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As people across the world scrambled to view the first episode of its third season, HBO’s highly acclaimed Game of Thrones series on Sunday has also set a new record for modern day piracy.

According to piracy tracker TorrentFreak, over one million people downloaded the episode following its debut that night. In fact, over 163,000 individuals shared a single torrent at one instance, which is a record in itself. This beat former record holder Heroes, whose season three premier was simultaneously downloaded by 145,000 people in 2008.

Apparently, nothing about the reception is surprising, as the mythical drama was 2012’s most pirated TV series. Based on TorrentFreak’s estimates, 4.3 million individuals downloaded the final episode of season two in 2012. Comparatively, the next most pirated show, Dexter, was downloaded by only 3.8 million people.

TorrentFreak doesn’t have any estimates for the overall downloads for the first episode of season three. Nonetheless, it was able to track the location with the highest number of downloads. Most of the downloads came from London, while the countries with the highest numbers of downloads were the US, the UK and Australia.

Those who pirated the season three premiere mainly used BitTorrent. This free software platform allows users to share media files and some use it to illegally swap movies and other copyrighted materials.

While Hollywood is worried about illegal downloads, HBO Programming President Michael Lombardo said the network believes the huge piracy of Game of Thrones is a testament to its popularity rather than a problem.

Publicly traded companies can now make important announcements through social media networks, but they must inform their investors which sites will be used, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

On Tuesday, the SEC issued new disclosure rules allowing firms to use social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook in lieu of more formal websites. However, the new rules could curb spontaneity, as firms will likely make their announcements on official corporate accounts.

This ruling arose after Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings announced on his personal Facebook page last July that the company had hit a new milestone: its subscribers viewed over one billion hours of video for the first time in June 2012.

However, the SEC warned that Hastings’ post on Facebook violated the watchdog’s Fair Disclosure rules, which require public companies to simultaneously provide important information to investors.

Although Hastings’ announcement was posted on a publicly available page with over 200,000 followers, the information was not disclosed in a news release or securities filing.

He argued that his Facebook post was both insignificant and easily available to investors. “We use blogging and social media, including Facebook, to communicate effectively with the public and our members,” said Hastings.

Interestingly, Netflix’s shares soared from US$70.45 during the time of Hastings’ post to US$81.72 at the end of trading on the following day.

“One set of shareholders should not be able to get a jump on other shareholders just because the company is selectively disclosing important information,” added George S. Canellos, Acting Enforcement Chief of SEC.

Search giant Google announced on Tuesday that it had chosen 8,000 winners for its #ifihadglass campaign, according to a report from The Business Insider.

Last month, the company asked people across Twitter and Google+ to share what they would do if they had Google’s yet-to-be-released Glass device, and the ones with the best posts will get the chance to test out the device.

Google said that it is looking for a diverse group of people who can help develop the future of Glass, as the device is not just a piece of technology that can be shaped inside a conference room. Hence, the company needs explorers who will take it out into the real world and use it in as many ways as possible.

The results are now in. In the next few days, the company will message several thousands of people in Google+, inviting them to join the Explorer program, said the search giant.

However, the chosen ones will have to fork out US$1,500 for each Google Glass, which is expected to hit the market near the end of the year or in early 2014.

The lucky winners are a diverse and creative group. Max Wood from Georgia plans to improve fire safety with Google glass. San Francisco Zookeeper Anthony Brown wants to show the feeding habits of penguins. Herschel Taghap of Seattle wants people to see what it is like to be a line cook. Sarah Hill from Missouri plans to let veterans use the glass so they can view war memorials from afar, while Shannon Rooney will go to Japan so her grandmother in the US can revisit her home country through her eyes.

After months of testing, Facebook is now all geared up to launch a feature that allows users to post a reply to comments left by other people.

With this newest upgrade, users of the social network can now reply to each individual comment instead of replying to a comment after subsequent posts, which can sometimes become a bit tangled. The feature facilitates the search process for specific conversation threads, according to reports from CNN.

Responses to replies will also be indicated below the first comment and Facebook will prioritise the comments based on the level of interaction. Thus, the comments of the most active and popular people in your online circle will be displayed at the top, a time-saving feature for pages with thousands of friends and followers.

“You and your readers will have the ability to reply directly to comments left on your Page content and start conversation threads, which will make it easier for you to interact directly with individual readers and keep relevant conversations connected,” said Vadim Lavrusik, Journalism Program Manager at Facebook.

The threaded reply feature will only be available to pages and not individual profiles. Facebook will bring this feature to all pages with over 10,000 followers on 10 July 2013. The feature must be activated via the page’s administrative panel. Page owners can choose whether to turn it on or off.

“At launch, this feature will only be available on desktop and we plan to make it available in the Graph API and mobile in the future,” added Lavrusik.

After months of testing, Facebook is now all geared up to launch a feature that allows users to post a reply to comments left by other people. With this newest upgrade, users of the social network can now reply to each individual comment instead of replying to a comment after subsequent posts, which can sometimes become a bit tangled. The feature facilitates the search process for specific conversation threads, according to reports from CNN. Responses to replies will also be indicated below the first comment and Facebook will prioritise the comments based on the level of interaction. Thus, the comments of the most active and popular people in your online circle will be displayed at the top, a time-saving feature for pages with thousands of friends and followers. “You and your readers will have the ability to reply directly to comments left on your Page content and start conversation threads, which will make it easier for you to interact directly with individual readers and keep relevant conversations connected,” said Vadim Lavrusik, Journalism Program Manager at Facebook. The threaded reply feature will only be available to pages and not individual profiles. Facebook will bring this feature to all pages with over 10,000 followers on 10 July 2013. The feature must be activated via the page’s administrative panel. Page owners can choose whether to turn it on or off. “At launch, this feature will only be available on desktop and we plan to make it available in the Graph API and mobile in the future,” added Lavrusik.

How would you react if your personal photos were out in the open for almost three weeks? Well, that is exactly what happened to some users of the popular photo sharing site Flickr.

The photo sharing site has sent emails to affected users saying that some of their private photos were accidentally exposed to the public from 18 January to 7 February, for a total of 20 days. Flickr noted that the photos could only be viewed through direct links and were not available in Flickr search or other search engines such as Google.

Barry Schwartz of Marketing Land was the first to report the glitch. However, Flickr was unable to tell him if someone else had viewed his private photos. A reader commented that his statistic pages could help him determine if someone else saw his private images.

With this, Flickr has changed the settings of those affected so that the links to previously public photos that were later switched to private will no longer function.

This has irked some users who claimed to have been extra cautious when they adjusted their privacy settings. They noted that they will now have to comb through all their photos to see if they are public, private, or friends-only and adjust them accordingly. Another user complained that affected photos have also lost their descriptions.

Although the bug affected photos uploaded from April to December 2012, the issue still poses a major problem, particularly for users with naughty pictures. Brett Wayn, Flickr Vice President, has informed users that the bug has already been “identified and fixed.”