Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett doesn’t like what some Twitter users are tweeting about him.

In fact, the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office has sent a subpoena that threatens Twitter officials with arrest unless they identify two users that criticize Tom Corbett and his public corruption investigations.

The subpoena demands that Twitter’s custodian of records release “any and all subscriber information” for the accounts bfbarbie and CasablancaPA, including name, address, contact information, creation date, and IP address for the two users.

The two users have been critical of Corbett’s use of grand juries and suggest that he uses investigations for political gain and to go after political adversaries.

Neither user seems phased, as they are still tweeting against the AG and even wearing the subpoena as a badge of honor.

A Twitter representative was summoned to appear before a state grand jury on May 14 to “give evidence regarding alleged violations of the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

However, the vague court document does not specifics about what crime(s) are being investigated.

The subpoena was issued on May 6 and states that failure to appear could result in an arrest warrant being issued for contempt of court.

It is not known whether or not Twitter has released the requested information to the court.

Vic Walczak of the American Civil Liberties Union stated that the subpoena “raises grave concerns about abuse of the grand jury process to retaliate against political critics and opponents.”

Walczak further stated that US citizens “have a right to criticize government officials and to do so anonymously.”

Last week Corbett won the Republican primary to run for governor of Pennsylvania. He claims that he doesn’t have any problem with people criticizing him on Twitter.

However, he would not discuss the subpoena, saying the investigation stops him from discussing the issue publicly.

[ Source: WHTM.com ]

Mining tweets on Twitter can be as reliable as conducting lengthy, labor-intensive public opinion polls.

A recent study from Carnegie Mellon found that sampling and analyzing Twitter tweets for data is as good as conducting an opinion poll in some cases.

According to the Twitter study, computer analysis of opinions expressed in a billion Twitter tweets during the period 2008-2009 found that measures of both consumer confidence and presidential job approval mirrored those published in public opinion polls.

Researcher Noah Smith believes the results show that analyzing the words found in streams of tweets could someday become an economical and fast way to measure public opinion on some issues.

However, he cautioned that data mining tools used to analyze public opinions on social networks are too new to know what extent they can be relied on for measuring public sentiment.

Smith noted that approximately 7 million Twitter tweets are posted every day, which could allow data mining pollsters to measure public opinion very quickly.

[ Source: India Times ]

Guess what the most common words used in tweets on the Twitter social network are…. Give up?

Oxford University Press ran a study of 1.5 million Twitter tweets and found that four of the most commonly used words on the buzzing social network are:

- “Cool”
- “Awesome”
- “Wow”
- “Yay”

Proving that the more times change, the more they stay the same.

We now eagerly await the study that shows what percentage of tweets that use one or more of those four words are sincere in their expressions.

[ Source: America's Tweethearts ]

Twitter is adding to their geolocation technology through their purchase of Mixer Labs.

Mixer Labs’ GeoAPI is a tool that helps developers create geolocation-specific applications for the Twitter messaging service.

The technology will allow Twitter users to identify the location where a tweet was posted from.

The GeoAPI tool can track the location of tweets on Twitter. Location software that uses the GeoAPI could allow people to receive Twitter messages based on location-specific tweets.

Adding location-based data to tweets could help with issues like tracking friends or locating businesses.

Last month Twitter launched a geotagging tool for their social network.

[ Source: Business Week ]

In what could be another new low for self-centered and obsessive social networking, CNN is reporting that a mother in Florida was busy on Twitter while her 2 year old son was helplessly drowning in the family’s backyard pool.

Then, within minutes of discovering her son’s death, the social networking mother was back on Twitter posting tweets like this one: “Please Pray my son fell in the pool.”

Shelley Ross, was tweeting away when she should have been keeping her attention on the whereabouts of her 2 year old son.

Evidently, parenting and tweeting don’t mix.

[ Video: CNN ]