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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg rejected Steve Ballmer’s (Microsoft CEO) offer to buy the social network for $15 billion in 2007. Instead, Microsoft invested $240 million for a small stake, and the two companies now work together in a search partnership.

In The Facebook Effect, Kirkpatrick writes that Ballmer asked Zuckerberg ““Why don’t we just buy you for $15 billion?” He was told “I don’t want to sell the company unless I can keep control.”

Kirkpatrick goes on, “Ballmer took this reply as a sort of challenge. He went back to Microsoft’s headquarters and concocted a plan intended to acquire Facebook in stages over a period of years to enable Zuckerberg to keep calling the shots. But Zuckerberg rejected all the overtures.”

Rovio Mobile's Angry Birds mobile game has been downloaded more than five million times by Android users.

"By end of year, we project earnings of over $1 million per month with the ad-supported version of Angry Birds", says developer Peter Vesterbacka.

As a comparison, it would take around 1.4 million monthly unit sales on iPhone's App Store to equal those revenues.

Vesterbacka also says that Angry Birds has now sold 12 million paid downloads on the App Store, out of a total of 30 million downloads across all platforms.

UK insurers were preparing Sunday to use people’s Facebook profiles and online spending habits as a way of setting premiums based on their lifestyles.

Studies for the insurers suggested that applicants' online data detailing food purchases, activities and social groups could be as good an indicator of life expectancy as conventional medical examinations.

Aviva, one of Britain’s largest insurers, was planning to introduce the so-called predictive modeling in the UK next year after studying the results of trials in America. Swiss Re was also working on a similar program.

The trials were conducted by Deloitte Consulting LLP and showed that consumer data, based on a sample of 60,000 people, was as effective in identifying potential health risks as if the applicant went for blood and urine tests.

Read More At My Fox Orlando

Earlier this week, Apple booted the Manhattan Declaration app from the App Store. The  "anti-gay" app was banned, at least in part, due to a petition initiated by Change.org which garnered 7,700 signatures. Since then, the Manhattan Declaration has posted a similar pro-app petition on its site, and that petition has gotten over 480,000 signatures.

Upon removing the app, Apple said, "We removed the Manhattan Declaration app from the App Store because it violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people." The Manhattan Declaration released a statement asking Apple to rethink its decision, saying that "disagreement" is not "gay-bashing" and thus not in violation of Apple's policies.

Looking at the letter of the law in terms of Apple's policies, "offensive to large groups of people" would mean that the app does not have to "gay bash" to be excluded from the App Store. In fact, the app could be offensive to both gays and their straight supporters.

Confounding rumours about what Facebook would announce, founder Mark Zuckerberg said the system was "not e-mail".

Instead, he said, it was modelled on instant messaging systems and will route messages to people no matter how they are using Facebook.

"This is not an e-mail killer," said Mr Zuckerberg. "It is a messaging system that includes e-mail as part of it."

Mr Zuckerberg said it would bring together four separate messaging types - SMS, Instant Messaging, e-mail and Facebook chat.

The co-founder of social networking site Twitter is standing down as its chief executive.

Evan Williams, who has headed the company since 2008, is being replaced to allow him to focus on ways of making Twitter more profitable.

Announcing the decision on Twitter's blog, Mr Williams said Twitter needed to "meet its potential as a profitable company".

He will be replaced by the current chief operating officer, Dick Costolo.

Twitter has grown dramatically in recent years, with user numbers now topping 160 million, compared with three million two years ago.