Obama's phantom presence

Nearly two-thirds of Obama's Twitter followers are either fake or inactive.

How do we know that? By using an app developed by Status People. It's called "Fakers App," and more than 150,000 people have already used it to find out what their follower quality is.

Status People also have developed a Fakers Dashboard you can use – for a nominal fee – that tells you how many of your Twitter followers and those of five other Twitter account holders are fake, inactive or good. For example, my Twitter account @RadioPatriot shows that 2 percent of my followers are fake, 12 percent are inactive, and 86 percent are good.

So I ran a test on Obama's Twitter handle, @BarackObama. The result? Of his 20,014,187 followers, 32 percent are fake, 40 percent are inactive and only 28 percent are good.

So who's really reading Obama's tweets? His base? His campaign war room worker bees?

Go ahead and plug your Twitter handle into this handy app. Once you do, it'll automatically save your details and update your account.

Related: Confessions of a man who sells fake Follower accounts.

Downloading your tweets?

Speaking of tweets, think about how many of yours contain valuable information, like links to news stories, interests and much more. Have you ever wanted to keep a downloaded archive of your tweets? You might soon be able to, according to Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, who spoke about it at the Online News Association conference, when he said he'd like to see the feature "before the end of the year," given their engineers' capacity.

Here's a fun and interesting way to keep up with the international social networking scene on all kinds of topics.

Best journalistic practices according to social network?

Given that journalism's best practices seem to have gone by the wayside, at least where the legacy or "mainstream" media's concerned, it is somewhat interesting to note that at least one new media social networking giant has taken it upon itself to lay out a new set of standards, albeit with an emphasis on maximizing Twitter's usefulness.

Mark Luckie, Twitter's Creative Content Manager for Journalism & News (@marksluckie), spelled it out on Twitter's official blogsite last week.

"We've created a set of best practices for journalists and newsrooms that can help you increase follower growth and engagement on Twitter, based on extensive research by our Platform and Analytics teams," Luckie wrote.

More than 150 reporters and news brands were analyzed by Twitter's team to determine specific areas of focus, including source citing and the use of the # symbol or "hashtag" that gives context to tweets.

The Twitter team's recommendations also apply to non-journalists, tweeters who just want to up their follower numbers:

First, tweet regularly about the subjects you cover. If you post a concentrated number of tweets in a short time span, you'll increase your follower growth by 50 percent more than average. Live tweeting or posting updates about a news event related to your beat grows followers and increases interaction.

Tweets preceded by the # hashtag followed by the keyword related to the tweet can increase engagement almost 100 percent for individuals and 50 percent for brands. Journalists and news publishers use hashtags to organize conversations, gather feedback and to identify and engage with Twitter users discussing a particular topic.

As an example, Luckie showed how Fox News (@FoxNews) and @CBSChicago use hashtags to identify Tweet subjects.

Next, cite your sources. When tweeting about or to a Twitter user (either individual or brand), include their Twitter handle (the @ sign, followed by the username). It will grow your number of followers by 17 percent. Make sure to include a URL address.

Retweet to organize content for your followers. For example, The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) has a high rate of Twitter engagement because she shares interesting content she has come across.

Find more handy tips at bit.ly/TwitterForNews and by following@TwitterForNews.

Related: What's in the missing two minutes of the Romney tape? The question spawned the creation of the hashtag #missing2min on Twitter. Here are some humorous suggestions on what might be contained in the missing two minutes.

Facebook adds features

Facebook has announced it has added searches to the Activity Log, a feature it will roll out over the next few weeks. This will allow you to see your Facebook search activity and if you so desire, to delete it. Also coming up in the next few weeks, Karma, Facebook's newly acquired social gifting app maker will enable Facebook to launch a social gifting service.

Related: Facebook will delete all the facial recognition data it collected from European users and will switch off the feature in Europe by Oct. 15.

Facebook to start charging.

Iran preparing own Internet

As rumors of war continue to build in the Middle East, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Global Communications Studies say that Iran's government ministries, agencies and military outfits, universities and businesses sites have created their own isolated online network separate from the Internet.

TechCrunch's Anthony Ha wrote yesterday that Iran is now blocking Google.

"The Iranian government also announced, via state television, that it will be blocking accessing to Google and Gmail within 'a few hours,'" Ha wrote. "The Iranian Students' News Agency says this is in response to the anti-Islamic 'Innocence of Muslims Video' that was posted (and then blocked) on YouTube. I've emailed Google for more information and will update if I hear back."

According to a report published in The Washington Post, Iran's government, in an effort to defend itself against cyberattacks like the Stuxnet worm and limit influence from the West, is believed to "have laid the technical foundations for a national online network that would be detached from the Internet and permit tighter control over the flow of information."

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