China’s bloggers are a focus of organizers of the President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit, echoing similar efforts by the administration to use social-media tools to communicate with Americans.

On Thursday, U.S. State Department officials held simultaneous press briefings for a select group of predominantly Chinese bloggers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, giving a rundown of the U.S. president’s China schedule and took questions from the bloggers.

The attendee list included many influential bloggers, such as journalist Michael Anti, who blogs about freedom of the press, and Rao Jin, whose Anti-CNN Web site scrutinizes China coverage by the news network and other foreign media.

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As news of the Fort Hood shooting rampage spread last week, media outlets and readers both put Twitter and its new lists feature to the test.

Just as the service was instrumental in providing updates during the summer’s election protests in Iran, Twitter feeds from Texas-based news sources such as the Austin-American Statesman and the Killeen Daily Herald provided a stream of local updates.

The Statesman’s feed amassed more than 3,000 followers by the end of the day Thursday, and soon larger news outlets such as Huffington Post, CNN and the New York Times (NYT) had tapped into it and other sources by using Twitter Lists, which lets users create groups of other Twitter accounts that others can view and follow.

“Lists proved a new way to follow breaking news on Twitter, with filtered groupings of local news outlets, military accounts, and local citizens,” Craig Kanalley wrote on Poynter’s E-Media blog.

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Time Warner’s (TWX) CNN unveiled its new Web site Thursday evening in a presentation that was part Hollywood and part Apple (AAPL).

All week long, the network had been touting the event, dubbed “The Unveiling.” Top CNN executives and invited reporters packed a corporate screening room on the 10th floor of the Time Warner Center as KC Estenson, CNN.com’s general manager, took the stage. He looked like somewhat like Steve Jobs in a dark sweater, jeans and wireless microphone.

“It is a revolution for us,” Mr. Estenson said, as he flashed the first glimpse of the new CNN.com, which goes live on Monday. “This is a really special event.”

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Will Comcast (CMSCA) use its rising cash pile to make a large acquisition in the content business?

Reuters raised that question in a lengthy news analysis yesterday which wondered if the company is plotting a giant deal along the lines of its failed $54 billion bid for Disney (DIS) in 2004. The story says speculation on the Street has the company potentially targeting Viacom (VIA), or even Time Warner (TWX). (A combination with Time Warner–which would give the company control of key cable properties like HBO and CNN – would be truly weird, given that Time Warner only months ago spun off Time Warner Cable as an independent company.)

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Has Sarah Palin rejoined the Twittering masses after nearly three weeks of silence? According to CNN, she’s back, picking up the name “SarahPalinUSA.”

The former Alaska governor stopped using her previous account, AKGovSarahPalin, on July 26, her last day in office. Her farewell tweet: “Last state twitter. Thank you Alaska! I love you. God bless Alaska. God bless the U.S.A.”

That account is still up, where she has more than 135,000 followers. She hasn’t posted any updates under her new name, though it already has some 2,500 followers.

It’s not clear how CNN verified that the new account is legitimate, and Ms. Palin has been a frequent target of online impersonators.

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Everyone’s coverage of the uprising in Iran has been Twitter-centric, for obvious reasons. But CNN, in an apparent attempt to look like they have real, non-Twitter newsgathering capabilities, has been regurgitating Twitter posts and attributing them to unnamed “sources.”

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Just before ending his news conference Tuesday, President Obama called on CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux for one last question.

MALVEAUX: Back to Iran, putting a human face on this. Over the weekend, we saw a shocking video of this woman, Neda, who had been shot in the chest and bled to death. Have you seen this video?”

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As the Iranian election aftermath unfolded in Tehran–thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to express their anger at perceived electoral irregularities–an unexpected hashtag began to explode through the Twitterverse: “CNNFail.”

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Every day, with everything they do, the key question for journalists and news organizations in these tight–that is, more efficient–times must be: Are you adding value? And if you’re not, why are you doing whatever you’re doing?

Sitting in a hotel room, cruising by CNN the other day, I caught a behind-the-scenes segment that wanted to show us just how cool it is to be a reporter dashing from story to story.

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Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) shut like a book.

Domino’s Pizza Inc. (DPZ) was late but eventually delivered.

And CNN focused on the good news.

When the three major brands engaged with their Web-savvy fans and critics in separate incidents last week, their responses demonstrated how corporations are still learning how to control their messages–and reputations–in a fast-twitch online world.

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As Ashton Kutcher becomes the first to collect 1 million followers on Twitter and Oprah Winfrey sends out her first tweet, tech observers are debating: Does Friday mark a new peak for the microblogging service? Or the beginning of its demise?

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You can’t get more meta than a site that micro-blogs trends in micro-blogging. But we’re through the looking glass anyway, so here goes: Tinker.com, part of the distinguished Glam Media Network, is live streaming the Twitter race to a million followers between Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and CNN (@cnnbrk).

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The Twitter microblogging service has received an absurd quantity of press in the mainstream media lately. Everybody has been talking about it, from CNN, which has built entire shows around it, to “The View,” where each host tries to out do the others in how clueless she is about Twitter. And now, the inevitable “Twitter backlash” has begun. What does it all mean?

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Who knew Dick Cheney was an e-book reader?

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” the former vice president said that he owns an Amazon (AMZN) Kindle and used it to read James McPherson’s “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.” He said he also uses a BlackBerry, made by Research In Motion (RIMM), to keep up with the news now that he’s no longer in office.

Mr. Cheney follows in the footsteps of an increasingly wired crew of politicians. President Barack Obama fought to hang on to his BlackBerry before his inauguration, stoking speculation that he might have received a National Security Agency-approved device. Congressmen might as well declare themselves dinosaurs if they don’t create their own YouTube channels and Twitter constantly.

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