Mark Zuckerbeg’s charm offensive in China won’t let up. [...] Zuckerberg’s goal, of course, is to bring Facebook to China, which has been blocked by Beijing since 2009. Adding just half of China’s 668 million internet users to Facebook would increase the social network’s total by 20%—and create a lucrative new market for advertising and publishing.

Increasing Internet access will be a key component to boosting Cuban businesses, according to President Obama. In remarks made alongside Cuban President Raul Castro as well as a separate forum on Cuban entrepreneurship, the President emphasized the Internet’s role in improving and expanding the country’s ability to innovate.

President Obama has produced a video every Nowruz in which he directly talks to the Iranian people inside Iran as well as the Iranian diaspora. His messages have not always been the most appealing, but in the last couple of years, they have drastically improved to connect with the majority of his audience.

Despite once claiming to be a technological dinosaur, Pope Francis has expanded his social media presence by joining Instagram, launching the new account with a picture of himself knelt in worship alongside the caption “pray for me”.

Facebook's co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg met China's propaganda tsar Liu Yunshan in Beijing on Saturday (March 19) as part of a charm offensive in one of the few markets where the social network cannot be accessed. The rare meeting [...] suggests warming relations between Facebook and the Chinese government, even as Beijing steps up censorship of and control over the Internet.

Finally, the United States is coming to terms with a central reality about terrorism: much of it happens on smart phones, laptops and other screens around the world where those who seek to perpetuate violence prey on would-be terrorists.

While domestically it defines the debate between Apple and the FBI, we should not minimize its relevance, and consequently the outcome of the court battle, on American soft power. Sinologist David Shambaugh does a side-by-side comparison between the United States and China in his book China Goes Global: The Partial Power.