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Micro-blogging service Twitter has confirmed its support for an initiative that lets people browse the web without being monitored.

Washington: Micro-blogging site Twitter has backed a privacy project that would allow people to surf the Internet without being monitored. 

The "Do Not Track" initiative stops firms tracking people as they visit several different websites.

The monitoring is done to help advertisers craft ads to a user's preferences and lifestyle.

Blocking the tracking depends on websites honouring requests from users to browse anonymously.

The firm extended its support for the ‘Do Not Track’ (DNT) initiative that has been brokered by the US Federal Trade Commission, which wants people to be able to tell websites to stop gathering and sharing information when they visit. 

Twitter said it would now respect the Do Not Track option in all the browsers that supported it, the BBC reports. 

The firm, however, said that those that turn on DNT would notice a change in the information Twitter presented to them. 

“We stop collecting the information that allows us to tailor Twitter based on your recent visits to websites that have integrated our buttons or widgets,” it said. 

A DNT option is available in the recent versions of the Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari browsers. 

For DNT to work, websites have to agree to discard any data they would otherwise collect and share about what people do when they visit a site. 

Because the Firefox Do Not Track feature only works if websites allow it, the move is seemingly a show of goodwill by Twitter towards its users. More and more websites are allowing Firefox to disable cookies and other tracking mechanisms for people who visit their sites, but there is still a push for stiffer regulation across the Internet.

The much-awaited Facebook debut on the stock market has begun on the Nasdaq.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg didn’t travel to New York’s Times Square for the company’s big day. He did it unconventionally like you’d expect a hacker would.  He opened the bell remotely from the company’s Menlo Park Headquarters after Facebook employees had just finished a long, all-night Hackathon — their 31st. They played midnight hockey and worked on extra projects,

Just ahead of the 6:30 PST open, the company’s employees got together again in the main headquarters “Hacker Square” in front of a big stage where he rang the bell. Facebook is the second company ever to ring in NASDAQ’s bell remotely on its IPO day. Zynga was the first back in December.

But unlike Zynga CEO Mark Pincus in last December’s IPO, Zuckerberg didn’t give any remarks. He was flanked by chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, vice president of product Chris Cox and Elliot Schrage, who is Facebook’s vice president of public policy and communications.

The 28-year-old billionaire founder hugged and high-fived Sandberg and other employees in celebration after he pressed the remote button. 

The area outside Facebook's offices at 1 Hacker Way was packed with throngs of photographers, more than 12 television trucks, and a TV news helicopter hovering overhead as the excitement reached fever pitch. 

“Mark and Sheryl wanted to make sure it was about team that helped grow this company,” said Bruce Aust, who is NASDAQ’s executive vice president and head of the global corporate client group. “They wanted to make it special, but they also wanted to remind everyone that this is just one day in the life in company. They wanted say, ‘Let’s get back to work once we have the IPO opening bell. It’s a company that’s very focused on its mission.”

It was the culmination of an eight-year journey that began in Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room. But it’s the company first step in what may be a very long life. Facebook is the most anticipated IPO of the last eight years after Google. It’s the largest tech IPO in history because the company stubbornly waited so long to go public. Facebook and its early shareholders are raising $16 billion today, or nearly 10 times what Google raised in its highly-hyped and very unorthodox Dutch Auction-style IPO in 2004.

When the market finally opened, Zuckerberg had signed a statement to be shown in Times Square. It was a company motto. It read, “to a more open and connected world.”

The Facebook IPO will be the largest tech IPO in history

Facebook shares jumps about 13% as public trading begins

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook Inc shares opened 13 per cent higher on Friday, after the pioneering online social network raised as much as $18.4 billion in one of the biggest initial public offerings in US history. 

After a delay in the opening print that drove up anxiety levels among traders and onlookers outside the Nasdaq, the company's closely watched stock began trading at $43, compared with an IPO price of $38. 

With a value of $104 billion, Facebook became the first American company to debut at over a $100 billion. It is larger than Starbucks Corp and Hewlett-Packard combined.