Chinese Foreign Ministry's newly-registered microblog has drawn considerable attention at home, marking the government's latest efforts to connect to some of China's 457 million Internet users through increasingly popular web services.

he Public Diplomacy division of the Ministry of External Affairs was awarded the prestigious Gov2.in Awards 2011 instituted by Governance Now magazine for innovative use of social media and Web 2.0 tools in government.

Freed on February 23 after being jailed for five months, the first thing the 33-year-old activist did was join protesters on the streets, even before returning home to be reunited with his young wife, 1-year-old twin daughters, and 6-year-old son.

The Japanese embassy in Beijing has officially launched a micro blog, attracting more than 5,000 fans in just two days. According to Japanese Ambassador Uichiro Niwa, the micro blog will introduce his schedule as well as various activities related to Sino-Japanese relations.

Egypt's internet activists have played a key role in the pro-democracy protests from the outset, but they tell the BBC that the online campaigning is evolving to suit their real-life activism in Tahrir Square.

The US State Department maintains nine full-time Arabic-language bloggers, two Farsi bloggers and two Urdu bloggers, while the Pentagon also maintains a team of bloggers. The UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office maintains two full-time Farsi language bloggers.

An Egyptian political activist, a Bush-appointed diplomat, and Obama campaign staffers met in New York in 2008 to talk about revolution—of the social media kind. And now the Internet is buzzing. Plus, full coverage of the Egypt revolt.

Some of the first-hand accounts of British Prime Minister David Cameron's visit to China last week did not come in the form of media reports or in postings on news portals, but in a microblog by the British embassy in Beijing, the The Beijing News daily reported Sunday.