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A ruling by a US judge requiring news outlets to seek out permission before they can use a Twitter picture is expected to make waves in the online world, especially for news agencies and journalists.

According to the court, Agence France-Press (AFP) infringed the copyright of photojournalist Daniel Morel when it used pictures of the 2010 Haiti earthquake taken and tweeted by him and then distributed them without permission through Getty Images, Inc. The Washington Post also violated Morel’s copyright when it did not secure due permission before using photos from Getty.

Although AFP claimed that Morel’s photos can be freely used once posted on Twitter, District Judge Alison Nathan disagreed. She pointed out that the site’s Terms of Service (ToS) require news firms to obtain permission before they can use tweeted pictures. Nonetheless, Nathan ruled that re-tweeting of photos could be done freely.

Notably, Twitter’s ToS protects all users’ copyrights, especially those of photographers. In fact, a section in the Terms of Service contains instructions on how users can report a copyright violation.

The trial started in 2010 when AFP sued to get a ruling that it is legally allowed to disseminate tweeted pictures after Morel first accused them of violating his copyright. Morel then filed a countersuit against Getty, AFP and the Washington Post.

Initially, Morel asked for “tens or hundreds of millions of dollars” arguing that each illegal reproduction constituted an infringement. However, Judge Nathan noted that the AFP is only liable once for each violation, not every individual copy of the photos.

A recent trend has emerged in social media wherein teenage girls take photos posted by their peers on social networks and mock them, making unkind comments about their choice of clothing and general appearance. This new type of “teen shaming” is growing in popularity and many teens are suffering from hurt feelings as a result.

Across social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook, pages such as “Hey Girls, Did You Know?” feature silly pictures with rude captions that have been imitated by other girls.

17-year-old Alley Guscott told ABC News that girls post their own pictures and then other females repost the photos to make fun of the original poster. According to experts, this behaviour is categorised as a new form of cyber bullying and they target certain teens who are well aware of the derision.

Dr. Logan Levkoff, a sexuality educator, feels that teenagers will continue to use technology to ridicule others anonymously unless parents intervene. To prevent this, the teens’ parents and friends should monitor their activity and tell them that it is harmful to make fun of others.

This form of teen shaming also reveals the insecurities of the perpetrators, according to 16-year-old Sarah Mays: “It’s likely that those teens are presently dealing with their own insecurities, that’s why they deride others,” she said.

Interestingly, although this new form of cyber teasing is still prevalent, countermeasures have also emerged. For example, instead of ridiculing the photos, some teens post messages of support, telling others that they are beautiful and should ignore those who say otherwise.

Some days are better than others. When you’re feeling down, just being able to tell somebody how you feel can go a long way toward feeling better. Understandably, Facebook status updates have become an outlet to make many users feel more upbeat and connected.

With this in mind, a research study by the University of Berlin monitored the Facebook posts of 100 students from the University of Arizona for a week. Specifically, it asked the student volunteers to perform two actions. First, the students were instructed to post updates on Facebook more often than they normally would. After that, they answered questionnaires evaluating their mental well-being. In contrast, a control group was instructed to maintain the number of posts they usually make in a week.

The result was that students who posted more Facebook updates maintained their level of cheerfulness or depression throughout the week, just like the control group. However, the control group felt lonelier than the students who posted more updates.

Interestingly, even if no one paid attention to the posts, the students felt more connected to their online clique. This means frequent posting reduces a respondent’s sense of alienation, regardless of the amount of social media interaction that transpired during the week.

Explaining the findings, the researchers wrote in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science that frequent posting might help offset the lack of actual social interaction during certain periods. “Similar to a snack temporarily reducing hunger until the next meal, social snacking may help tolerate the lack of ‘real’ social interaction for a certain amount of time,” added the research team.

Who said age is a prerequisite to make a change? He may be a young school boy, but Nadav Ossendryver has saved a rhino, spoken at tech conferences, won many awards and established a huge online community.

The 16-year old founded Latest Sightings, a crowd-sourcing portal that gives real-time info on animal sightings at South Africa’s largest game reserve, Kruger National Park The site was set up in November 2011 and enables tourists to share the location of animals they have recently sighted. As a result, spotting wild animals living at the park such as elephants, leopards, cheetahs and lions had significantly increased.

“Wow! Three lioness and nine cubs. Thank you very much for this wonderful website,” commented a user of Latest Sightings.

The idea for the portal started after Nadav’s many visits to Kruger National Park, a wildlife reserve spanning more than 7,500 square miles. Nadav explained that each time his family visited the park, he would beg his parents to stop every motorist they passed by and ask them what they’d seen.

However, after a while, his parents became irritated, so he came up with an easier way for tourists to share their animal sightings. When Nadav returned to Johannesburg, he created a wildlife-tracking iPhone application. Notably, this app doesn’t share rhino sightings to prevent poaching.

Now, Nadav’s website and iPhone app have more than 33,000 users. Interestingly, they have also attracted lots of fans from across the world. Thanks to Latest Sightings, Nadav had spoken to Google executives and has been invited to speak at major technology events in Africa such as the Tech4Africa conference.

More offline opportunities abound if you spend less time on Facebook and Twitter, noted a blog post at Forbes, urging people to quit using social media. Author J. Maureen Henderson cited three key reasons people should quit these networks even though they’re prevalent in everyday life.

First, although evidence that social media causes anxiety is primarily anecdotal, a UK research study revealed that frequenting social media sites leads to lower self-esteem. Specifically, more than 50 per cent of the study’s respondents said that lower self-esteem is caused by comparing themselves to peers on social media.

The solution to this is to go offline because you won’t be affected by the achievements of your former classmates or relatives studying at prestigious schools such as Harvard or The Massachusetts Institute of Technology if you didn’t know about them. In addition, you won’t have the urge to stalk your ex on Facebook or Twitter, which is a great way to end an unhealthy habit.

Second, using social media could increase your blood pressure, as bad behaviour is prevalent among these sites. These behaviours include cyberbullying, bragging and even criminals planning to steal your credit card info or hack your computer. You might want to consider taking a break if you can’t pull the plug entirely.

Finally, the important things in life happen offline. Nearly 25 per cent of Americans said they’ve missed out on vital real-life moments in their bid to capture and memorialize them for social media.

Some internet users are obsessed with their social media presence and others are not, but many people find it handy to have an analytical overview of their online presence.

If you’re one of these people, the Infomatic application is for you. Developed by Saturized, this app consolidates Twitter and Facebook statistics into a beautiful and concise presentation on your iPhone.

For example, it displays your activity on Twitter over the last seven days, prominently showing the total number of tweets and followers. For the site, it features tabs labelled as Overview, Followers, Following, Media and Activity that provide detailed information.

For Facebook users, you can view the overall number of photos they’ve uploaded or been tagged in, as well as posts and friends. Tabs with detailed info include Activity, Videos, Photos, Friends, Comments and Posts.

Infomatic is available for just US$1.99. To get it working, you must first enter your Twitter and Facebook account information. The app also utilises native iOS Facebook and Twitter integration, so it’s easy to use even for users with many Twitter usernames.

However, there is no way to input accounts manually, which means users will have to set them up with Apple’s operating system (OS) first. Another downside is that Infomatic can only accommodate one social media account at a given time. Therefore, info from all your FB and Twitter accounts cannot be consolidated into a single presentation.

Nonetheless, data is refreshed each day and it provides a comprehensive snapshot of your social media activities for the past week.