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Twitter's Election Day 2012 event page is live

There's no shortage of places to catch up on the latest Election Day coverage, but Twitter is aiming to make it easier for political junkies to get news by creating a one-stop shop Election 2012 event page.

Curated by Twitter, the page is loaded with tweets from the presidential candidates, political parties, and news sources such as the Electoral College, CNN, and the Washington Post.

"It highlights tweets from candidates and their staffers, media, and other key players so you can hear directly from those close to the action," Rachael Horwitz, Twitter's senior manager of communications, … Read more

Facebook pushes you to vote

Monday's CNET Update has the power:

The CNET New York office has reopened, and it's great to be back to give you today's tech news roundup:

- Apple sold 3 million iPads in the three days since new models went on sale. That number includes the sales of two models: the iPad Mini fourth-generation iPad. But the bulk of the sales are estimated to be for the smaller tablet.

- Tuesday is election day in the U.S., so prepare to be bombarded with voting reminders and peer pressure on social media. Facebook is making a big push … Read more

Instagram CEO: Twitter's photo filters don't scare me

SAN FRANCISCO -- Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said he has no problem with Twitter adding filters -- something Facebook-owned Instagram is known for -- to its photos.

"I don't think that in anyway threatens Instagram because Instagram is a community and not a filter app," Systrom said at the GigaOm's Road Map conference in San Francisco.

It's been reported that Twitter is planning to launch a filters feature in the coming months.

Systrom said adding filters to photos is now ubiquitous with photo sharing and photo apps, so Twitter jumping on the bandwagon is not … Read more

New Twitter policy notes copyright take-down requests

If Twitter receives a complaint that a tweet has breached copyright, the site will now transparently display a notice explaining why the tweet was pulled instead of just yanking the infringing tweet.

A policy shift will now see infringing tweets replaced with a warning, such as: "This Tweet from [username] has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder," along with a link to Twitter's copyright policy and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Other Twitter users will also be made aware that the tweet was withdrawn and can reply to the withdrawn tweet notice … Read more

Report: Twitter taking on Instagram with its own photo filters

Twitter appears poised to take on Instagram directly by offering sets of photo filters through its mobile apps, according to a report in The New York Times.

The Times reported that "in the coming months, Twitter plans to update its mobile applications to introduce filters for photos that will allow people to share altered images on Twitter and bypass Instagram."

If true, this would potentially be a very big move for Twitter, because it could keep people taking photos on smartphones from using the Facebook-owned Instagram altogether. Whether or not Twitter could create as passionate a community around … Read more

Twitter: Over 20M tweets sent about Hurricane Sandy

More than 20 million tweets were sent about Hurricane Sandy between Saturday and yesterday, according to Twitter, and the site says that's probably a conservative estimate as it only tracked certain keywords.

The site, which followed the terms and hash tags for "Sandy" and "hurricane," also said it saw a peak at about 9 p.m. Monday in the number of times users in New York accessed their home timeline from a mobile device. That coincides with the approximate time much of the city lost power.

Also Monday, search queries related to Sandy peaked at … Read more

Pew: Social media as a political tool on the rise

Check out your Facebook news feed and see opinion, links to news articles, and dialogue all concerning the presidential election and campaign. Twitter? There's more than enough there to to keep you occupied.

And it seems like it may be a phenomenon that is here to stay.

A recent research report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that "the use of social media is becoming a feature of political and civic engagement for many Americans." Sixty percent 2,253 U.S. adults surveyed use social-networking sites including Facebook and Twitter, and of these users, … Read more

Twitter launches tool to gauge interest in political tweets

Twitter today unveiled a Political Engagement Map, a tool that lets anyone see where people are tweeting most about specific political issues.

"We've built a visualization that illustrates people's reaction to and engagement by state to tweets from @MittRomney and @BarackObama," Miguel Rios of Twitter's analytics team wrote in a blog post. "While the Twitter Political Index analyzes Tweets about the candidates, [we've] also been studying how citizens interact with tweets from the candidates. We... want to see what insights you can glean from Twitter data, so this visualization is fully interactive." … Read more

What Lady Gaga is seeing on Twitter, right now

It's always been easy on Twitter to see someone else's @-replies, simply by doing a search for say, "@LadyGaga."

But what if you wanted to see more than that? What if you wanted to pretend you were the global pop superstar and fashion icon and peek into her Twitter feed to see what all the people she follows were saying?

Until now, there's been no easy way to do that directly through any of Twitter's official apps -- although it's a simple thing to do in a client like TweetDeck. But with the … Read more