Armstrong Tweets Invite to Ride; Masses Clog Traffic

Twitter, Facebook kept bike in the news

(NEWSER) - Turns out celebs can use Twitter for more than just ranting against loud neighbors: Lance Armstrong used social networking sites to get his bike back, the Telegraph reports. He issued an “APB” to his 140,000 Twitter followers, and on Facebook, a group popped up named “1 Million Citizens Looking for Lance Armstrong’s Stolen Bike.” Four days after the theft, the bike was returned. More»

Champ offers reward via Twitter

(NEWSER) - Thieves made off with Lance Armstrong’s customized time trial bike and the bikes of three teammates last night, VeloNews reports. "There is only one like it in the world therefore hard to pawn it off,” Armstrong wrote on his Twitter account with a photo of the Trek bicycle. “Reward being offered." The Astana team bikes were pilfered from a truck in Sacramento. More»

These unknowns have more followers than Stephen Colbert, Snoop Dogg

(NEWSER) - Paris Hilton may be famous for being famous, but there are at least five Twitter users with more followers than her—even though most people wouldn’t recognize them on the street. CNN runs down five of the top 200 Twitter users, each with more than 1.2 million followers, that you’ve never heard of:

• Stefanie Michaels, @adventuregirl: A former bikini model, Michaels has been a self-styled travel journalist since the mid-1990s and now posts up to 50 tweets a day from the road.

(NEWSER) - Irate Twitterers appear to have forced General Motors to scrap a proposed Buick plug-in hybrid based on the Saturn Vue, Jalopnik reports. “VUE, with a touch of Buick,” tweeted one hater. “I dub thee the Vue-ick.” GM cited “the overwhelmingly negative response to this vehicle” in its decision to cancel the model. “yea GM saw our tweets on the #Vuick and they listened” tweeted one enthusiast. More»

FriendFeed buy is bid to consolidate Internet

(NEWSER) - Facebook’s $47.5 million purchase of FriendFeed is about more than competing with Twitter in real-time search, Chadwick Matlin argues for the Washington Post. Facebook could use FriendFeed and Facebook Connect to become a “social media aggregator”—a hub for all content its users create and peruse on the Internet at large. More»