Rupert Murdoch has launched an attack on Facebook after it was revealed that it had overtaken MySpace as the most popular social network.

According to figures from ComScore, Facebook received 123.9 million unique visitors in May compared to MySpace's 114.6 million.

It was revealed that Facebook had grown by 162 per cent year on year, compared to a growth of just five per cent for MySpace.

The owner of NewsCorp, who bought the social networking site in 2005 for $580 million, said that Facebook had "done a great job of being flavor of the month in the last six years of last month".

Facebook is teaming up with jobs site CareerBuilder.com to run recruitment campaigns on the social network site.

Specialized recruiting adverts will promote CareerBuilder within a specially developed part of the Facebook site, with the view of attracting specific types of job seekers.

An example from CareerBuilder said that an engineering firm may be able to target people with engineering degrees.

Microsoft has signed deals with five social networking sites to enable data to be shared more easily.

The company has announced deals with Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged to enable easier and more secure access to their contacts from more places on the web.

A spokesman for Microsoft told IT news site vnunet.com: "These partnerships will enhance our users' online experiences and the way in which they choose to communicate with their friends and families."

Facebook is introducing new improved privacy controls that give users increased control over who sees the data on their profile changes.

The new controls, which will be introduced in the early hours of Wednesday, will make distinctions between family, friends and co-workers.

As a result users can choose who can see personal details and photos on their profile pages.

Up until the change any user accepted as a friend had unrestricted access; however there have been continued warnings not to post personal details on social networking sites.

Amazon is launching two applications for Facebook, which could transform the relationship between online retailing and social networking media.

Amazon Giver and Amazon Grapevine will link Amazon's "wish lists" and product reviews functionalities into Facebook profiles, so that friends can view and be alerted to one another's activities.

Rock giants REM are planning to make their first album in four years available via social networking websites before it goes on sale in shops.

The album, entitled "Accelerate", will be released via the iLike application on March 24, ahead of the official launch date of April 1.

The band's decision to release the new album to users of social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace reflects an apparently growing trend of big bands getting behind the internet as a platform for distributing music – seeing it as an opportunity rather a threat.

Paramount Pictures has made clips from thousands of its movies available on Facebook.

The clips, which last from a few seconds to several minutes, are played through the VooZoo application.

Paramount is the first major studio to make parts of their movies freely available on the internet and initial feedback by users has been positive.

Derek Broes, Paramount senior vice president of entertainment, said: "The short clips for a movie that you've already seen before helps you relive the moment."

Social networking site Facebook has responded to criticism and made it easier for its users to delete their accounts.

In the past, users had expressed concern that Facebook kept personal details on its servers when users chose to deactivate their accounts and that it was hard to manually delete complete profiles.

Now, the social networking site has provided an email address where users can request that their accounts are deleted.

A bug in the ActiveX controls used on popular social networking sites Facebook and MySpace could be used by hackers to gain control of Windows-based PCs.

The flaw was initially made public by researcher Elazar Broad, who revealed the glitch on the Full Disclosure security mailing list.

He explained that the bugs are present in the pair of ActiveX controls used by Facebook and MySpace to let users upload photos.

Rumours have suggested that social networking site Facebook could be about to do a deal with cell phone company Nokia which would allow users to access the site on the go.

A report from research firm paidContent suggested that Nokia is currently negotiating with the social network site to develop a mobile version of Facebook.

It is thought that the deal would mirror the agreement struck between YouTube and Apple which brought YouTube to the iPhone.