Facebook has announced on Thursday that its initial public offering price range will be priced between $28 and $35 a share, bringing the value of the company to $77 billion to $96 billion, and granting the world's largest social network a market value close to Amazon.com's, according to Reuters. 

According to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the freedom of the Internet is facing its greatest threat ever. In an interview published by Britain's Guardian newspaper, Brin said that the principles of openness and universal access are being squashed by governments in order to control populations around the world. "There are very powerful forces that have lined up against the open Internet on all sides and around the world," Brin said. "I am more worried than I have been in the past. It's scary."

Dubai-based Abraaj Capital is possibly interested in bidding for the media assets of Turkey's Calik Holding. The assets, which include ATV television and Sabah newspaper, are being evaluated separately. "ATV and Sabah assets were separated. Investors' interest was focused on ATV television," a Reuters source said. "Abraaj was also added to the interested investors."

The Indian government has asked popular websites including Google and Facebook to monitor and ban user generated content on their sites. According to Reuters, India's telecom minister Kapil Sibal has met with Google, Facebook and Yahoo officials in order to create monitoring mechanisms that would help in preventing ‘disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory' content from being posted online. As of Tuesday, agreements between the parties involved were not yet reached.  

According to industry sources, the Al Jazeera network may launch an IPO as early as next year as the government of Qatar looks to offload stakes in state-owned companies. The government is said to be keen on divesting stakes in a number of large state-owned entities, like the Al Jazeera network and Qatar Airways. "Al Jazeera would like to list next year subject to regulatory approvals and market conditions," said Olivier Gueris, chief operating officer at Qatar Exchange, in an interview with Reuters at a conference in Dubai.

Twitter Chief Executive Dick Costolo, has announced that the social network site now has 100 million active users. About 40% of Twitter's active users are signing in just to observe although it is estimated about 50 million log in everyday, Reuters has reported. An active user is defined as an account holder who logs in at least once a month.

Reuters reports that Facebook doubled its revenues to $1.6 billion in the first half of this year although the social network's net income was almost $500 million at the start of 2011. Many industry observers expect Facebook to go public in 2012, as investors have pushed its valuation to roughly $80bn in private markets.