As the riots in London continued for a third night on Monday, Egyptian bloggers, watching events unfold on live television, debated the meaning of the violent confrontations between young people and the police, which reminded some of them of their own pitched battles on the streets of Cairo a few months ago.

The Indian Embassy in Beijing has taken to China’s widely popular version of Twitter in a new public diplomacy campaign aimed at directly reaching out to young, middle-class Chinese, in an attempt to present an often overlooked “modern” image of India here in China.

That was the genesis of the MEA’s move beyond its high walls into the social media platforms and to become more accessible through the tools of the 21st century—Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and their ilk.

When an Internet research group recently released a study concluding that the most influential person in the Twitter universe was Rafinha Bastos, a Brazilian comedian ...the English-speaking world was predictably baffled.

South Africans and private institutions have been “generously” donating money and other resources to relief efforts in East Africa. South Africa recently mounted a media blitz to raise money for a government-established relief fund, as well as for medical supplies and non-perishable foods. The government has tried to widen the reach of the campaign with social media like Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter has become the essential tool for following and understanding the momentous changes sweeping the Arab region. It's surprisingly smart and fast -- if sometimes a little too quick on the draw -- and human where other sources feel impersonal. If there is indeed such a thing as a Twitter revolution in the Middle East, it's the way the tool is transforming how the outside world looks at the region.

From the moment he took office, Chávez deployed himself across existing platforms, using every available communications resource to present himself, his ideology and his policies directly to the public. Now, as his idiosyncratic rule runs up against limitations imposed by serious health problems, Chávez has found that...social media, is a most useful tool.

Social media allowed an ''unprecedented'' two-way exchange of information between the public and those given the task of preparing for and responding to major events such as earthquakes, floods and infection pandemics, said researchers. The technology allowed officials to ''push'' information to the public while at the same time ''pulling'' in valuable data from bystanders.