Social Media, Microblogging | featured news

News of the tragic death of Whitney Houston this weekend didn't appear first on television or mainstream news sites.

Twitter on Wednesday switched on enhanced brand pages for accounts owned by National Public Radio, NBC News, Volkswagen, and others. This is the first batch of premium Twitter pages from companies other than the handful of launch partners who unveiled enhanced brand pages in December.

Twitter on Thursday announced that it is now able to block tweets that run afoul of certain countries' restrictions on speech, but that has prompted backlash from users who fear the micro-blogging service will honor takedown requests from repressive regimes.

Over the past few months, I have become increasingly interested in #Twitter with the help of my friend, Julie Hunt (@juliebhunt) of . Like (@Univ_of_Oregon) #Prof. Kyu Ho Youm (@Marshall Youm), I use Twitter to share, learn, and keep virtual note cards. As you've immediately noticed, I (@BenKerschberg) am writing this short piece in a ...

One of the newest Twitter-ers: First lady Michelle Obama.

Although Facebook dominates Twitter in many areas, it lost to its smaller competitor in at least one metric for 2011. Twitter was discussed in about 50 percent of media coverage regarding social networks this year, while Facebook was only talked about 45 percent of the time, according to HighBeam Research. The report did not even bother mentioning Google+.

Our overall happiness is apparently in decline. How do we know? It's on Twitter. A team of mathematicians from the University of Vermont analyzed 4.6 billion Twitter messages worldwide over 33 months. They assigned happiness grades to more than 10,000 of the most common words, crunched all the numbers and plotted them on a graph that shows a gradual downward slope during the past year and a half or so, through mid-September.

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and his investment company said Monday they are investing a combined $300 million into Twitter, giving the microblogging site a cash boost as it looks to entice more users and paying advertisers.

Micro-blogging site Twitter is joining the ranks of Facebook and Google+ as it launches 'brand' pages as part of a service-wide redesign.

After the Obama campaign’s masterful use of social media in 2008, House Republicans have adopted Twitter as their karaoke microphone against the White House bullhorn.