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Google’s Speak2tweet to help those in Egypt Google have been thinking of what they could do to help people in Egypt as their internet access is restricted. They came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection- no internet necessary. Working with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company they acquired last week, they built this system that allows anyone to post a tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. New Facebook Page creation Flow Facebook have rolled out a streamlined Page creation process to help businesses, brands, and

Welcome to this week’s social media news with a selection of some of the weird and wonderful news from around the web.

Rupert Murdoch’s ipad newspaper took a hit this week with a forecast that launching newspaper iPad apps will not be as popular as predicted. The latest research from Knowledge Networks shows that, despite the mammoth sales of iPad with more than 17 million sold last year,  a mere 13% of iPad users are likely to download an app for a magazine or paper they already pay for – and that out of a current average of 24 apps per user, only six involve payment. Will his paper ‛The Daily“ be able to thrive in this environment? British engineers are planning to put a mobile phone in space. Astronauts tweet from space, Nasa releases their own foursquare badge, and now

Welcome to the first Social Media news update of 2011! The Wikileaks saga continues… The US government has demanded personal details of people connected to Julian Assange on Twitter. Twitter has been one of the main forums where supporters and opponents of the whistle-blowing site have debated the issues, which resulted in them being dragged into the affair. If US authorities have the power to demand confidential of overseas users, this could damage the image of Twitter’s role as a forum for free expression. Reports indicate that the Department of Justice may seek to indict him on charges of conspiring to steal documents with Private First Class Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst who is facing up to 52 years in prisonSkype launches video app for iPhone Only 6 months after

1. Wikileaks

The big story over the last two week has been Wikileaks which has just kept on rolling out thousands of leaked US classified documents. This has been a trending topic worldwide since the story first came out at the end of November. Searches for the keyword ‘wikileaks’ peaked when the story first broke on both Google and Twitter (see graphs below for Google Insights and Trendistic, a keyword tool for Twitter). Interest is on a steady decline but still at the back of people’s minds. Like to know more about Wikileaks? Check out Andy’s blog explaining the website and its popularity. 2. The Great Twitter Secret Santa The Great Twitter Secret Santa pairs you up with another Twitter user you’re following or who follow you to be his or her Secret Santa. To participate,