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Can a two-year-old photo sharing app really be worth $1bn? It would buy you some some 2,100 Rolls Royce Phantoms. Or 200 million mosquito nets to fight malaria. Or the whole of the New York Times company (with $50m change to spare). If you are Microsoft, it buys you some 800 AOL patents to fight the next patent war.

Facebook is spending $1 billion to buy the photo-sharing company Instagram in the social network's largest acquisition ever.

Facebook will list its shares with Nasdaq, according to media reports. That would be a big win for the Nasdaq, which competes fiercely with NYSE Euronext Inc., especially for an initial public offering as large as Facebook's, pegged at $5 billion. The New York Times and CNBC cited anonymous sources on the potential listing.

Over the past year or so, Beyonce has opened the door to her heavily guarded private life and invited her adoring public in.

Facebook’s attorneys squared off Wednesday with the legal team of Paul Ceglia, a New York man who says that a 2003 contract proves he should own at least half of Facebook. Ceglia, for whom Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg did some work while at Harvard University, says he has a contract granting him at least half the ownership of Facebook. Facebook has denied the claim, saying that the contract and several other documents Ceglia provided are faked. The company subsequently filed to dismiss the suit last month.

Kimberly Hester, a grade school teacher's aide in Michigan, was fired for refusing to hand over her Facebook password to her supervisors. Hester posted a picture of a co-workers' shoes and pants bunched around her ankles on Facebook in April 2011 with the caption, "Thinking of you." She posted the picture in jest, but a parent who's on her Facebook friend list saw the image and reported it to Frank Squires Elementary where Hester was employed, prompting the investigation.

Some universities are monitoring the activities of athletes on social media sites, raising privacy concerns.

A couple in Sanford, Fla., is afraid for their lives after a Twitter post said their address was that of George Zimmerman and urged people to "reach out and touch" the neighborhood watch captain who shot dead Trayvon Martin.

Trayvon Martin's death illustrates the growing numbers of black and Hispanic Americans harnassing the power of social networking sites.

If you’re reading this, chances are you got here from some social media site. The growing industry has changed the way that people communicate on a daily basis. It’s changed how we consume our news, share with friends, and go about our lives in general. The biggest social media sites in the world are larger than many countries and have an infrastructure similar in many ways to an odd form of government.