Social Media, Tweet | featured news

"Hello world from comms center in (hash)Pyongyang." That Twitter missive, sent Monday from Koryolink's main service center in downtown Pyongyang using my iPhone, marked a milestone for North Korea: It was believed to be the first tweet sent from a cellphone using the country's new 3G mobile data service.

Three weeks after tweeting (and then deleting) a series of strange messages, former senator Scott Brown spoke publicly on the tweets for the first time. "Anyone ever hear of pocket tweet, pocket dial? I mean it was pretty simple," Brown told Boston's Fox 25. "I mean, I have an iPhone 5. If anyone has iPhone 5, the keys are small. It's very, very sensitive."

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.

Mitt Romney has held a consistent advantage over President Obama in positive sentiment expressed in tweets from 12 battleground states in the 10 days leading up to the Republican convention.

Everyone's made a joke they thought was funny only to see it fall flat, but Park Jung-geun's attempt at humor could see him jailed for up to seven years in South Korea. Park, a photographer by profession, re-tweeted some messages from North Korea's official twitter feed, such as reports on the late leader Kim Jong Il's travels across the country and negative tweets about South Korea.

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.

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.

Today marks the sixth year since founder Jack Dorsey and Twitter’s first members started using the communications platform. And for its birthday, the company has posted a number of stats about its growth in usage.

Dean Obeidallah asks whether the Department of Homeland Security's surveillance of social media websites is an invasion of our privacy.