Twitter, Social Networking | featured news

It may look like Pope Benedict XVI’s first tweet on the auspicious date of 12-12-12 will be a divine act. But orchestrating the pontiff’s debut on Twitter has been a far more earthbound effort, involving an elaborate behind-the-scenes production.

Twitter pages are getting a bit fancier (some might say more Facebook-like) whether you like it or not, starting Wednesday. For years, a user's Twitter page has featured the option of a profile photo and a page background of your choosing. Now, there's a third element being added to your page's look, a "header" photo that surrounds your profile photo. The short messaging blog has been doing a soft rollout the past few months of the three-element look, but on Dec. 12, it goes site-wide to all users.

Images from Instagram, the photo-sharing app that lets user spruce up their work with a slate of arty and retro filters, no longer show up on Twitter, a popular place to share them.

The Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI would begin posting messages on Twitter next week under the handle @pontifex, a term for pope that means bridge-builder in Latin.

Is it possible to say something profound, to create something beautiful or essential, 140 characters at a time? Of course it is! No it isn’t! Oops, that’s already 141 characters. Clearly, the writers in the first-ever Twitter Fiction Festival don't have an easy task. The virtual literary gathering, brought to you by Twitter, begins today. The writers come from 20 countries and were chosen by a committee “composed of experts from around the publishing industry in the U.S.,” according to the official launch page.

... Lawyers for the former Conservative politician, Lord Alistair McAlpine, who was wrongly implicated in connection with sex abuse claims by a BBC show, have vowed to end the so-called trial by Twitter. They said they were looking at a "very long list" of users who wrongly repeated the allegations regarding Lord McAlpine with a view to taking legal action in the British courts. Simply deleting the messages would not be enough, the lawyers told The Guardian newspaper.

Election night unfolded as much on the Web as it did on TV. Many say the real-time conversations on social media were the real show... Right after the television networks projected that he had won reelection, the first thing President Obama did was thank supporters — not with a statement to the media or in an email, but in a tweet.

Diane Sawyer's Election Night performance left some viewers asking if she had begun celebrating Tuesday's election a bit early. Co-anchoring ABC News' coverage, the veteran journalist struck a different manner from her practiced, straight-news-delivering style.

The words "four more years", coupled with a photo of Barack and Michelle Obama embraced in a hug, have become the most retweeted Twitter post ever. The US president tweeted the message at 0416 GMT, and it has since been retweeted over half a million times. It underlined the now pivotal role social media plays in informing and persuading potential voters.

News.me, the social news service incubated at betaworks, announced today that it’s officially shutting down its iOS apps and removing them from the App Store. The company is also claiming that it’s yet another victim of Twitter’s latest API guidelines, and states that Twitter may have even viewed its service as a competitor. We might not go that far, but it makes for a good story.