Digital Week in Review: Facebook Faces Lawsuit, Most Popular Brands on Twitter, and Apple’s New Mac Pro

In this week’s Digital Week in Review: Facebook faces a class action lawsuit, the 20 most popular brands on Twitter, and Apple’s new eco-friendly Mac Pro.

 Facebook Facing Class Action Lawsuit

Facebook has allegedly been intercepting private message, without consent from its users, to use as data for its own profitability. When Facebook users send messages that include links to other websites, Facebook scans the link and content of the message to gain information about the user’s web activity. This violates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and certain Californian privacy laws.

The plaintiffs are seeking damages against Facebook to the tune of 100 dollars per day for each day that Facebook was violating the Electronic Communications privacy act, for each member of the class .

Jackie Rooney, a spokeswoman for Facebook said the allegations are “Without merit…..We will defend ourselves vigorously.”

Google has also faced violations of the same nature, having been accused of opening and reading the contents of emails sent through Gmail which is in violation of federal wiretapping statutes.

To read more and to see the legal case document follow the link.

20 Most Popular Brands on Twitter

Twitter Counter has revealed the top 20 brands on Twitter with YouTube comfortably at the top. Ironically Twitter doesn’t top the list but comes in at number 3 with over 28 million followers and Twitter en español at number 5 with over 13 million followers. See the full list below.

1. YouTube (@YouTube, 37,840,753 followers)
2. Instagram (@instagram, 30,071,203)
3. Twitter (@twitter, 28,066,109)
4. CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk, 14,973,661)
5. Twitter en español (@twitter_es, 13,610,803)
6. Facebook (@Facebook, 13,317,693)
7. CNN (@cnn, 11,364,101)
8. UberSocial (@UberSoc, 11,174,452)
9. FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona, 10,843,184)
10. The New York Times (@nytimes, 10,523,904)
11. MTV (@MTV, 10,293,986)
12. Real Madrid F.C. (@realmadrid, 9,799,100)
13. TwitPic (@twitpic, 9,036,642)
14. NBA (@NBA, 8,981,224)
15. BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking, 8,329,858)
16. ESPN (@espn, 8,184,603)
17. A Googler (@google, 7,811,974)
18. Funny Or Die (@funnyordie, 7,722,558)
19. Ramalan Indonesia (@TweetRAMALAN, 7,657,533)
20. Samsung Mobile (@SamsungMobile, 7,095,640)

Apple’s New MacBook Reducing Material Footprint

The new Mac Pro is showing considerate savings on power and raw materials by using 74% less aluminum, 68% less power and is 84% lighter in weight. After releasing its environmental report for the new machine, the device has earned a gold rating from EPEAT. Last year’s model had idle consumption rates of around 133.7w on 100v, the new unit uses just about 43w. Since the product is smaller, the packaging also consumes 82% less volume.

Read the full consumer report on Apple’s new Mac Pro here.