Twitter has come a long way in these past few years. Once a simple tool for allowing users to tell others what was on their minds, nowadays Twitter is a tool used by the prestigious and the famous to share thoughts, ideas, and important information with their followers. Amongst Twitter?s collection of top tweets for 2010 there is a ?welcome to Twitter? for the Russian President Medvedev, the Royal Family?s announcement of Prince William?s engagement, and a cry for help by Leigh Fazzina, who tweeted her way to rescue after a biking accident. And who could forget the Twitter Joke Trial, with Paul Chambers being found guilty of causing menace after sending a tweet stating his frustration with Robin Hood Airport. In that instance, Twitter came alive with support for Mr Chambers, with celebrity Stephen Fry going as far as offering to pay Chambers? fines for him.</p> <p>Another show of how Twitter has become a powerful tool of communication is the list of top trending topics that were discussed throughout the year. This includes important events like the earthquake in Haiti, the floods in Pakistan, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Other trends included discussions of movies, television programmes, and people ? like Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and soon-to-be-princess Kate Middleton.</p> <p>Today?s Twitter is a powerful tool for communication. This year?s top tweets and top trends show that social media is no longer only for fun, but an important part of the business and marketing arsenal.

We read our news in snippets. All day long we traverse the internet, clicking a twitter link here, sharing a Digg item there. Gone is the hour of casually perusing the news with a cup of coffee in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Nowadays, we are attracted to articles that are short and easy to consume. With longer fare, we tend to collect stories like acorns, storing them away to read later.</p> <p>Not only has digital technology and web economics completely changed the way mass media presents the news, it has changed the way we view it ? with sites that collect tidbits of news and present them en masse often favoured over traditional long-form journalistic sources. As a result, publishing networks are seeing computer tablets, like iPad as a replacement for newsstands and developing applications that will allow their publications to be read over smartphones and Kindles. In fact, some publishing networks have designed completely new publications specifically for mobile media consumption.</p> <p>While the above addresses the ?read now?, what about the ?read later?? Well that is being addressed too. For instance, take a look at Istapaper, an application designed by Marco Arment, a 28-year-old programmer from New York. Instapaper works with your computer, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Kindle, allowing you to drag articles into a ?Read Later? icon for later access ? creating your own aggregated, personalised news publication.</p> <p>?I?m not addressing the supply,? Mr Arment says. ?But I am increasing the demand.?

Late last week, Microsoft announced that the upcoming version of Internet Explorer (IE 9) will let users block third-party websites from attempting to track browsing behaviour. According to the Microsoft, this new tracking protection is their effort at balancing the benefits users get from sharing information with their need to be in control of their privacy.</p> <p>This past year, online privacy has been a big topic, with the Federal Trade Commission releasing a report stating that internet users should be given a method to easily opt out of being tracked by advertisers gathering information.</p> <p>According to Lorrie Faith Cranor, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, tracking protection is an industry step forward. Ad agencies however voice concern that this ability will result in users blocking advertisements which serve as a source of revenue ? the very thing which allows web publishers to offer certain content for free. Cranor says that, to get around the advertisement and revenue problem, ad networks will need to separate tracking from advertisements so that advertisements do not get blocked.</p> <p>While IE 9?s tracking protection blocks third-party tracking, it will not block information on sites that are visited directly. According to Peter Cullen, Microsoft chief privacy strategist,</p> <p>?Consumers understand that they have a relationship with the site they visit directly, whose address is clearly visible to them. The modern web though means that web sites include content from many other sites as well. These sites are in position to potentially track consumers [?] This creates a potential trade-off for those consumers with privacy concerns.?

Facebook has announced its 2011 Hacker Cup, a competition in which participants will be asked to solve algorithmic-based problem statements, with answers rated on speed and accuracy. The contest will consist of three rounds during which the participants will be narrowed down to 25. This final group will then be flown to Facebook headquarters to participate in a final round which will determine a winner.<br /> According to Facebook?s announcement;<br /> ?Hacking is a central part of Facebook's culture. Whether we're building the next big product at one of our Hackathons or creating a smarter search algorithm we're always hacking to find a better way of doing things.?<br /> Registration for the event begins on 20 December 2010, with a 72-hour qualification round taking place on 7 January at 0:00 UTC.</p>

Christopher Lee from Qhub outlines how User Generated Content should form a part of many websites? content strategies</p> <p>Commissioned Content, such as that supplied by Purecontent, often focuses on a limited number of short keywords that are competitive search terms. That can leave the website lacking exposure in long tail search where 5 or more words are used as the search term. Researching long tail keywords is an endless task for large sites</p>

