By Mike Hoyt In April 2004, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith Idema started shopping a sizzling story to the media. He claimed terrorists in Afghanistan planned to use bomb-laden taxicabs to kill key U.S. and Afghan officials, and that he himself intended to thwart the attack. Shortly thereafter, he headed to Afghanistan, where he spent the next two months...

Censorship fears are misplaced, tweets from the Middle East will still buzz around the world

When Twitter announced it was giving itself the ability to censor particular tweets or users in certain countries, the immediate reaction among users of the network in the Middle East – as elsewhere – was: #sh*t.

Without overplaying its importance, Twitter has proved to be an invaluable tool for activists, enabling them to find up-to-date, accurate information and news, to publicise and to communicate among themselves, particularly in times of crisis. The hashtag #egypt was the most widely used on the social network in 2011, and a Dubai School of Government survey estimates Egypt had the largest number of active Twitter users in any Arab spring country.

Such is the fear of governments from social networks, particularly Twitter, the service has repeatedly been blocked in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

But Twitter has proved to be among the most activist-friendly of social networks. From delaying a scheduled maintenance during the 2009 protests in Iran to quietly fighting a US court order to disclose private information on a number of its activist users, it is hard to accuse the microblogging platform of being a client of Middle Eastern governments. Fears that the $300m stake Saudi businessman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal took in Twitter would affect its freedom were rapidly cast aside by logic: the stake, at only 3% of the company – hardly qualifies anyone to make extensive policy changes.

Nevertheless, talk of using alternative sites spread on the network after the news broke on Friday. The site identi.ca was mentioned, as was open-source social network Diaspora, with users comparing their merits and disadvantages. The spirit of Jordan-based microblogging platform Watwet, which closed in June 2011, was also briefly touched on before being laid to rest: if censorship is the concern, a website under dictatorial jurisdiction may not be the best idea.

Workarounds that would neutralise the risk of censorship began to circulate rapidly, the simplest being to change, in the user's profile, the country of location to one where tweets would not be blocked. Many users, particularly in the Middle East, do not list their country of origin to protect their identities – a discrepancy noted by social media experts. It explains why estimates of user numbers in Arab spring countries vary wildly.

Others questioned how well Twitter's censorship could work. Social media expert and University of Maryland sociology professor Zeynep Tufekci cited the impossibility of dictatorial regimes fighting Twitter "tweet-by-tweet". The usefulness of Twitter, after all, lies largely in multiple sources and routes of information than individual tweets. Tufekci is supportive of the transparency Twitter's move introduces, by effectively informing users of what has been cancelled rather than the content disappearing with no trace.

It is doubtful that users, in the Middle East or beyond, will leave Twitter. The strength and breadth of its network makes it near impossible to replace or replicate on the short or medium term. Furthermore, it doesn't appear users would be willing to let go of their favourite platform: discussions about a one-day blackout of the network in protest appear lukewarm at best.

Most importantly, though, it doesn't appear it will be necessary, given the softness of Twitter's censorship and its easy circumvention.

As Twitter appears to be willing to fight for its users' freedom of speech, by pledging to report tweets censored or, as it has done before, to challenge court orders, users feel relatively comforted that the network won't sell them out. That trust, particularly for activists, is hard to replace.

Mohamed El Dahshan is an Egyptian activist and blogger

The film festival, which has its award ceremony on Saturday, has so far been flat creatively and commercially, especially when compared with last year's buying binge.

“Web company has a video.” I know. But this one, posted this week by Foursquare, is worth thinking about for a second. It’s directed at new users, but anyone who visits the homepage and isn’t logged in will see it.

“Save money and unlock rewards” based on stuff you and your friends like. Now that sounds like a pretty interesting service.

And one that makes a whole lot more sense than “You’re supposed to ‘check in’ when you go some place. And also you might get a ‘badge’ or something,” which is where Fourquare has been for most of the past three years.

Of course, during that time Foursquare has racked up plenty of gaudy growth statistics, and big piles of VC money, and seems to have fended off would-be competitors from Gowalla to Facebook to Google. So you could argue that they’ve been communicating just fine, thank you very much.

But even though everyone you know knows about Foursquare, 15 million users — and a much smaller, and undisclosed, number of active users — isn’t close to a full-on mainstream service. So this kind of messaging is important as the company tries to grow into something much bigger.

Also important: Actually delivering on the promise of the video above. The idea is that you give Foursquare lots of data about what you like and what you do, and it offers up value to you in return, in the form of suggestions, or deals, etc.

