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Without the free content created by its 850 million users, Facebook would surely not be on the verge of a multibillion-dollar initial public offering.

For all the huge numbers in Facebook's IPO papers, a surprisingly small figure stands out: $4.39, the amount the site generated per user last year....

Twitter on Wednesday switched on enhanced brand pages for accounts owned by National Public Radio, NBC News, Volkswagen, and others. This is the first batch of premium Twitter pages from companies other than the handful of launch partners who unveiled enhanced brand pages in December.

Facebook has filed papers for what's expected to be the largest initial public offering ever to come out of Silicon Valley and one of the largest in U.S. history. Ending months of breathless speculation, the 8-year-old social networking company has submitted registration documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that set preliminary goal of $5 billion. Facebook had discussed raising as much as $10 billion. Final pricing will not be set for months, and the size of the IPO probably will increase with investor demand. The filing sets the stage for an IPO in May.

Facebook Inc. could file papers for its initial public offering as early as this coming week, people familiar with the matter said, as anticipation mounts for what is likely to be one of the biggest debuts for a U.S. company.

Facebook looks set to file papers for its public stock offering by as soon next Wednesday, CNBC reported Friday. The highly anticipated IPO will value the world's largest social networking site at between $75 billion and $100 billion, CNBC said, citing The Wall Street Journal as the source.

Twitter on Thursday announced that it is now able to block tweets that run afoul of certain countries' restrictions on speech, but that has prompted backlash from users who fear the micro-blogging service will honor takedown requests from repressive regimes.

Facebook announced in a blog post Tuesday that Timeline will be coming to all users in the next few weeks. According to a Facebook blog post Tuesday -- or rather, an update to the post published when Timeline became available to all users -- you will have seven days to preview your Timeline and hide content you don't want out in the open.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider how much free speech protection students have for items they post on the Internet, turning away a set of cases involving the use of the social-networking site MySpace.com.

Over the past few months, I have become increasingly interested in #Twitter with the help of my friend, Julie Hunt (@juliebhunt) of . Like (@Univ_of_Oregon) #Prof. Kyu Ho Youm (@Marshall Youm), I use Twitter to share, learn, and keep virtual note cards. As you've immediately noticed, I (@BenKerschberg) am writing this short piece in a ...