Despite continued denial of service and network attacks, WikiLeaks continues to provide readers with content.<br /> In the past 10 days, wikileaks.org has lost its domain hosting service, its amazon.com cloud hosting, and its accounts with MasterCard, Visa Europe, and PayPal. Yet, despite all of these things, WikiLeaks continues to serve up controversial material provided by anonymous whistle blowers, including the US State Department cables which have led to the shunning of the site by so many of its service providers.<br /> In response to the denial of services, WikiLeaks has established several new domains ? including wikileaks.cc in Cocos Islands ? and signed up with a variety of individual DNS providers located in eight different countries, including Canada, Malaysia, and Switzerland. Fourteen different servers across 11 different networks provide for wikileaks.ch and there are also nearly 1,000 mirror sites displaying WikiLeaks content.<br /> Addressing the site?s ability to continue publishing its content in his blog, James Cowie, chief technology officer at the internet monitoring firm Renesys writes;<br /> "Within a couple days, the WikiLeaks web content has been spread across enough independent parts of the internet's DNS and routing space that they are, for all intents and purposes, now immune to takedown by any single legal authority. If pressure were applied, one imagines that the geographic diversity would simply double, and double again."<br /> In an interview with Computerworld, he added that even if WikiLeaks were to be completely taken down, ?bits and pieces of its contents would be mirrored forever. Even after the domain went away, people were tweeting raw IP numbers,? he said.

Search Engine experts are beginning to recognise the power of unique news feeds. At a recent SEO conference in Manchester, journalist Barry Adams demonstrated the traffic pulling power of news.</p> <p>"When you manage to get a new article on to a general news site, you are going to be dominating the search engine results pages for that query for a couple of days" concluded Barry. In his view, the Google News ranking algorithm was relatively simplistic.</p> <p>These findings support feedback from Purecontent's News Feed customers. They have been telling us that in addition to underpinning regular traffic flow, News can provide huge surges when a particular story gets picked up by Google News.</p> <p>More</p>

Earlier this year, Experian Hitwise published figures that show social networking in the UK is more popular than even search engines such as Google. In fact, during May 2010 alone, social networking accounted for 11.88 percent of all internet traffic, while search engines totalled 11.33 percent. Favoured networks included Facebook, which came in at number one, followed by YouTube, Twitter, Bebo, and MySpace.<br /> In a recent blog entry, ReadWriteWeb?s Richard MacManus reinforces the numbers given above, stating that in the past 12 months, more users have turned to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media venues to find their news rather than relying solely on traditional RSS news feeds.<br /> "If, for example, you want to know up-to-the-minute news on Wikileaks, then Twitter is where you'll find it," McManus says.<br /> What exactly does this mean? Well, in the internet scheme of things, the indication is that we, as a nation, are changing the way we find and consume news - and that means a change in the type of content sites provided.<br /> While Facebook may not yet rank above Google in the search market, its rise as a tool for gathering news is significant. No longer are we relying on traditional sources of news, but rather seeking out alternate sources, such as news feeds on favoured websites that provide us with a way to go directly to the news that is relevant to us; something that a traditional news source (like a newspaper) does not do.

The controversy over WikiLeak?s recent publication of US embassy cables draws the technology behind the venue to the forefront of discussion.<br /> Wiki, the Hawaiian word for fast, is the term used for websites which allow people across the World Wide Web to write, edit, and/or remove content from interlinked web pages. The best known wiki website is Wikipedia, but there are plenty of others: WikiHow, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks</p>

Last night, Facebook?s CEO Mark Zuckerberg made an appearance on the popular US news programme ?60 Minutes?. During the interview, Mr Zuckerberg spoke of life, of Facebook, and of the recently released film ?The Social Network?, as well as provided 60 Minutes with a preview of the new Facebook profile pages which are to be rolled out gradually to Facebook?s 500 million users.</p> <p>In addition to a revamped introduction section, the new profile page will highlight photos, placing those selected by the user in a section called ?Featured Friends.? Photos can also be perused more quickly through an infinite scroll feature.<br /> The new Facebook profile will also create more flexibility in how you share your information. According to Facebook project leader Josh Wiseman, "You can list the projects you worked on at your job, classes you took in school, your favourite musicians and sports teams, and more.<br /> "You can also share your life philosophy by connecting to the religions, political affiliations, and people you follow and admire," Wiseman says. All of your interests will be represented by images which can be rearranged to showcase those that are the most significant for you. Other changes include an improved people search.<br /> To read more about the upcoming changes to Facebook, you can check out Facebook?s blog, where Wiseman has provided a post introducing the new profile and outlining improved and newly-added features. Another source of information is on Facebook?s Help Centre, where you can learn more about how to upgrade to the new profile early.