The Library of Congress archives all public messages on Twitter. This was announced two years ago (on Twitter, of course). The Library has the very first tweet, the Twitter equivalent of the Gutenberg Bible. It preserves Barack Obama’s presidential victory tweet as well as George Washington’s diary.
Now that the Library has amassed this huge and growing sea of social media data, it doesn’t know what to do with it. Meanwhile, the tweets keep gushing in.
Pope Benedict XVI is on Twitter, tweeting encyclicals in 140 CXL letters. Actually, His Holiness was on the Twitter last year, about the same time he went on Facebook, but this is his very own personal account, and his handle is @Pontifex. Twitter Followers: 1,104,394, Following: 0. That’s your Vatican table of organization right there.
But Twitter works in mysterious ways. The Pope invited questions to the hashtag #askpontifex, unleashing a flood of tweeted inquiries about faith, sex, scandal and lunch. More queries of the curia curious can be found here and here.
More:
“To Tweet the Infallible Tweet,” Steven Mazie, Big Think
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Pope Benedict XVI is on Twitter. Well, he will be before the end of the year, anyway.
Actually, His Holiness was on the Twitter last year, about the same time he went on Facebook, but this will be his very own account.
We look forward to reading encyclicals written in 140 CXL letters.
More:
“Pope Benedict to guide followers with personal Twitter account,” Amanda Holpuch, The Guardian
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If you’re strolling through Wembley Square in Cape Town and you’d like a nice cold rooibos iced tea, reach for your iPhone, not a coin. Tweet the hashtag on the front of the Bos brands Iced Tea vending machine and it will give you a can for free.
The Twitter microblogging empire decided to refresh its logo, and the selection was made on an exciting two-hour broadcast of NBC’s “America’s Got Tweets” (above). The winner: an updated version of Twitter’s Larry The Bird.
The McDonald’s Corporation started 2012 with TV ads personalizing the multinational fast food giant through first-person “McDonald Stories” narrated by its rural, agricultural suppliers. A few days back McDonald’s took the human element a step further, inviting consumers to add their own 140-character #McDStories on Twitter, a recipe for disaster. McDonald’s found the results not to their taste, and 86ed the Twitter campaign.
More:
“#McDStories: When A Hashtag Becomes A Bashtag,” Kashmir Hill, Forbes
“‘McDialysis? I’m Loving it!’: McDonald’s Twitter Promo Fail,” Colleen Curry, ABC News
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“Imagine you’re a human rights activist working for an NGO in Sri Lanka. After a hard day’s work in a humid office building, you walk into your apartment, fire up your laptop and fire off the following tweet:
’Holding workshop with @LTTE and Sri Lankan govt. about easing roadblocks for medical supplies to be trucked in. Conf. going well, God-willing.’
Congratulations, you’re now a terrorist.”
– “Terror Tweets,” John Winn, OhMyGov!
Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is back on Twitter, condemning the Chinese government’s detention of bloggers and artists who had previously protested his own 2-month prison detention. It is believed that this violates a gag order that was a condition of Ai’s release.
Twitter is blocked in China but the censorship can be circumvented through use of VPNs and other tactics. Ai speaks English but his primary audience is domestic so he’s tweeting in Chinese. His messages are being translated into English here and on a Tumblr.
Ai Weiwei has also joined Google+ and given an interview to the Communist Party’s official English-language tabloid Global Times.
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI fired up his iPad II and used L’Osservatore Romano‘s Twitter account to hype the Vatican online news portal:
”Dear Friends, I just launched http://www.news.va. Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI.”
122 characters. Oh, pardon, that’s CXXII.
And you don’t have to be Catholic to follow Pope Benedict. Mirabile dictu, he’s on Facebook.
More:
“One Small Tweet for Pope….” Rocco Palmo, Whispers in the Loggia
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Rep. Anthony D. Weiner (D-NY 9) resigned from Congress. He didn’t tweet about it, but the media noticed.
