Facebook, Celebrities | featured news

The celebrity gossip machine had burbled for a day or two about Ozzy Osbourne's marriage, and for weeks about Jada Pinkett Smith's. Yet both stars hit a breaking point at about the same time — and took to Facebook.

Bristol Palin is apologizing for herself and her younger sister for their Facebook rant against posters criticizing their family. Palin posted the apology on her Facebook page, saying she and her 16-year-old sister Willow "shouldn't have reacted to negative comments about our family. We apologize."

JustSpotted plans to sift through people’s tweets to identify those that claim celebrity spottings, and then to place those celebrities’ whereabouts on a map in real time. It would be similar to the now-defunct GawkerStalker, but it would be faster. (It’s not a novel idea. Last year, start-up OMGICU proposed to do the same thing, supported by text messaging and tweets, except its service requires active user participation rather than data-mining the whole Twitter community like JustSpotted will do.)

Jackie Chan's comments that freedom may not be good for China were taken out of context, his spokesman said Tuesday, while Facebook users and Chinese scholars condemned the veteran actor on the Internet in a spreading backlash.