Putting your thoughts in 140 characters and sharing them with the world is shaping up to be more popular than “digging” your favorite news. According to new market share numbers from Hitwise, Twitter, the popular microblogging service, is now more popular than Digg’s social news aggregation service. Hitwise compared both sites in a report released Tuesday and is basing the market share ranking by page views.

Unfortunate events such as the Hudson River plane crash and also more fortunate ones like Obama’s Inauguration, led to more mainstream exposure for Twitter and moved it above one notch above Digg in Hitwise’s hierarchy – Twitter is now ranked at 84, with Digg at 85.

When the US Airways Flight crashed into the Hudson River late last week, the first reports of the incident appeared on Twitter, including amateur photographs that later made headlines around the world and transformed Janis Krums into a celebrity of the moment. Hitwise confirmed the fact that this event was one of the main factors of Twitter surpassing Digg in visits market share.

The Numbers

When Will Europe Be Ready to Chose a Leader Like Barack Obama?

As Barack Obama is sworn in as the first black president of the United States, Europeans wonder when — no make that if — they will ever see their own “Obama” in Europe.

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama waves to spectators as he leaves his hotel in…

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama waves to spectators as he leaves his hotel in Berlin July 25, 2008. As Barack Obama is sworn in as the first black president of the United States, Europeans wonder when — no make that if — they will ever see their own “Obama” in Europe.

(Markus Schreiber/AP Photo)
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Could a second-generation immigrant with roots in the black Third World be elected prime minister or president in Europe?

My American friends find it difficult to imagine an immigrant overcoming Europe’s white-dominated, slow and elitist political systems anytime soon.

“Does anyone really think that Britain would chose a second-generation Pakistani as its leader?” Yale professor and intellectual heavyweight Harold Bloom said.

“Would Germany choose a child of Turkish immigrants? Or France someone whose parents emigrated from Algeria?”

But European friends and intellectuals also seem more optimistic, even if most statistics say otherwise.

Raj, a teacher of postcolonial literature whose Indian parents moved to Great Britain in the 1960s, said he could envision a European Obama in the next 10 years. Particularly in Britain, which had a Jewish prime minister in the 19th century, and is perhaps seen as one of the better-integrated European countries.

ABC News: Is Europe Ready for a Barack Obama?.

Wikipedia plans to become as easy to use as blogs and social media sites in order to attract users and remain competitive. Wikia co-founder Angela Beesley reveals more.

Wikis could take a trick or two from Facebook and social media in order to draw more contributors in the new year, says co-founder of Wikia, Angela Beesley, one of the keynote speakers at the upcoming linux.conf.au. She shares her thoughts on wikia, wikis and wikipedia as well as their place in the enterprise with Computerworld.

What will your talk at linux.conf.au be about?

I will be talking about the future plans of both Wikipedia and its parent organisation, the Wikimedia Foundation.

Where are Wikia and Wikipedia heading?

Both Wikia and Wikipedia will be very focused on usability in 2009. The Wikimedia Foundation was recently awarded a grant of $890,000 by the Stanton Foundation to make Wikipedia’s editing interface easier to use.

Wikia has recently launched a rich text (or WYSIWYG) editor for MediaWiki, the software that both Wikia and Wikipedia use. This means that new users can instantly get involved with editing or creating new pages without needing to learn complex markup. At the same time, we have retained the option for editors to switch to the traditional editing interface.

Wikia has also introduced a new skin making the site easier to navigate, especially for new users, and we will be refining this over the coming year, ensuring that people know they can edit and we will be making it very easy to add new content.

How has Wikia created a viable business model around wikis?

Unlike other tools, a wiki is not owned by a single person, so the model of selling something to the customer doesn’t work here.

The sort of public community-based wikis that Wikia hosts rely very much on group ownership, and we think that providing hosting or premium services via one person who is paying could upset that by implying that the individual is responsible for the site which decreases the motivations of others to build and maintain it.

Instead, Wikia is focused on the advertising-model, where we display ads from a variety of networks and directly from companies. This frees the community from being reliant on the person who pays the bills, and allows all members to have an equal stake in the success of their wiki.

Wikipedia will soon be easier to use, says founder.