The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is hosting a global town hall at Twitter headquarters to talk foreign policy with users of the online messaging service. Ambassador Susan Rice will be taking questions from around the world Thursday morning via Twitter and from employees at the company's San Francisco office.

The State Department -- already pretty good at the social media thing -- is now using Twitter to transmit its thoughts to the Arab world in ... Arabic. Foggy Bottom is using @USAbilAraby, which in English means "USA in Arabic."

Egypt's internet activists have played a key role in the pro-democracy protests from the outset, but they tell the BBC that the online campaigning is evolving to suit their real-life activism in Tahrir Square.

Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians, many wearing bandages from from days of street fighting, turned out in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday for what they are calling the ‘Day of Departure’, a nationwide call for the immediate removal and prosecution of Hosni Mubarak who has ruled the country for 30 years.

Gil Scott-Heron once sang that the revolution will not be televised. The Tunisian revolution, and the continuing Egyptian uprising, would seem to refute the great man’s chorus.

The Middle East’s latest unrest has revived once again a tired debate about the power of social media. Recent headlines gush about the arrival of the “Facebook Revolution” or “Twitter Diplomacy.”

As events in Egypt move forward, the United States has appeared to be a befuddled bystander, reacting slowly and with a muted voice that cannot be heard above the din of those demanding freedom.