
The Walt Disney Company hit a major marketing milestone at around 8 p.m. PT Saturday night: 100 million Facebook Likes across its more than 200 official brand, property and character Pages.
Reviews: Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Wikileaks, pages