After the flap last week around the fake Wendi Deng getting a verified Twitter account a lot of people have been asking how you go about getting a verified Twitter account. Come on, you know you have.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that it is apparently quite difficult. Unless that is you happen to be a celebrity or have some good connections. Alternatively, one magazine publisher was told by Twitter that another route to a blue tick is spending more than $15,000 on ads will. Read More »

Google is continuing its transformation of search as it unveils three significant additions, which aim to make search more social, more personal, and combine to form what it is calling ‘Search plus Your World’.

The first is Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you.  The second is Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following. The third is People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest. Read More »

From Friday, The Guardian will begin charging its 280,000 active iPad users £9.99 a month to use its iPad app. It is going to be a big moment for the Guardian, a test of paid content, while it continues to maintain a rich free website.

Since its launch in October The Guardian iPad has been free, by way of a sponsorship deal with Channel 4, but now those three months of free access are up the question is how many of those readers will pay? Read More »

2011 was a landmark year in the corporate use of social networks, as business models swiftly changed in response to the growing influence of social media. Nearly all brands were re-considering their social outreach stance – whether businesses were forced to change in response to a crisis, or they recognised the strategic potential of building a two-way conversation with customers. Brands realised if they didn’t invest in their own social reputations, their competitors gladly would. Read More »

A wonderful infographic here detailing the difference between geeks and nerds.

You really wouldn’t want to be the nerd in all of this. While the geek has his ironic t-shirts, and interest in film (from high brow to low brow) the nerd is socially inept and introverted and might be into larping (I had to Google this). Read More »

A new sporting Twitter record was set on Sunday as reaction to 80-yard overtime touchdown pass by the Denver Broncos quarterback, Tim Tebow, hit 9,420 tweets per second.

The touchdown, which was scored in overtime, by the Denver Broncos player, led his team to victory and an upset against the Pittsburgh Steelers — although it failed to displace Japan in the number one spot. Read More »