Are Any Members Of Congress Still On Myspace?

Its garish colors and pop-up jingles have finally driven nearly all of the US Congress from MySpace. Unfortunately, they've left behind a lot of their constituents.

Plenty has changed since the spring of 2007, when MySpace was seen as a potentially invaluable tool for politicians. A close look at all 100 senators' social media efforts shows that only 39 of them have profiles on the Murdoch-owned social network; of those 39, only 11 have signed in since the summer. A less rigorous look at the House supports this trend. It's one thing for a blogger, a media outlet or an advocacy organization to flee a social network for greener pastures, but aren't Congress members using social media for slightly different reasons?

IE 6 Is Almost Dead, But Not Quite

Internet Explorer 6 is the bane of web developers existence.  The browser doesn’t support web standards that have become common the last few years, and making sites work in IE 6 adds significant time to the web development process.  Despite the release of IE 7 in 2005 and IE 8 in 2009, a full 10% of users still use IE 6.  In other words, it is still too big of a group to ignore.

Pingdom Says People Are Tweeting 27 Million Times a Day

Twitter may be having trouble finding new users in the U.S., but its existing users in the U.S. seem to be putting out a majority of the Tweets, which are now averaging 27.3 million a day. According to data provided to us by Pingdom, the pattern of Tweets follows waking hours in the U.S. (see chart), even though comScore data suggests more than half of Twitter’s users are from outside the U.S.

While this data is only a snapshot of the Twitter activity in the three weeks between October 21 and November 11, it does show that the number of messages sent out over the service is approaching a massive scale. 

And...Harry Reid Goes Mobile with a healthcare petition.

Harry Reid is a Meme:

The gentleman from Nevada went from Senate Majority Leader to Twitter trending topic in a few seconds flat today. After Reid announced that he was fine with holding off on health reform legislation until after the Senate's August recess, the hashtag  #harryreid took off. And no, not in a good way. Congressional Democrats might have trouble getting their talking points together, but the Twitterverse is remarkably good at it. In no time at all, the mockery coalesced around a few themes: Reid lacks vision, kowtows to Republicans, and isn't particularly good at this legislative leadership thing.

HOW TO: Make Your Online Profile More Alluring:

There’s a fair chance you’ve received a “Worst-Case Scenario” handbook as a stocking stuffer at some point over the last decade. They offer offbeat, funny, and sadly often true advice on various subjects...

...In any event, the company that produces these – Chronicle Books – is getting hip to social media with its own blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, and videos. Their latest video tutorial features the brand’s typical irreverent advice on the subject of “how to make your online profile more alluring."

Twitter Unveils a Live-Updating Search Widget:

Twitter Search is great. Unfortunately, unlike FriendFeed’s search, it doesn’t update live in real-time. Sure, for some searches, that would be annoying. But it’d be nice to at least have the option to watch a stream of incoming tweets without having to hit the refresh button. And Twitter has just unveiled a way to do that, with a new widget.