We’re starting to see glimpses of that now, but my sense is that this is still more aspirational than anything else, and that Foursquare’s management and backers agree. Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley, in a meta post where he comments about someone else’s comment about his video, hints that there’s much more to come. Fun to watch.

A New Yorker living in Germany tells of his love for the Guardian, which began in Morocco thanks to the late actor Richard Harris

I fell in love with the Guardian on a holiday long ago in Morocco, where I stayed at the same resort as the late actor Richard Harris. He'd leave his copy by the pool every morning after breakfast for me to filch. Now, as a native New Yorker who has lived in Germany for the past eight years, I have a new perspective – that of a native English-speaking European – that has been largely formed by what I continue to read in the Guardian.

I used to be a loyal New York Times reader but, as my trust in it has waned, the Guardian has continued to produce proper investigative reporting. To me, not only does it thus use its gifts to make the media industry a better place, but the quality and craft behind most of what I read in it also allows me to tell my American friends it's the best news organ in the English language today.

Having recently discovered the Guardian iPad edition, my reading patterns have been transformed – it fits my hectic travelling schedule, and allows me to meander horizontally and vertically through the paper. I'll always read Simon Jenkins, whose well-grounded command of the facts is compulsive, and I maintain my strange addiction to the football coverage – it arms me with a heap of banter usable across the globe!

With revelations still emerging from the Leveson inquiry about the cynical behaviour of News International, readers might like to note that the exhibition on the Wapping dispute in 1986-87, when Murdoch sacked the workforce at his newspapers and set out to destroy the print unions, continues at the Bishopsgate Institute, London EC2, until 29 February. The News of the World phone-hacking scandal, which has revealed the dark side of Murdoch's global empire, should be no surprise when you look at the collusion 25 years ago between the Tory government, the police and NI to promote corporate interests over and above workers' rights or responsible journalism. With the ejection of the unions, editors and managers were handed unlimited power and ethical reporting went out of the window. I hope Leveson considers the lessons offered by history during his inquiry.
Chris Guiton
Crowborough, East Sussex

As more news organizations move toward web content systems that were originally intended for single-person bloggers, the need for a more dynamic tool has becoming increasingly apparent. The New York Times recognizes this and has launched some code that could help. Called ICE (“Integrated Content Editor”), the tool lets collaborators of a web-based text document track changes from multiple users.

In the demo, you can select different users from a dropdown to see their various contributions and deletions in the document. You can toggle between showing/hiding changes.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

David Skok, citing Time's start as an aggregator nearly 90 years ago, says aggregation and their desire to march up the value chain are nothing new: "We shouldn’t be surprised in the recent developments at the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed — nor should we be surprised when, in the coming months and years, other sites disdained by some make similar moves."

Mel Taylor on the problems with the strategy of hiring a separate digital sales staff: "This strategy is not only a money loser, but it’s a massive time suck too. Newspapers waste precious resources on trying to make this work, while pure-plays like Reach Local, Google and the Yellow Pages actively steal local dollars right from under [their noses]."

Alex Salkever on the significance of Twitter's purchase of Summify: "For people craving local content, layering together these multiple functionalities could create a hyperlocal overlayer that is more relevant, more readable, and less noisy."

Steven Jocbs on what Gilt Groupe's recent round of layoffs could mean for the daily deals industry: "It appears for now, that the honeymoon period is over, and the deals space is finally coming back to the hard reality of the street. The industry isn’t dying; it’s finally maturing."

The social network could file papers for an initial public offering as early as next week and is seeking a valuation of between $75 billion to $100 billion, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The nonprofit news site ended 2011 with a modest surplus — just over $21,000 — the second consecutive year MinnPost has ended in the black, showing that a nonprofit site can support itself.

By Mariah Blake In April 2004, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith Idema started shopping a sizzling story to the media. He claimed terrorists in Afghanistan planned to use bomb-laden taxi cabs to kill key U.S. and Afghan officials, and that he himself intended to thwart the attack. Shortly thereafter, he headed to Afghanistan, where he spent the next two...

By Jay Jones NEVADA — President Obama came to Las Vegas Thursday to promote his energy agenda in a state with a wealth of alternative energy sources—solar, wind, and geothermal. And befitting a presidential visit, especially one just nine months before a general election, the Las Vegas media did a thorough job covering the event—right down to details about the environmentally-friendly hotel where...