“We entered the world of weibo with an open mind, and have often been surprised by what we have found,” said a note by the embassy’s public diplomacy head weeks after the first status updates hit the “Canadaweibo” account on Chinese Internet portal Sina.com.

I’ve been admirer of ADM Stavridis for a long time, especially his embrace of social media and public diplomacy...The admiral’s TED talk unites his own personal advocacy for transparency and connectedness in his leadership roles with NATO and US DOD (he has a substantial presence on Facebook and Twitter) with a broader vision of sustainable security efforts globally.

Diplomats in all parts of Canada's Beijing embassy are being encouraged to learn how to use China's version of Twitter. The embassy launched a "weibo" microblog account on Chinese Internet portal Sina.com in June 2011. But internal Foreign Affairs documents show that not all Canadian diplomats rushed to type out 140-Chinese character updates when the account went up.

"If somebody thinks that 140 characters is the diplomatic solution to solving the world’s problems then we’ve got a big problem. Twitter really wasn't created for diplomacy. Twitter’s not even created to have a conversation," he said.

For Olympics organizers who pride themselves on putting on a carefully choreographed — obsessively controlled, some would say — 17-day show, the bursts of Twitter activity are like gamma rays escaping from a solar flare. They're impossible to stop and spellbinding to behold.

The London 2012 Games have been touted as the first Olympics to live fully in the age of social media. After all, the organization's Twitter feed has nearly 1.4 million followers...But a rash of scandals and news related to Twitter has put a new mark on the face of these games. And, as they say, it ain't pretty.