update:

Turkish student apologises for ‘bringing down Twitter’ but denies being a hacker

Twitter hacked by Turkish people

I wouldn’t call them hackers. Some folks discovered a way to make everyone they want follow themselves, and they even made this trick public.

it looks like the Turkish guy was an Accept fan:

ACCEPT fan causes Twitter to explode

check out:

5 Most Essential Social Media Infographics via Viralblog

Study: Consumers are Willing to Pay for Content on E-Readers, iPad, Tablets

Call it a spark of genius from the part of Apple. But undoubtedly, the  iPad has certainly awaken an otherwise sleeping e-book and tablet market.According to a recent Boston Consulting Group Study which showed that more than half of surveyed consumers plan to buy an iPad, Kindle or similar device in the next three years. More important than that is the findings that these consumers appear willing to pay for content to be consumed on those devices.

Hugo Chavez Hires 200 People to Manage His Twitter Account

Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, who only recently signed up to Twitter, has rapidly risen up the rankings to become the top tweeter in the country, despite having previously described the service as a ?tool of terror.? The leader has also hired hundreds of staff to reply to tweets.

7 things people get wrong about the Internet and TV

from Boing Boing by Craig Engler

How big is Internet Freedom?

Rebecca MacKinnon and I led a conversation at the Global Voices public summit on the topic of ?Internet Freedom?. I raised the idea that term ?internet freedom? is so broad that it can end up being meaningless. Rebecca?s offered the wonderful idea that ?internet freedom is a Rorschach test? ? what someone sees in the term tells you more about them than it does about the subject.

Twitter: social network or news publisher?

Writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab, Jason Fry recently discussed a South Korean academic paper, entitle “What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media,” which examined what characterizes Twitter as a hybrid social networking and news media site. Journalists and other members of the media industry have already embraced the social networking site Twitter. Users have a limited space of only 140 characters in which they can post snippets of information about anything that interests them. The website is constantly used by a spectrum of nearly 41.7 million users who cultivate followers through their tweets. One of the more interesting aspects of Twitter, separating it from social net working websites like Facebook, is the fact that information is largely one way.  Fry explains that Facebook relationships are “two-way ” ‘friendships’ ” while relationships on Twitter “don’t have to be reciprocal — there’s no need to follow someone back who is following you.” According to the research paper, only 22.1% of Twitter relationships are reciprocal.

5 Needs and 5 Tools for Measuring Media Impact

Tracy Van Slyke co-authored this article

This spring, National Public Radio launched Go Figure, a new blog authored by members of its Audience Insight and Research Group. In an April 1 post, blogger Vince Lampone wrote, “Nearly all listeners have been moved to take action by NPR at some point in their lives. For instance, two in three have done further research into a topic, most have visited a website, and nearly 25% have become involved with a local or national political issue as a result of listening.”

You don?t ?get? social media? Just open your ears and listen?

It is very easy to tell how many followers we have on Twitter but have you ever wondered why people are using social media? Why people are reading your blog? What kind of information they are looking for? If the answer is ?no?, you should definitely start listening to the users, their answers will give meaning to the numbers.

Discussion: Political Tweets and Transparency

from DigiActive.org by Talia Whyte

Special Report: Kids, Data, and Internet Safety

• The Mission
• Cybermyths vs. cyberfacts
• Cyber harassment: A new twist on an old problem
• Identifying kids at-risk
• Internet safety: What works?
• What should parents do?
• Building community programs: One size doesn?t fit all
• Identifying what works: In search of evaluations
• Making better classroom use of online resources
• A new legal frontier: Sexting
• Different worlds, different approaches
• Next steps
• Download all as a PDF

NarrativeTracker: the First Social Media-based Tracking Tool Announced

NarrativeTracker Index? to provide policy-makers unbiased public opinion on Healthcare Reform

Dallas and Austin, Texas, May 12, 2010 ?  Today OpenConnect Systems and The Global Language Monitor have announced the joint launch of the Healthcare NarrativeTracker Index? (NTI?), the first product specifically designed to use social media-based monitoring to better understand the issues driving healthcare reform. Because the Healthcare NTI is based on the national discourse, it provides a real-time, accurate picture of what the public is saying about any topic related to healthcare, at any point in time. In addition to the NTI, the Narrative Tracker Arc? follows the rise and fall of sub-stories within the main narrative to provide a comprehensive overview of the opinions surrounding a single issue.