Here's my quandary: If I deliver, as promised, a warts-and-all account of how Agence France Presse's Twitter-based application the e-diplomacy hub came to be, I risk irritating our developer, getting rapped on the knuckles by my CEO, and provoking the good folks at Twitter who, make no mistake, can pull the plug on our ambitious little project, and others like it, with a digital flick of the wrist.

The reaction so far to newly proposed State Department guidelines for staff members tweeting in their official capacity about certain subjects has been universally negative. Under the proposed guidelines, obtained by the Diplopundit blog, there could be up to a two-day review ahead of publishing posts on social media sites.

I cannot speak for all of the region but generally this is a good moment for press freedom in the Middle East. In fact, the advent of satellite television had already made it hard for dictatorial regimes to suppress all alternative sources of information. Al Jazeera was a breath of fresh air, not only to those limited by CNN’s version of world news, but also to all those whose only news came from state controlled television, radio and newspapers.

The U.S. Embassy in Hanoi has deactivated its account on a popular Vietnamese website that’s full of suspected pirated music and Hollywood movies, the State Department said Wednesday. The embassy had used its social media account with ZingMe to promote American values, including respect for intellectual property rights. But its presence had raised questions about digital piracy on the site and led to a review.

Last week, The Jewish Agency for Israel and Masa Israel opened an International New Media Center in Jerusalem which is staffed by volunteers from around the world who are participating in Masa Israel programs. The center will allow the volunteers to participate in Israel’s public diplomacy activities by sharing their personal experiences of living in Israel under rocket fire with people around the world through social media, utilizing multiple languages.

In September, StandWithUs (having raised funds for the project through Jewcer) brought to Israel 10 of the world’s top Instagram users to take inspiring, fun photos of daily life in the country. Here’s Part 2 of our “best of” series of selections.

Israel held a four-day conference aimed at giving young Russian-speaking Jewish communal leaders in Europe a training in social media that should enable them to promote the country’s image and to reverse anti-Israeli attitudes. The conference, held on November 21-25 in Maastricht, Holland, was organized by the Jewish Agency for Israel, and the Ministry for Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs.

“The bottom line is that Hamas is more relevant,” said Yoram Meital of Ben-Gurion University’s Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy. “Israel’s image is as the side that refused to pay the price for peace, and most Palestinians see Hamas’s ‘resistance’ as more attractive and up to date, and the Palestinian authority as somewhat not relevant.”