Twitter Passes 10B Tweets

Hamza Kashgari, 23, tweeted that he wants to talk to Mohammed as a 'friend'

(NEWSER) - Islamists are calling for the execution of a young Saudi Arabian who tweeted last week about the Prophet Mohammed. "I have loved the rebel in you, you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me," Hamza Kashgari, 23, wrote in a tweet addressed to Mohammed. But "I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you,” he added. "I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more." His tweets triggered more than 30,000 responses in a single day, many of them from enraged Saudis calling for his death. Kashgari has since deleted his Twitter account, and apologized, but his home address was posted on YouTube and vigilantes have been hunting him at his mosque, reports the Daily Beast . More»

Employees awkwardly encourage you to apply for a job

(NEWSER) - Twitter wants YOU to "Join the Flock Today," the company says in a new—and intentionally awful—recruitment video. The video is a send-up of other, often cringe-inducing, help-wanted videos, and it features employees uttering awkward lines like, "Boy, I wish I didn't already work here so I could apply for a job!" Writes David Gianatasio at AdWeek , "This clip hits the bull's-eye, especially since the target is presumably in sync with the microblogging firm's corporate mindset and attuned to silly humor." More»

A minority makes the experience more rewarding for the majority: Study

(NEWSER) - This might help explain why Facebook is closing in on 900 million users: Most people "receive more from their Facebook friends than they give," concludes a new Pew study . Among the findings from the one-month analysis:

• 40% of users made a friend request in the one-month period, but 63% received a request themselves
• Users hit the like button 14 times on friends' content, but received 20 likes on their own content in the same span
• 12% tagged a pal in a photo, but 35% were tagged by others

It involves whining about a sandwich

(NEWSER) - How to be an ace tweeter? Megan Garber at the Atlantic pores over a new study and starts her lesson with what not to do. This would be "The Most Annoying Tweet Imaginable":

• "BREAKING: Last week I had a #sandwich that was SO HORRIBLE, it made me want to #scream. Seriously, why can't they make better #sandwiches?"

Users shatter Guinness World Record

(NEWSER) - A team of about 100 Facebook pals has collaborated to comment more than a million times on a post—setting an official Guinness record, KTXL-TV reports. The initial post was made in October in the Facebook group Ffgpioneers/gwr/attempt . (It was an innocuous post made just for this purpose.) To garner 1,001,619 comments (and counting), each user had to post some 9,300 times on average, the Huffington Post notes. The previous record was 529,335. "I'm no spring chicken anymore and I really haven’t done anything phenomenal," one of the posters said. Now she has. More»