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Internet companies rush new tools for Iranian protesters

(NEWSER) - Twitter has taken extraordinary measures to keep its site running during the Iranian election protests, and now other websites are speeding up developments. Today Facebook launched an early version of its site in Persian, relying on 400 volunteers to translate pages into the local language. "We felt it was important to help more people communicate rather than wait," said a spokesman. More»

Tools like Twitter complement, rather than replace, traditional blogging, argues blogger

(NEWSER) - A recent Wired magazine article argued that blogging is out, that mainstream media have taken the practice over, and one-time bloggers have moved on to social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. Not so, responds Allyson Kapin on Fast Company. Witness the 175,000 new blogs created daily and 570,000 posts a day. More»

Experts compare it to physical closeness

(NEWSER) - The mini-missives that friends post on websites like Twitter create what experts call "ambient awareness"—a form of contact akin to picking up a friend's body language or stray remarks. Alone they add up to little, "but taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting," Clive Thompson writes in the New York Times. More»

NY meeting introduces new services to new media leaders

(NEWSER) - What’s next for online social networking? A heavy dose of geography, writes David Kirkpatrick in Fortune’s Fast Forward. At a real-life meeting for 100 new-media notables in New York, one hot topic was adding location information to user-driven sites so that “not only will you know what someone is doing online, you’ll know where they are doing it.” More»

From NBC's site to Twitter lists, little need for actual TV

(NEWSER) - With watching the Olympics on actual TV being so, like, 2008, TechCrunch presents the best places to keep tabs online:

• NBC Olympics : Lots of scores and news—and if you’re a premium cable customer, 400 hours of live events.
• Vancouver 2010 : The host committee’s site has the usual stuff, plus maps and more local flavor.
• Facebook : The news, plus status updates and photos from athletes.