Flush with a reported $5.5 million in fresh funding, upstart social network Ello on Thursday legally changed its corporate standing to back a promise to remain ad-free.

Ello converted to a public benefit corporation, which it described as "a new kind of for-profit company in the USA that exists to produce a benefit for society as a whole — not just to make money for its investors."

Facebook on Thursday released an application that lets people create virtual "rooms" to chat about whatever they wish using any name they would like.

"Rooms" software introduced in the U.S. and Britain for iPhone made its debut as Facebook tries to make peace with people unhappy that real identities are mandated for profiles at the world's leading social network.

Google on Thursday announced a partnership with artificial intelligence teams at Oxford University to teach machines to think like people.

Oxford professors behind spinoff startups Dark Blue Labs and Vision Factory will work with DeepMind, a London-based startup that Google bought early this year.

Microsoft on Thursday reported quarterly profits ahead of most expectations, as revenues got a boost from its Xbox consoles and Internet "cloud" services for enterprises.

Net profit in the quarter dipped to $4.5 billion from $5.2 billion in the same period a year ago, but topped most analyst forecasts.

Google provided a sneak peek into Bhutan Thursday by unveiling a Street View project for the remote Himalayan kingdom, featuring panoramic views of its majestic mountains, monasteries and crystal-clear rivers.

The "Land of the Thunder Dragon" has long been one of the most isolated countries on earth, only lifting its ban on television in 1999. Most foreign tourists have to pay a minimum $200 a day to visit.

One of the first Apple computers ever built sold in New York on Wednesday for $905,000, leading Bonhams auction house to declare it the world's most expensive computer relic.

The Apple-1 computer, built by hand in 1976 by Steve Wozniak in Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' garage or his sister's bedroom, fetched nearly twice its pre-sale high estimate, Bonhams said.

Twitter on Wednesday set out to weave itself into mobile applications with a free "Fabric" platform to help developers build better programs and make more money.

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo touted Fabric as "the future of mobile software development" while unveiling the platform at the one-to-many messaging service's first conference for makers of applications for smartphones or tablet computers.

Facebook is banned in China, but the co-founder of the world's largest social network appears determined to win over hearts and minds in Beijing -- in Mandarin.

Mark Zuckerberg surprised a hall full of Chinese and international students when he kicked off a question-and-answer session at the elite Tsinghua University with the words "Hello, everyone" in Chinese.

Google's music-subscription service will try to anticipate its listeners' mood swings as it amplifies its competition with Pandora, Spotify and other popular services that play tunes over the Internet.

Starting Tuesday, the $10-a-month All Access service will make music suggestions based on educated guesses about each subscriber's mood and likely activities at certain points in the day or week.

A Tokyo court has ordered Facebook to disclose the IP addresses used by fake accounts that were posting revenge porn, a lawyer said Tuesday, in the first such case in Japan.

In response to the order the U.S.-based social networking site revealed IP addresses -- a string of numbers identifying the computer being used -- connected to two accounts that were uploading personal information and private pictures, lawyer Yohei Shimizu said.