Inspired by the successful use of social media to fuel popular protests in Egypt and elsewhere, the intifada fan page had amassed more than 300,000 "likes" from users for its proposed May 15 uprising before disappearing Tuesday.

We couldn’t have picked a more salient topic or a more critical time to talk about new media and their impact on our relationships around the world. Throughout the Middle East, people are shaking off decades of restrictive government controls.

Facebook on Tuesday removed a page calling on Palestinians to take up arms against Israel, following a high-profile Israeli appeal to the popular social-networking site. The page, titled "Third Palestinian Intifada," had more than 350,000 fans before it was taken down.

The powers that be at the social networking giant, Facebook, decided the "Third Palestinian Intifada" page will not be removed, despite requests from Israel, the Anti-Defamation League and others.

Two days after using Flickr to display photos of police officers from Egypt’s feared state security force, Hossam el-Hamalawy watched in disbelief as they vanished, one by one, from the popular social networking site, which he had been using since 2008.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has "reached out to Facebook" to remove a "cause" page entitled "Third Palestinian Intifada," saying the page constitutes "an appaling abuse of technology to promote terrorist violence." According to an official statement, the ADL's request has not been met.

In the realm of public diplomacy reports, there are too few that should be on your required reading list. “Social Media Strategy: Bringing Public Diplomacy 2.0 to the next level” (820kb PDF) is an exception.

What is Gov 2.0? Gov 2.0 is all about a new culture of open governance, greater citizen involvement through the judicious use of web 2.0. Gov 2.0 is about interactive democracy against representative democracy, it is about open administration that involves citizens participation against closed administration and it is about spirit of voluntarily sharing information against closely guarding it.