Twitter

Two teenagers have been arrested over racist tweets  they made towards an English footballers as problems with social media and sports connect to rise in England. Samuel Ameobi, an English born athlete of Nigerian descent, logged into Twitter one day to find his page vandalized. Read more

Fortune Magazine annually tracks America’s largest corporations due to their influence in the business world. For this study, Academics from Center For Marketing Research Dartmouth examined the social media activity, specifically blogging, of various organizations, concluding that the biggest companies have slowed down their social media efforts and appear to be hitting a plateau. More after the jump.

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What I would argue is the greatest asset of twitter is its ability to unite people all around the world who experiencing the same thing at the exact same time. Twitter is most exciting during the Super Bowl, the Oscars, and certainly would have been ever so entertaining during the O.J. Simpson car chase down the Los Angeles freeway had it been around then. Read more

Though it certainly seems like most if not all of the 2011 NBA Season will be put on hold, the Phoenix Suns are gearing up for a new social media marketing initiative, one incorporating every major social network as well as the introduction of a very new reporting position. Read more

The strangeness of Twitter is that there are so many people who will never learn from those who have made missteps on the medium before them. Athletes continue to use Twitter to connect with fans and let out their feelings, but so many of them still bring unnecessary attention to themselves or their teams, stir up controversy, and simply write dumb things. Here are the latest in the sad, continuing saga of unwise athlete tweets.

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Ah, to think back on all those jokes.

“Do I Twitter?” went the classic question-in-response-to-a-question, often asked with a look of befuddlement, or boredom, or busier-than-thou disgust, and always followed by the “who cares what so-and-so ate for breakfast?”

Well, a few fans of MC Hammer cared what he was up to (to date @MCHammer attracts a whopping 2, 204, 299 followers).

Others cared about people’s whereabouts and updates, too, realizing Twitter, along with other social networking sites could be about so much more than who ate their Wheaties (the breakfast cereal which, we were pleased to just discover, boasts 67,000-plus fans on Facebook).

Last week, it was reported by the San Francisco Chronicle that Twitter has crossed the 100 million monthly active users mark and has 50 million users that log on daily, as tracked by the San Francisco micro-blogging service. That’s an 82% increase since January 2011, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told Chronicle staff writer Benny Evangelista.

Still, as impressive as this number of active users sounds, Evangelista’s article points out that it is hard to decipher which Twitter users are actually having meaningful interactions and engaging, not to mention which users are paid to Tweet marketing material about a brand, company or business as part of their jobs. And then there is the whole question of multiple accounts for the same entity.

Of particular interest among the stats mentioned in Evangelista’s article is a 40% representing “active users” who have not posted any Tweets in the last month.

We’re not sure how they qualify as active, either.

The NFL season has yet to begin, and last year’s best running back has already stumbled out of the gate. Feeling the pressure of being a leader on team with high expectations and one of the top fantasy football players, Arian Foster tried, and failed, in an attempt to relieve people of their worries about his hamstring injury. Read more

Our tablets and smartphones already make apps widely available while on-the-go in the car or on a hike — but still, TomTom’s new Go Live GPS device has added apps, including Twitter, to its arsenal of functions. That is, now your Personal Navigation Device could be capable of tweeting for you as you travel. The device also features apps like Yelp and TripAdvisor as well as real-time updated traffic updates. Read more

Twitter is great for generating buzz, but sometimes that buzz isn’t all that constructive. As the east coast of the United States prepares for Hurricane Irene this weekend, tips on how to handle weather emergencies are appreciated by all audiences. Thankfully, there are a lot of Twitter users who are skilled at giving advice, whether it be on how to deal with flooding or how to maintain perspective when we don’t even know how badly the storm will affect different areas. Here, then, are the top 10 tweets about Hurricane Irene that are actually useful. Read more

Last week, Twitter’s Claire Diaz-Ortiz, the company’s leader for social innovation, released her book all about how people can use Twitter to be good global citizens. But the book, Twitter for Good, is only one part of Twitter’s focus on social change: Hope140, Twitter’s web site for supporting causes, serves as a launch pad for the various ways social media can make a positive difference. Here are the top 5 things Hope140 is doing right at this juncture. Read more