Audio: Compared to Iran, Twitter was not especially useful in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. Joshua Keating of Foreign Policy and Andy Carvin of NPR’s social media desk discuss why some tools prove useful in crisis situations and not in others.

Four quick links to with information about how and where non-profits and NGO’s are using social media and what their return on investment is.

Getting our ideas into the public sphere isn’t much of a problem. Start a blog and start typing. But how do we make them take hold in the collective imagination and develop a life of their own.

Five easy pieces… or some of what I read in the news today.

Can using social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Blogging help save the Ugandan mountain gorilla? With less than 800 in the world, there’s not much time to find out.