The number of people using Facebook during May fell in the US, UK, Canada, Norway and Russia, according to new data. The slowing growth in user numbers may indicate that Facebook has hit the limits of expansion in the countries where it was first successful – and perhaps even that some early adopters from those countries have stopped using it.

Most accounts from rights activists as well as journalists on the scene and sociologists analyzing the situation clearly show that Facebook had an enormous influence on the start and spread of the uprisings, as well as their apparent domino effect. It served a primary means of communication.

The Obama administration is embarking on a fundamental overhaul of Voice of America and other official broadcasters — one that seeks to adapt their traditional diplomatic missions to the era of Facebook and Twitter...the need for the United States to get its message across to an often hostile world is greater than ever.

A blogger whose frank and witty thoughts on Syria's uprising, politics and being a lesbian in the country shot her to prominence was last night seized by armed men in Damascus. Several Facebook pages had been set up on Monday evening calling for her release...and activists were tweeting using the hashtag FreeAmina.

No plugging of Twitter accounts or Facebook pages on French broadcast airwaves. France's audiovisual authority says that TV and radio stations that promote their sites on the two gargantuan social media services on air are actually engaging in secret - and unfair - advertising.

France and the United States have long been engaged in a friendly war for global prestige and pre-eminence -- especially in the technological and cultural spheres. It is not entirely irrelevant to situate this latest French obstacle to American technological and cultural influence within the longstanding animosity between France and the U.S. in these spheres.

Facebook announced that it would be putting together a global team of quasi-diplomats, called "policy directors," to represent the company in various countries around the globe. "You literally build a foreign service... to translate the policy environment back into the company."

Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who became a public voice in the Egyptian uprising, said that social networking played a vital role in the rebellion and will continue to do so in many other regions throughout the world.