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...

The Arab Uprising has shaken the way we understand politics, communications and public diplomacy. Social media may have played a role in the unrest, but pretending that the uprising is a social media revolution is as imaginary as the existence of the Empress of Mancha.

The Israel Foreign Ministry is speaking Arabic, on Facebook. The Facebook page which was launched in early January, entitled "Israel speaks Arabic" in Arabic, was opened by the Foreign Ministry's Media and Public Affairs Department and is devoted exclusively to Arabic-speaking audiences.

Indian diplomacy is set to make friends and woo youngsters by joining the social networking platform. The latest entrant to join Facebook is the Indian embassy in Kathmandu, one of the biggest Indian missions abroad...

Facebook has been hailed as a tool of revolution that has spread across the Middle East, the means by which young Tunisians, Egyptians and others spread their message and organize their rallies. But when they are not banning the world’s favorite social network, the region’s rulers are learning to use it, too.

Co-chaired by Ambassador James Glassman and Secretary Dan Glickman, the Strategic Public Diplomacy Project seeks to develop recommendations on ways to tightly integrate public diplomacy with foreign policy to advance U.S. strategic interests in a new media age.

Pope Benedict XVI still won't let you poke him (he’s not on Facebook), but the pope has offered new praise of the “great opportunity” of social networking sites and invited Christians "to join the network of relationships which the digital era has made possible." With a caveat: Virtual relationships are no substitute for the real thing, he said.

The African country that has the highest percentage of people with Facebook accounts is Tunisia, at 18%. That's triple the penetration of the social-media service in repressive Egypt.