What he actually said, in a debate with Mark Andreessen at the Milken Institute Global Conference, according to CNN, was that "Twitter's roughly 1,000 employees will have jobs a decade from now," because "the business case for Twitter is solid," while employees of the New York Times "should be worried about the longevity of their jobs" because the newspaper "is not guaranteed a future in the digital age."

Please. No one is guaranteed a future in the digital age. But if I had to pick one paper that had the best chance of surviving and thriving, I'd probably choose the New York Times, a newspaper that continues to provide indispensable, in-depth reporting on topics of great social importance. And if I had to pick one social media network that was most likely to survive, I'd pick ... well, who the hell knows? Social media networks, so far, have the lifespan of butterflies. They look nice for a few minutes, and then they're gone. Poof! Friendster, MySpace, et cetera.

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I started writing my review of Twitter Music while listening to a George Jones country song I'd never heard before: "The King Is Gone (and so are you.)" I listened to a lot of George Jones on the day I learned he died. It seemed appropriate, if a bit macabre, to follow him on Twitter Music and see what sort of songs might pop up as a result.

I'm not going to list "The King Is Gone" in my top ten George Jones pantheon (frankly, any chorus with the words "yabba dabba doo" is right out) but I'm glad I heard it. I love being exposed to new music (even if, and sometimes especially if, it's old music).

Twitter Music is all about the social discovery of new music. It suggests for your listening pleasure songs that are already popular on Twitter, songs that the people you follow are tweeting about and listening to, and songs from artists who are in mysterious ways connected to the musicians that you choose to follow. It's confusing in a good, serendipitous, jumbled up kind of way. You're never quite sure how exactly the algorithm works that is generating the tunes, but that's OK. The whole point is discovery, hearing something new that you might like, generated through a fortuitous crunching of your social relationships. If you have a Spotify or Rdio premium account you can listen to the entirety of the songs; if you have iTunes you get a 30-second clip and the option to buy.

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Seems his fellow Republicans did not appreciate what Kush said on Twitter and Facebook regarding a 19-year-old female at the meeting, "Nice hat Working America chick but damn you are a radical bitch." Nor did it enjoy his remarks depicting the organization's state director Chelsey Evans as "Uh oh another Working America chick," or his observation that she had "nice boots…I know she makes more than min wage." And they definitely didn't find it too amusing when he declared that she "was hot enough to almost make me register democrat."

He's currently suspended, indefinitely, without pay.

"It was an ill-fated attempt at humor," Kush told Watchdog.org Wednesday. "Do I regret it? Yes … I absolutely crossed the line."

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We’ve seen the most famous TV network in the news business repeatedly botch basic facts, while one of the country’s largest-circulation newspapers misreported the number of people killed, launched a wave of hysteria over a “Saudi national” who turned out to have nothing to do with the crime, and then published a cover photo suggesting that two other guys (also innocent) might be the bombers. We’ve seen the vaunted crowd-sourcing capability of Reddit degenerate into self-reinforcing mass delusion, in which a bunch of people whose law-enforcement expertise consisted of massive doses of “CSI” convinced themselves that a missing college student was one of the bombing suspects. (He wasn’t – and with that young man’s fate still unknown, how does his family feel today?)

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And then I turned it off. The staccato bursts of information were too chaotic, too jumbled, too contradictory for me to make much sense of. I needed more filtered news. Sure, it's way cool and still kind of mind-blowing that I can sit at my desk in Berkeley, Calif., and listen to police officers in Boston warn each other about suspicious packages that might contain explosive devices, but it wasn't helping me understand what was happening.

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The New York Times reports:

Both brothers have substantial presence on social media. On Vkontakte, Russia’s most popular social media platform, the younger brother, Dzhokhar, describes his worldview as “Islam” and, asked to identify “the main thing in life,” answers “career and money.” He lists a series of affinity groups relating to Chechnya, and lists a verse from the Koran, “Do good, because Allah loves those who do good.”

The older brother left a record on YouTube of his favorite clips, which included Russian rap videos, as well as testimonial from a young ethnic Russian man titled “How I accepted Islam and became a Shiite,” a clip titled “Seven Steps to Successful Prayer.”

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Case in point:

[embedtweet id="321427245522616320"]

The two have launched an informal campaign to get verified on their son's site, reports BetaBeat.

Even the Mayor of St. Louis (who has a verified account), where the Dorseys live, has joined the cause:

[embedtweet id="321439687522787329"]

[embedtweet id="321441006975320064"]

Verification on Twitter is designated by a blue and white check mark next to a user's name, and "is currently used to establish authenticity of identities on Twitter", according to the Twitter FAQs.

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Colbert then created a Twitter account for Clinton with the handle PrezBillyJeff, and the two constructed his first tweet:

[embedtweet id="320644561439436800"]

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There's no mystery as to why Facebook would want to launch a Facebook phone. Facebook claims around 650 million mobile users and Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly totally focused on adapting Facebook to the mobile environment. The more Facebook can dominate your mobile experience, the more revenue-generating ads it can deliver to you. The future of Facebook is inextricably enmeshed with the future of the smartphone, so why wouldn't the company want to have one of its own?

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The stampede began, as anything Facebook-related does, with George Takei. The actor and social media icon posted the HRC logo earlier this week, with a note explaining that, "For those friends wondering, this special 'red' equality symbol signifies that marriage equality really is all about love. Thanks to the Human Rights Campaign for this effort. Please consider changing your profile today in support -- esp if you are a straight ally."

And what Mr. Sulu says, goes. Throughout Tuesday, Takei also posted a few comical variations on the avatar theme, including my inevitable favorite, the one featuring Grumpy Cat. By the end of the day Facebook had all but turned red, with plain equal signs, glittery equal signs and ones tweaked to feature such legendary couples as Bert and Ernie and Peppermint Patty and Marcie. The always enthusiastic drinking community even got in on the act, with both Smirnoff and Absolut updating their FB avatars to reflect their own twists on equality.

