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Facebook and Google, two giants in digital ads, seek more

But on the first day of Advertising Week, a top industry convention in Manhattan, it was clear how much influence resides in Silicon Valley.

Facebook and Google, two digital advertising powerhouses, took the stage to introduce services meant to lure an even bigger portion of digital marketing dollars.

Facebook returns after suffering wide outages

Users in various locations were greeted with an error message at around 3pm ET/8pm BST that read: "Sorry, something went wrong."

The outages follow just four days after Facebook temporarily went down on Thursday, September 24.

Facebook has yet to offer any explanation or cause for Monday's service outage, although service appeared to have been restored by 4pm ET/9pm GMT.

The matter riled up users on social media, who wasted no time posting on Facebook's rival site Twitter.

Facebook features dropped on PS3, Vita and PlayStation TV

The official app for Vita and the microconsole are due to be discontinued, and features integrated within each of Sony's consoles are being removed.

The apps have been removed from the PlayStation Store and support is set to end completely by January next year, although Sony notes that this date may change "depending on circumstances".

Facebook to post missing child alerts

The 'Child Rescue Alerts' will contain crucial information about the missing person and only be visible to those in the area where they were last seen.

Users will be able to share these notifications with anyone in their network to further increase the odds of the child's safe return.

Facebook will only display a Rescue Alert if the child's life is in danger or if they are believed to be at risk of harm.

Facebook is finally creating a 'Dislike' button

The social network's CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today (September 14) at a Facebook townhall that the new option will be geared towards allowing users to express "empathy".

"I think people have asked about the Dislike button for many years," he explained. "Today is a special day because today is the day I can say we're working on it and shipping it."

The tech billionaire continued: "What [users] really want is the ability to express empathy. Not every moment is a good moment."

Instagram images no longer all square

Until now, images shared via the site could only be uploaded in a square format.

Disney, maker of the new Star Wars film, has already taken advantage of yesterday's change to upload a landscape-orientated teaser video.

Instagram recently announced plans to carry more advertising.

Facebook users hit milestone in one day

The number amounts to one-seventh of the Earth's population.

Monday's milestone was mostly symbolic for Facebook, which boasts nearly 1.5 billion users who log in at least once a month. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the network in his Harvard dorm room 11 years ago, reflected on the occasion with a post.

"`I'm so proud of our community for the progress we've made," he wrote. "Our community stands for giving every person a voice, for promoting understanding and for including everyone in the opportunities of our modern world."

Twitter gets an unofficial messenger app

Direct Messenger for iOS is a Twitter-flavoured version of Facebook Messenger, allowing users to DM in peace without distractions from their timeline.

As this is not an official app from Twitter, there are a few compatibility issues since the microblogging giant imposes API restrictions on third-party developers.

Text pings back and forth just fine, but web users who receive animated emoji sent from the app will see only a static symbol, while images are converted into web links.

Star Wars Facebook page responded perfectly to sexist comment

The Star Wars Facebook shared some really amazing fan art of everyone's future queen of the galaxy, Captain Phasma, played by the one and only Game of Thrones' Gwendoline Christie.

Let's face it, she is going to be a certified badass. Just look how she struts in her Elite Storm Trooper (Dark Trooper?) costume.

She's not your run of the mill hits-head-on-doors-and-misses-every-target-ever kind of Storm Trooper. No, no. She's Captain Phasma, damn it!

Twitter's stock falls below IPO price amid ongoing decline

Shares of the San Francisco-based short messaging service fell 5.8 percent to close at $26, after trading as low as $25.92 during the day. Twitter went public in November 2013 at an initial public offering price of $26 per share.

The stock is down more than 30 percent since Twitter's July 28 earnings report, when it warned that boosting its user growth rate will take a long time.