Facebook's new global policy team will monitor the local political landscape and act as multilingual, TV-friendly communicators in countries and for cultures that, in many cases, have very different values and laws about privacy and personal communications than the U.S

Social media experts and activists are bemoaning the failure of Palestinians to join the Arab Spring and bring about bottom-up change through viral campaigns on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Indeed, the disappointment was palpable at a one-day conference in Ramallah last week...

In less than a year, the external affairs ministry's twitter account has collected over 10,000 followers, pioneering the outreach of government organisations on social media platforms.

The Tourism Ministry will spend RM1.8mil on social media branding to woo young tourists. Its Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ng Yen Yen said the move was part of the ministry’s transformation programme and would mark the first time that social media was used as a branding tool.

The rapid political and social changes sweeping the region has transformed the media here... Egypt’s Minister of Culture Emad Abu Ghazi said in his keynote address: “Today’s new media has helped bring about social changes, acting as a tool in the hands of the youth.”

Last year, the Public Diplomacy division of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) began an experiment....[W]e see social media not just as a tool for disseminating information; it is also valuable for getting feedback, listening, engaging with people, so that a relationship is built.

Castoff American t-shirts, which have flooded African markets for years, are starting to trickle back to the United States as part of a non-profit initiative spearheaded by two young American social entrepreneurs. This supports local markets in places like Kenya while supporting non-profits.

After a page calling for a mass march by Palestinians on the borders of Israel on May 15 was taken offline by Facebook, mirror sites with more than 3.5 million followers sprung up... Will the so-called "Facebook Intifada" tip the Middle East into further turmoil?