This week is dominated by Twitter news and news on Twitter. We also touch upon how Facebook is making it easier for small pages to get recognition and how Apple is making it easier for your face to get recognition. Lastly, we wanted to highlight a really great use of Google maps for a charity website.

We take a look at two new start ups, witness round two of Google and Facebook’s tussle for control of the web and round up how this half a year has impacted some of the biggest sites.

Twitters iOS integration, Google acquired Postrank, WaterAid holds 24 hour tweetathon and T-minus one week until Teri walks 100km!

Facebook nears the 700 million user mark, Twitter launches Follow button and adds extra email notifications, new donating platform Givey is launched and a quick look at mobile usage figures among social networks.

This week Ash pledges to grow a beard to help save a million gallons of water and Ben and Jerry’s are similarly resourceful and save your left-over Twitter characters. Crowd-sourcing (and new tools!) take the pain out of content generation. We look at Storify – a tweet capturing tool, Philanthroper – a Groupon for good and new Facebook Non-Profit Resources.

This week’s focus is on social search. Bing integrate Facebook into it’s search, and Facebook play dirty when Google try to do the same.

This week’s beautiful bytes looks at how the launch of JustTextGiving, Likester and Unity could impact the sector and looks at an innovative use of Groupon for clever crowdsourcing.

Social media have been around for years now, so it might be reasonable to assume that our attitudes to them, and the way they’re used, should be reaching some kind of maturity. But they still feel very much like the new kids on the block in the media mix and they still seem to be much misunderstood, not entirely trusted and certainly not proven in the eyes of many.

On 26 April, Andy Mabbett (@pigsonthewing) tweeted his idea for a new Twitter tool that would pull together associated hashtags in order of their relevance to each other. Rachel liked the idea, so re-tweeted his brainchild to her 6,000+ followers and it was spotted by @simonpainter.

This week we look at free agents and how social media enables them to inspire more people and generate more donations than ever before. We question whether Google should buy LinkedIn and reveal new tech acquisitions that will impact the sector. Finally we concede that Lady Gaga does some good to the world.

Twitter launched UK office, looks to buy Tweetdeck. Everything Everywhere waives text donation fees and Marks and Spencer rewards Foursquare check-ins with charity donations.

The old volume vs value debate is always ongoing and is as pertinent as ever with the arrival, and spread, of social media. But the way people communicate has changed, the tools we have are different, and so the debate has moved on…

Google encroaches on Facebook and Foursquare turf, pressure increases for Apple to allow in-app donations and getting buy-in for development of your online strategy

Swipegood makes donating even easier, Google updates offering to non-profits, check-in to Facebook events and Twitter may be soon to roll out brand pages

As her time at beautiful world draws to a close Lucy looks back on her eight weeks as an intern.

This week, Facebook ads to star your face, Twestival kicks off and Twitter celebrates its fifth birthday

We are marking Twitter’s game-changing micro-blogging service’s fifth birthday by highlighting five significant charity landmarks that have transpired in 140 characters

In those situations where a punchy encapsulation of your situation floods over you and you think “I’m going to tweet about that funny character on the bus/free coffee from random coffee chain” which Twitter client does your smartphone thumb instinctively reach for first? Is it Echofon? TweetDeck?

Getting people excited about donating money for an intangible, online product would be considered the pinnacle of skilful digital marketing for most charities. Becoming national water cooler fodder on top of that is a veritable Holy Grail.