Internet, Blogs | featured news

A mystery blogger who appears to have close access to the daily activities of China's new leader may be the leader himself, say China watchers. The blog "Study Xi Fans Group" has posted pictures of Communist Party Secretary General Xi Jinping's trip to northwest China along with detailed updates about his busy schedule.

Thomson Reuters said its blogging platform for Reuters News was hacked, resulting in multiple false posts to its website, including a fake interview with a Syrian rebel army leader.

The design of Tumblr, the blogging tool and social network, is guided by feeling. In particular, the feelings of David Karp, the company’s 26-year-old founder, whose instincts tend to run counter to current Web conventions. Tumblr does not display “follower” counts, for example, or other numerical markers of popularity that are viewed as crucial social-media features, because Karp finds them “really gross.” The culture of public friend-and-follow reciprocity that theoretically expands a social networking service can, in his view, “really poison a whole community.”

With new food, revamped decor and an embrace of Twitter and mommy blogs, McDonald’s has returned from the brink of a public-relations nightmare.

That was the headline on a conservative blog following a $2.5 million judgment this month against blogger Crystal Cox in a defamation case tried in federal court in Oregon. It’s a case followed closely in both the blogosphere and in the traditional media, as it highlights the proliferation of blogging, the blurring of lines between journalists and bloggers and more libel cases born out of blog posts.

Disney is buying Babble Media, whose website carries news for parents and blogs written by moms and dads, in a deal that could further blur the line between advertising and blogs.

Michael Arrington is leaving TechCrunch, the technology blog he founded in 2005 and sold to AOL for $30 million, for a recently formed venture fund, amid drama over his position at the company.

What's a blogger to do when his blog is in turmoil? Well, blog about it, of course. Or, in the case of TechCrunch's MG Siegler, maybe "rant" is the more operative verb. On Tuesday morning, the powerful, frothy-mouthed tech blog's No. 2 man went off the digital rails, bemoaning a website that's "on the precipice" and "may be over" as we, the People of the Internet, know it.

A Canadian man who blogged about his battle with cancer has died, but not without leaving a post-mortem message. "Here it is. I'm dead," read the last internet post of Derek Miller, who died last week after more than four years of blogging about his struggle with colorectal cancer.

Police in Taiwan investigate a self-proclaimed prophet whose doomsday warnings on a blog have caused panic.