All three started as one thing and became something else entirely as people used digital tools to add their own interpretations and comments and then spread their work around the Web.

Is public political discourse any different in the new age of social media? Survey says: Yes. Negative tweets about the GOP hopefuls outnumbered positive tweets by at least 2 to 1, according to a new report.

A New Jersey teacher posted comments on Facebook against a gay history exhibit at her school. Another teacher could lose her job for a post in which she called her students future criminals. Incidents like this around the country spark heated debates over privacy and free speech.

Facebook has developed new privacy features and agreed to 20 years of independent audits of its privacy practices. Google and Twitter previously settled similar cases with the Federal Trade Commission. Farhad Manjoo argues that Facebook, or any social network, can never be truly private.

One word soared because of historic events. The other rose because of Charlie Sheen. Other words or phrases that were used a lot include "Japan," "rad on Osama bin Laden" and "McLobster."

Sometimes a topic that seems hot, like Occupy Wall Street, doesn't appear on trending lists, leading some activists to accuse Twitter of censorship. But the secret algorithmic formula prefers stories of the moment to enduring hashtags, so it ignores topics that are popular over a long period of time.

Teens aren't the rampant texters that we've been led to believe. In fact, they're pretty darned modest. That's the news from a survey of middle and high schoolers. Just 1 percent of teenagers said they had created or appeared in sexually explicit videos or photos that were shared.