Kevin: The UK National Union of Journalists general secretary Jeremy Dear suggested at the Oxford Media Conference that content aggregators should be subject to levies. Laura Oliver of Journalism.co.uk reports: "Dear said the union is opposed to state aid for local media and the relaxation of local media regulation rules, but would consider introducing a levy for those who ‘do not produce content, but live off the back of those who do’."

I collect media stories here on Strange Attractor. Would I be subject to such a levy?

Kevin: Daniel X. O'Neil of Everyblock.com says: "Today President Obama issued two eloquent orders with the following subject lines: "Freedom of Information Act" and "Transparency and Open Government". Published on the first full day of his presidency, they constitute a sweeping manifesto about how he wants to govern at the Federal level. Those leading municipal government in this country– mayors, commissioners, and department heads– would do well to read closely. Change is coming."

Kevin: Some explosive allegations that the US National Security Agency spied on journalists.

Kevin: Stunning visualisation of Twitter activity around Barack Obama's inauguration.

Kevin: A PR social media expert at Ketchum makes unflattering remarks about the Memphis, key hub for large client FedEx, on Twitter. The company gets slapped.

Kevin: A very interesting look at some of the social media elements in Barack Obama's campaign. Lots of good figures showing the difference in use and also of uptake by Obama and McCain supporters. I do believe that Obama's outreach helped ensure that his young supporters went to the polls. And in North Carolina and Indiana, voters under 30 were decisive in the result.

Kevin: H/T to my Guardian colleague Jack Schofield, who says: "Would like to see some UK examples of twitmapping.)" Some really interesting trends in this map showing network of Twitters in US Congress. There are more Republicans than Democrats, which is surprising seeing the attention that Obama and the Dems got for their digital efforts in the last election.

Kevin: h/t to markemedia on Delicious. "Twitter is becoming an important source of Internet traffic for many sites, and the amount of traffic it sends to other websites has increased 30-fold over the last 12 months. Almost 10% of Twitter’s downstream traffic goes to News and Media websites, and BBC News is currently the seventh most popular site visited after Twitter. A further 17.6% of traffic goes to entertainment websites, while 14.6% goes to social networks, 6.6% to blogs and 4.5% to online retailers. As a source of traffic Twitter is still in its infancy, but it is becoming more important every day. A number of news sites, blogs, and video and picture websites already rely on Twitter for a significant amount of their traffic."