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People
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Jun 17, 09 3:15 PM CDT
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Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson have split for good, a source tells People . The pair hadn’t even made the reunion official before LiLo’s antics—including a new love for Twitter—made even friendship impossible. And it’s not just Ronson who’s suffering from the tweets: Lohan posted a dark photo of Justin Timberlake with another woman earlier this week, asking, “where’s jb cheater?”
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Los Angeles Times
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Jun 17, 09 7:50 AM CDT
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MySpace was overtaken by Facebook for the first time last month and without some serious innovation, Rupert Murdoch's big buy may end up joining Friendster in the ranks of the also-rans, Dawn Chmielewski and David Sarno write in the Los Angeles Times . The world of social networking moves at an unforgiving pace, the two note, and MySpace has been playing catch-up instead of leading, as its own initiatives tanked.
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ComputerWorld
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Jun 16, 09 3:03 AM CDT
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Twitter has pushed back work that would have taken the site offline to avoid disrupting the flow of information from Iran, Computer World reports. The site, which has proven to be a vital link between Iranian protesters and the rest of the world, will now be offline 2 to 3 pm Pacific time for essential maintenance, leaving the channels of communication clear during daylight hours in Tehran.
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Washington Post
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Jun 15, 09 5:31 PM CDT
(Newser) -
Traditional media are having a tough time covering the Iranian election fallout, but fear not: Web 2.0 is up to the task. The Washington Post runs down the best destinations for those hoping to stay on top of the situation: PicFog.com: Current, unedited photos containing "a level of gore or manipulation not found on traditional news sites."
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Ars Technica
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Jun 15, 09 2:07 PM CDT
(Newser) -
Evidence suggests that Google will soon introduce a “MicroBlogsearch” feature, indexing and searching Twitter and its imitators, Ars Technica reports. Google-watchers noticed a reference to the new feature hidden in Google’s translation service. Unlike Twitter’s own search, which seeks out any and all tweets containing the search terms and displays them chronologically, Google will seek to rank the links by relevance.
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CNN
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Jun 15, 09 10:12 AM CDT
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Erupting protests over Iranian elections may be the first political upheaval tweeted from beginning to end, as demonstrators keep up a running account of what's happening, reports CNN. "My friend saying more than 100 students arrested. Bastards just attacked us for no reason. I lost count of how much tear gas they launched at us!" said one of several breathless posts over the weekend.
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New York Times
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Jun 15, 09 6:03 AM CDT
(Newser) -
Twitter has already become a go-to place for breaking news, but the micro-blogging site assumed the role of media watchdog over the weekend, reports the New York Times . As riots protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory began to heat up in Tehran—and CNN aired a Larry King repeat about American Chopper rather than images of bloody students—tweets labeled #CNNFail began to fly.
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Bloomberg
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Jun 13, 09 4:10 PM CDT
(Newser) -
Facebook’s offer of personalized URLs drew 500,000 members in 15 minutes after midnight today, Bloomberg reports. “We saw higher than usual traffic,” said a spokesman. “Planning allowed us to handle that traffic well.” The feature, designed to make Google searches easier, allows the site’s 200 million users to name the URL attached to their profiles—but analysts say it could backfire.
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Ars Technica
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Jun 12, 09 7:09 PM CDT
(Newser) -
Rumors of a Y2K-style Twitter bug crashing the microblogging site tonight are mere tweeter-tattle, Ryan Paul writes on Ars Technica. True, Twitter assigns each missive with a numerical ID, and their total will soon exceed 2,147,483,647—the most a 32-bit assigned interger can fit. But the site, and likely most of its third-party programs, are designed to handle the load.
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Chicago Tribune
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Jun 12, 09 11:55 AM CDT
(Newser) -
A popular anti-abortion blog that told the story of a woman who gave birth to a terminally ill baby was a hoax, the Chicago Tribune reports. For months, thousands of readers logged on daily to follow "April's Mom." They rallied around her, sending photos, gifts, and prayers. On Sunday, the blogger wrote a post—picture included—saying she had given birth and that the baby died hours later.
