It appears that micro-blogging service Twitter has removed the option to delete a “tweet” once it’s been published, making the service a haven for digital litter–the trail of information about you or things you’ve said that perhaps you shouldn’t leave lying around the Web.

Publish a status update on Twitter slamming your boss–at 2 a.m. in the morning after a night out at the pub–only to regret doing so seconds after hitting the “update” button, then you could be out of luck. As of yesterday (?) the trash can icon that used to reside next to Twitter updates has been removed.

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One of the delightful things about creating a new Web application or service is the way in which end users find unintended ways of utilizing said service. That’s a common story we hear from those who’ve created cutting-edge and disruptive products on the Web and something that has become an aspiration of Web start-ups.

An example that springs to mind is the way in which early adopters of Twitter made use of the @ sign, and how Twitter recognized this to evolve to become more than a micro-blogging system into a communications platform.

But Facebook is different. Arrogant even.

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“You’re fat!” screams the ad. But in an online world of supposedly hyper-targeted advertising it’s hard not to take offense. And offense the Washington Post’s Rachel Beckman takes.

In a rather fun article, Beckman describes her own experience of Facebook’s ad platform. The site’s “proverbial brain” knows a little more about us than most Web properties, and certainly traditional media such as television and newspapers. In particular, Beckman has declared her age and marital status.

When Beckman told the so-called social utility that she was engaged, she was targeted with weight-loss ads, specifically “learn how you can shrink your waist.” Another offending ad asked: “Do you want to be a fat bride?”

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I’m not sure whether to call this data portability or just making it easier for social-networking services to spam a user’s contacts. But either way, Microsoft has announced partnerships with LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo and Facebook, to enable Windows Live Messenger users to look for contacts on either of the five social-networking sites and vice versa.

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