In the Air: Sky News boss bans re-tweeting

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There's surprise that Sky News boss John Ryley has issued an edict, telling his reporters that they cannot re-tweet other non-Sky News staff's tweets during breaking news.

"Don't tweet when it is not a story to which you have been assigned or a beat which you work," says a memo. There must be a danger that the ban will backfire - and there's plenty of incredulity in the Twitterverse. But considering the excessive number of tweets that some journalists produce, perhaps a retweeting ban is not an entirely bad thing. New Twitter convert Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp is a 39% shareholder in BSkyB, is keeping his distance from the row. "I have nothing do with Sky News," he tweeted this morning.

Incidentally, News Corp reports annual results tonight when Murdoch can expect questions about hacking.

*More than 10,000 employees of BSkyB, including chief executive Jeremy Darroch, each collected 100 free shares this week, worth around £700 a head.

Sky gave staff the shares three years ago on its 20th anniversary and now employees have formally got their hands on them. Doubtless the gift was gratefully received, although it's not quite on the scale of Darroch's one-off bonus award last July. He was given 300,000 shares - on top of other long-term bonus schemes - to ensure his loyalty during last year's abortive News Corp bid.

*This column revealed in January that News International had set up a hush-hush divison, called Project Two22, named after its address at 222 Gray's Inn Road in Holborn, a long way from NI's newspaper HQ in Wapping. Now Project Two22 looks to be history, as it is being quietly dropped. Few details ever emerged but staff were said to be focusing on phone and tablet apps, rather than a new standalone digital newspaper.It apparently had nothing to do with the possible launch of the Sun on Sunday to replace the News of the World.

*The UK matters more to Google than Facebook in revenue terms. That's the conclusion of one nugget from Facebook's S-1, the document outlining its plans for a stock market float. Mark Zuckerberg's social networking website says it made $3.7 billion (£2.34 billion) in sales in 2011 and no country apart from America was responsible for 10% of that revenue. That's in contrast to Google which has made between 10% and 13% of global turnover from Britain. On the basis of Facebook's numbers, the UK operation generated well under $370 million (£234 million) last year. Google UK made more than ten times that amount - around £2.5 billion.

*London Fashion Week, taking place later this month, is a proving to be a boon for advertising. Glossy weekly Grazia is claiming the issue that hits the streets on February 21 will have a record 264 pages to cover the spring/summer collections, with a 45% surge in advertising year on year. The Bauer-owned title is hoping to turn it into a "social publishing event" called "Grazia Fashion Issue... Live!", with readers invited to contribute editorial ideas, including the choice of the cover photo, through Facebook and other sites. A TV crew has also been brought in to make daily episodes that will appear on Grazia's website from next week. Time for Grazia's rivals at Vogue publisher Conde Nast, which doesn't own any weekly titles, to mount a fightback?