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Rolling Stone
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Jun 11, 09 3:40 PM CDT
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Twitter’s negative users appear to have scared away a celebrity tweeter, Rolling Stone reports. Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor delighted some fans by using his 140 characters to announce collaborations, diss Chris Cornell, and raise money for charity. But the social network is “now doing more harm than good,” Reznor writes on the group’s site. “The experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule.”
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Time
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Jun 11, 09 2:58 PM CDT
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The US’ third-largest social network is also the world’s most annoying website, Sean Gregory writes in Time . An e-mail about photos from an ex-boss lured him to Tagged, only to lead him through a confusing registration that spammed all his contacts with an informal note. “I don’t have a ‘smiley-face’-style relationship with most of my old professors,” he moans.
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Wired
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Jun 11, 09 2:21 PM CDT
(Newser) -
The US Army has lifted a years-long ban on online social networks, commanding bases to let soldiers access sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr so they can “tell the Army story,” Wired reports. The change doesn’t apply to all overseas bases or other armed forces, and it leaves MySpace, YouTube, and Pandora blocked. But it marks a shift in the military’s thinking towards the web tools.
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New York Post
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Jun 11, 09 11:32 AM CDT
(Newser) -
A Brooklyn man is suing Match.com over “humiliation and disappointment” suffered by users who seek dates with non-subscribers, the New York Post reports. Most people listed on the site, he says, “are canceled subscribers or never subscribed at all.” And those who e-mail them “feel rejected when their e-mails get no reply,” Sean McGinn claims.
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BBC
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Jun 10, 09 7:20 AM CDT
(Newser) -
China's blocking of Twitter ahead of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre last week didn't foil the country's computer-savvy youth for very long, the BBC reports. Users swiftly shared information about visiting the site through proxies or software applications, and the subsequent twittering made Tiananmen one of Twitter's most-discussed topics last week.
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TechCrunch
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Jun 9, 09 5:48 PM CDT
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A website hopes to meet the "tiny challenge" of cataloging every concert ever given, writes MG Siegler on TechCrunch. Songkick, a site developed in 2007 to provide recommendations for live music based on where you live and what you like, also wants to add a mix of social networking to its database. An “I Was There” button in the site’s catalog allows concertgoers to chime in about a particular show.
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Mashable
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Jun 9, 09 4:40 PM CDT
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Facebook will now offer users an alternative to the clumsy random URLs currently assigned for personal pages, Mashable reports. Starting Friday, users can apply for an actual named website to supplant a mix of numbers, such as facebook.com/john.q.public. The “vanity URL” system has been available on Twitter and MySpace, but this is Facebook’s first concession to the trend.
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GigaOm
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Jun 9, 09 10:56 AM CDT
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Just last week, Twitter was on the cover of Time ; today, everyone’s crowing about its demise, writes Om Malik for GigaOm. According to Compete.com, Twitter’s unique visitor growth stalled in May after months of sensational gains, up a mere 1.47% compared to Facebook’s 8%. The BBC reported that 90% of Tweets are written by just 10% of users. Plus, the “Twitpocalypse”—in which the growing number of tweets could crash the system designed to keep track of them—is nigh.
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NPR
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Jun 8, 09 1:53 PM CDT
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Sex without commitment, also known as hooking up, has been common for years on college campuses. And now, as those college kids graduate and get jobs, hooking up is replacing dating in the real world, too, NPR reports. "Going out on a date is a sort of ironic, obsolete type of thing," says a Boston 25-year-old.
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Associated Press
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Jun 8, 09 2:20 AM CDT
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Sen. Chuck Grassley slammed the president in angry Twitter messages yesterday, saying Barack Obama has "nerve" for declaring "it's time to deliver" on health care while vacationing in Paris. Grassley is a crucial Republican ally on health care reform, which Obama has said needs bipartisan support. But Obama's increased involvement with the issue seems to be diminishing any hope of that, AP reports.
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