The Israeli government is expanding its existing social media publicity program, which aims to counter anti-Israel and anti-Semitic messages on social media and traditional media, by hiring college students to serve as social media foot soldiers, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Unfortunately the world has seemed especially disaster-prone in recent years, including earthquakes in China and Haiti, the combined earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan, and Hurricane Sandy and Midwestern tornadoes here in the U.S. While there's obviously not much we mere human beings can do to prevent nature from wreaking havoc, technology can help mitigate the impact and aid recovery after disaster strikes -- and social media plays a big role here.

Over the last couple years the Department of Defense has adopted social media to facilitate communication within the U.S. military, with sites modeled loosely on civilian equivalents like milBook (Facebook and LinkedIn), milWiki (Wikipedia), and milTube (YouTube). Now there's a new addition to the suite of military social media, with a Twitter-style platform called milWire, which allows military users to follow each other, aggregate news, and subscribe to feeds about specific topics.

Determining return on investment and measurement are still the top issues facing marketers, according to a new report from Forrester titled "Integrate Social Into Your Marketing RaDaR." Forrester analyst Nate Elliott was blunt summarizing the problem: "The sobering reality is that nearly a decade into the era of social media, more social marketers are failing than succeeding."

While social media sites may not be legally liable for cyber-bullying that occurs on their networks, they are still responsible for it, according to British Prime Minister David Cameron, who urged parents and teenagers to boycott social media sites that allow bullying to go unchecked.

Social media provides an exciting new way for CEOs to ignore things they don't understand, according to a new study by CEO.com, which found that just 32% of Fortune 500 bosses have any sort of social media presence at all. Apparently the other 68% are crouching fearfully in the C suite, suspiciously poking a 90's vintage desktop and wondering how to summon the fire magic told of in lore.

Facebook emerged from the primordial, hormonal ooze that is the college social scene, so it's not surprising that institutions of higher education are producing new species of social networks, including a bunch of enterprise networks dedicated to specific schools.

One of the best testimonies to social media's revolutionary potential in recent years has been the number of authoritarian regimes that have tried to ban it, fearing its utility for sharing information, organizing protests, and generally spreading dissent. Most recently, two fairly unpleasant governments -- in Vietnam and Zambia -- have introduced bans on social media news sharing.

OMG dude! Do you think that social media might, like, create norms and expectations that subtly guide our actions, even influencing us to engage in self-destructive activity? But wait, dude: isn't that just another way of saying humans are social animals who take their cues from their peers? (Vomits)

State legislators in Louisiana have expanded the ban on texting while driving to include accessing social media behind the wheel. The law, signed by Governor Bobby Jindal on May 30 and taking effect today, prohibits drivers from using "any web-based service that allows individuals to construct a profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and communicate with other members of the site," with a fine of up to $175 for the first offense and up to $500 for subsequent offenses.