In an intriguing development which suggests that tech firms are interested in exploring how suitable wearables will be for accessing digital content, news has broken that Apple has been permitting a select few to come in and test their apps on the Apple Watch ahead of the device’s launch – right inside its top secret Apple Watch lab at the Cupertino HQ

Journey back in your mind to a year ago: remember when Facebook offered $19 billion to acquire WhatsApp? Pretty well everyone thought such an offer was little short of crazy (most American pundits hadn’t ever used the messaging app). Now we know it wasn’t so crackers after all: Snapchat is now raising money on a valuation of $20 billion. How come?

When Facebook rolled out its new privacy policy at the end of January, it must have known that it would cause some outrage in Europe. And, sure enough, it has: EU data protection officials have responded by setting up a taskforce to deal with those parts of the policy which it believes are almost certain to break EU privacy laws.

Facebook is facing its first ever court appearance in a class action suit, which was filed last year by the Austria-based “Europe vs. Facebook” group (led by law student Max Schrems). A court in Vienna will consider whether Facebook has legitimate objections about the admissibility of the lawsuit in an initial hearing on 9^th April.

The world of smartphone-distributed social media nearly tilted on its axis last October when an investment deal between Facebook and China’s stratospherically successful mobile handset maker Xiaomi came close to getting inked.

The start of the New Year is as good a time as any to speculate about what’s going to be big in the world of social media in 2015. And several top pundits (including Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans and venture capitalist Fred Wilson) believe that they know the answer: messaging apps, which they think are set become ‘the new social media’ this year.

An established era may be coming to a close amongst marketers: the age of YouTube exclusivity is waning as Facebook’s video player begins to snap at its heels.

Traditional publishers are beginning to feel that the refreshing cool breeze of innovation they sensed on the back of their necks is turning into an icy chill of pure fear. And it’s coming from Facebook.

We’ve all done it - clicked on a link in our Facebook News feed because the headline seemed ambiguously exciting, only to be led to a page with spammy, low quality content. It’s disappointing and annoying, because it clogs up news feeds and can bury more worthy sites, stories and links further down the feed.

In the face of rising hostility towards Facebook’s policy of forcing users to install its Messenger app separately if they want to go on accessing their friends’ messages on their smartphones, the app has still managed to break the 500 million download threshold.