Twitter changed the restrictions on some tweets in some countries yesterday. Before, the general policy was that a tweet would be removed on a global level by Twitter if a government requested that. Yesterday, however, the policy was adjusted.
Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.
While this is – of course – running into criticism as it relates to free speech, many do think that Twitter chose the best option available to them.
Twitter would be banned outright in many countries if it did not agree to restrict Tweets, said Cynthia Wong of the Center for Technology & Democracy.
“The question is: What’s best for freedom of speech?” Wong said. “If Twitter was completely blocked from certain countries, is that really better? It looks like Twitter has done a good job in thinking through how to mitigate the human rights harm in complying with local law.”
Considering how big of a role Twitter has played in past civic uprisings globally, it seems obvious they’re still try to be a tool for the people and a voice to those silenced when they can. We’ll see how well it plays out when it’s first put to use.
It seems that some analysis points to Twitter picking up it’s 500 millionth user some time next month, considering they have cited 465 million currently and using recent growth trends as a predictor. Of course, most Twitter users know that an account registered does not equal an active user. Even Twitter acknowledges this with CEO Dick Costolo stated in October that the social platform seemed to have 100 million active users at that moment in time (with approximately 400 million registered users). But still – 500 million registered users is a huge milestone for the platform. And it does seem that the percentage of active users is growing along with the increase in registered users. 
Twitter has been in the news often over the last year for BREAKING THE NEWS. It’s an interesting enigma, reading a news article from a reputable news source, about how Twitter – a social network – was the first to scoop a news story. This has been true from uprisings to earthquakes. From births to deaths. News breaks on Twitter. We’re all used to it by now.
If you upload photos while using Twitter (using Twitter itself or some services like Instagram and TwitPic) the photos now show up in a gallery on your profile. At least they do for your followers by default. If someone who does not follow you clicks over to your profile, they’ll see the option to “Display Media” on your profile page that will show your gallery. You’ll also have the option to “Always Display Media” from there on out so that you’ll always see a user’s gallery on their profile page. 
Recently, Gmail unveiled the 
The latest Terms Of Service Outrage is here compliments of 
Recently I’ve noticed a shift in my own social-networking habits. I’ve toned down my personal use of twitter and find myself using Facebook more and more lately. For me, it has more to do with keeping up with other people than it does myself. Facebook is a smaller, but diverse group for me, while Twitter has lately become the same people talking more and more often. Even as I follow more people on Twitter, I still see the same users showing up on my feeds. I know there are various ways to adjust this, using the Twitter list function, for example. However, without conscience thought about it, I just started using Facebook more. 
