McCain Tops 1M Twitter Followers

(NEWSER) - Time has unveiled its latest tallying of the world’s 100 most influential people, and yes, of course, Barack Obama is on it. But the other 99 choices aren’t as obvious. Bernie Madoff makes the list, as do Rush Limbaugh, George Clooney, and 4Chan’s Moot. And as usual, Time has snagged some celebrity writers, making for some great pairings, like JK Rowling on Gordon Brown, Ashton Kutcher on the Twitter guys, and Arnold Schwarzenegger on uncle-in-law Ted Kennedy. More»

Arizona senator's following 46 times greater than nearest rival

(NEWSER) - John McCain is leading the charge of tweeting lawmakers, with 46 times more Twitter followers—a cool 1.7 million —than his nearest competitor, Missouri Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill. McCain’s popularity also illustrates Republicans’ quick embrace of the social network; twice as many of them tweet, compared to Democrats. “I love it; it’s so interactive,” McCain tells Bloomberg . More»

Senator's attacks on federal spending starting to seem like sour grapes

(NEWSER) - John McCain's complaining about the omnibus spending bill is starting to sound more like he's trying to fight the election again instead of fighting pork-barrel spending, Mike Madden writes in Salon. The senator appears to be going out of his way to remind people how much he disagrees with President Obama, Madden writes—even mastering Twitter to post dozens of snarky comments about the bill. More»

Rove, McCaskill, others make microblogging look useful

(NEWSER) - To the unconverted, Twitter seems about as useful as a Snuggie, writes Patrick Gavin in Politico, but some DC movers and shakers are making the microblogging site work for them. Here’s his top 10:

1. Karl Rove: More than 11,000 have signed up for quick glimpses into Bush’s Brain.
2. Claire McCaskill: Personal, off the cuff, and open, she’s Congress’s best tweeter.
3. David Gregory: Questions pols and interacts with fans.

Site boasted of indexing 1.3B pages (it's 8B now) ... and YouTube wasn't yet one

(NEWSER) - To honor its 10th birthday, Google put up a search engine that reflects the web in 2001, TechCrunch reports. Other than the Yahoo-esque exclamation point in Google’s logo, the search engine has not changed that much since—but searches show the web, and the world, have:

• "iPod" brings up a defunct document-processing system, while "YouTube" yields zero links.