Instagram introduces infinitely looping video

From today videos on Instagram will play continuously - allowing the platform to bank higher advertising views

What happened when I confronted my cruellest troll

I’m often deluged with hate online, but after one troll stole my dead dad’s identity to abuse me, I decided to ask him why

Don’t click on that porn video shared by a Facebook friend: it may be malware

Security researcher claims more than 110k users of the social network were infected in two days by trojan pretending to be a Flash update

Seven things we learned from Facebook’s latest financial results

Native video is growing rapidly, mobile advertising is still very big, and there’s no release date for Oculus Rift yet

Rapists use social media to cover their tracks, police warned

Police and Crown Prosecution Service conference on rape hears attackers are increasingly creating false narratives online

Facebook’s outage exposes our digital fragility

Simon Jenkins: First thoughts: Today’s Facebook suspension shows how vulnerable digital information is – penetrable by hackers, governments or subject to random failures

Emma Watson to be Belle of the ball in live-action Beauty and the Beast

Former Harry Potter star to take lead role in Disney reworking of its classic cartoon, with the original’s songs, writes

What can we learn from Facebook’s annual Bullshit Report?

The internet giant’s annual attempt to make itself look useful seems to betray nervousness about a coming backlash, writes John Naughton

BBC News app gets teenagers playing tag – but it needs to go further

News organisations are constantly trying to attract younger readers. So how does the BBC do with its new offering that puts personalisation at the forefront? We asked an 18-year-old student to review it for us

UN needs agency for data protection, European commissioner tells Davos

Edward Snowden’s revelations about digital monitoring have pushed data security high up the agenda at Davos this year

Pirate party founder: ‘Online voting? Would you want 4chan to decide your government?’

Rick Falkvinge backs electronic voting but warns of potential for abuse if the process goes entirely online

Indian bank allows payments via Twitter

ICICI Bank lets users ‘tweet to pay’ and top up mobile phone credit their using Twitter usernames and direct messages

Michael Fertik: online reputation is becoming more valuable than money or power

The author of The Reputation Economy believes online reputation is now so important that we risk becoming persona non grata if we ignore it. He talks to Tim Lewis