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The massive online community whiplashed between public-relations extremes in 2012, from a presidential visit to a series of high-profile controversies that culminated with the outing and shaming of one its most notorious users. The social news site became an Internet behemoth, leading and beating the news, and directing jaw-dropping traffic to any site lucky enough to get a link on its front page. By the end of 2012, about 50 million people were visiting the site every month.

For every admirable deed, redditors had an equal or greater negative action. They helped raise nearly a million dollars to support a bullied bus monitor in upstate New York, even as others were gleefully sharing sexually suggestive photos of women taken without their permission.

What has Reddit learned from the highs and lows of the past year? According to cofounder Alexis Ohanian and general manager Erik Martin, in the realm of Reddit, the best way to keep moving forward is to keep your hands off the steering wheel.

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The London-based ad team at Lean Mean Fighting Machine has introduced an "artificial intelligence experiment" called LivesOn. A program that will let Twitter users, well, live on through their account.

In order to distill information about your tastes, interests and "voice," the program analyzes your tweets while you're still alive. But once LivesOn learns enough about your social media style, it will begin posting updates independently to your new feed. Your followers can "favorite" the tweets that they like, providing even more informational feedback to the Twitter bot, helping it sound even more like "you."

Then, after you have tweeted your last and taken off for that big Google Hangout in the sky, your account's "executor" will decide whether or not to keep it active. Really, the tag line says it all: "When your heart stops beating, you'll keep tweeting."

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A case in point: With the Twitter masses already on edge after several hours of jokes about eating disorders, domestic abuse and boobs, MacFarlane pissed off an entirely new swath of Oscar-watchers when he said, "Well, we have finally reached the point in the ceremony where either Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz or Salma Hayek comes onstage and we have no idea what they're saying -- but we don't care because they're so attractive."

My primary objection to this joke was that it was lame. If you're going to play the meta-commentary game you need to do better than that. If I made my own personal list of most offensive MacFarlane Oscar moments, I'm not sure it would crack the top 10. But a cross-section of Hispanics I follow on Twitter immediately labeled the "joke" borderline racist, and an angry mob well-primed to seize upon further outrages speedily retweeted their comments. For the rest of the night, "Latina accent joke" joined the litany of MacFarlane's assaults against his audience.

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It's true that we physicians don't like it when patients show up late. So had Dunbar uttered this among her colleagues, those comments would not have raised many eyebrows. But her words traveled a lot further than the doctor’s lounge. Dunbar, it turns out, made them on her Facebook page, leading to some deep criticism for her lack of respect, and even calls that she be fired.

A recent survey of over 4,000 physicians showed that 67 percent use social media in a professional capacity. Many write blogs or use Twitter to broadcast their insights and opinion to a wider audience. Others have posted videos on YouTube. They are leveraging the strengths of social media: a fast, free and open channel of communication that is easy to use. But as Dunbar’s gaffe shows, many doctors are still trying to figure social media out.

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Abunimah gives some background on the image from Ostrovski's now-deleted Instagram account:

The context – particularly the character of the buildings seen in the background of the image – strongly suggests the child could be Palestinian.

There are no other images to suggest that the photographer actually fired at the person in the image in this case. The image is simply tasteless and dehumanizing. It embodies the idea that Palestinian children are targets.

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I have received numerous invitations to join you in a relationship, and I figured it was time to respond to your advances."

So begins "Girls" star Allison Williams' cringe-inducing (breakup? rejection?) letter to Twitter, the social media outlet of choice for Lena Dunham. Williams continues:

Before you jump to conclusions, it's not that I'm seeing somebody else. I barely talk to Facebook anymore (we only ever speak when I need to expedite the name game after meeting a new person), too many friends have been with Instagram or Tumblr, and LinkedIn can ask until he's blue in the face ... not my type.

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As reported by Didi Kirsten Tatlow at the New York Times, Lee made history this weekend after a Beijing court granted her divorce on the grounds of abuse and issued a three-month protection order against her ex-husband, a first in the nation’s capital.

“It’s a very important case. All of society was paying attention,” Guo Jianmei, a lawyer, told the Times. “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

And although censorship remains widespread in China, Lee's court victory is also a testament to the growing power of social media to share information and avoid direct control by government censors. After Lee posted photos and an account of her experience of domestic violence on Sina Weibo, a microblogging service similar to Twitter, it quickly went viral

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Porn? On the Internet? Who would have thought.

And rather than flying under the radar, this spicy new content came to very public attention this morning when an explicit clip (it was tagged #dildoplay, let's leave it at that) made its way onto Vine's "Editor's Picks" list. That means users who opened the application were automatically greeted with some very NSFW content.

Vine quickly issued an apology, but it may still be in hot water with Apple.

Vine is currently iOS-only, and Apple is notorious for its prudish policies around adult content, having recently banned a popular photo sharing application because of nude photos, even after the app's creator offered a fix to filter explicit images. Apple balked, claiming the content still violated its user guidelines.

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But, as the New York Times reported Tuesday, "in a series of recent rulings and advisories, labor regulators have declared many such blanket restrictions illegal. The National Labor Relations Board says workers have a right to discuss work conditions freely and without fear of retribution, whether the discussion takes place at the office or on Facebook."

The Times noted that the NLRB will enforce an end to restrictive online speech policies and will ensure companies rehire workers fired for social media comments. However, as Josh Eidelson noted last year for Slate when a number of cases brought the issue of social media comments to the NLRB's attention, the issue is not over whether an individual worker can be fired for critical comments on social media, but whether a group of workers collectively discussing their company can be protected from retribution:

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