Twitter, Social Media | featured news

Social media's quippy queen Kelly Oxford goes from tweeting to screenwriting on the strength of her posts, snagging a book deal and reeling in Hollywood fans like Jimmy Kimmel. From a snow-crested corner of Alberta, Canada, Kelly Oxford made her Hollywood screenwriting dream come true. She did it without leaving her close-knit family or giving up her free nationalized healthcare. She did it 140 characters at a time.

President Obama's order Friday suspending deportations for some young illegal immigrants sent a charge through social media over the weekend, with both the president and his Republican challenger seeing steep spikes in online chatter about them. According to the social media analysis firm VoterTide, about 52,000 messages about Obama were posted to Twitter Friday, a 74% jump over his daily average of about 30,000 and the highest number of mentions since he announced his support for gay marriage May 9. The firm did not offer an estimate of how many of these tweets were positive or negative.

Officials from Twitter are looking into what appears to be 50,000 email and password combinations posted to Pastebin earlier this week. After a brief analysis, the list consists of 20,000 duplicates, many suspended spam accounts, and unlinked user name and password combinations. No person or group has claimed responsibility for the leak.

With new food, revamped decor and an embrace of Twitter and mommy blogs, McDonald’s has returned from the brink of a public-relations nightmare.

The creation of the guidelines reflects concerns about the misuse of sites like Facebook and Twitter and follows accusations of misconduct by teachers with students.

Pepsi is tweeting to a new generation of music lovers. The No. 2 soda company is partnering with Twitter to provide streaming videos of live music concerts to Pepsi's followers on the social networking site.

Meet the king of the sporting Twittersphere: Brazilian soccer star Kaka. The Real Madrid midfielder on Wednesday became the first athlete to amass 10 million followers on the social networking site. "Thank youuuuu. To celebrate I'll make a twitcam" wrote the 30-year-old Kaka, who at the last count had 10,012,862 Twitter fans. He's nowhere close to Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber - who each have more than 20 million followers - but it's not a bad haul for a player whose career appears to be on the wane after becoming a superstar in a golden six-year stint at AC Milan in Italy.

Those mediocre updates about choosing a food truck for lunch, complaining about work, or a link to the same viral video you saw a month ago: No, it’s not just you rolling your eyes and scrolling quickly.

Over the past year or so, Beyonce has opened the door to her heavily guarded private life and invited her adoring public in.

A couple in Sanford, Fla., is afraid for their lives after a Twitter post said their address was that of George Zimmerman and urged people to "reach out and touch" the neighborhood watch captain who shot dead Trayvon Martin.