This weekend, people on Twitter got yet another reminder not to believe what you read on Twitter without confirming with an outside source.

Nelson Mandela has become the latest victim of a celebrity death hoax on Twitter, with the network abuzz with the false information that the former South African president had died in his sleep.

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Not all tweets are created equal.

Celebrities are often paid up to six figures to send a single sponsored message. The Huffington Post put together a breakdown of how much exactly 18 different celebrities get paid to tweet.

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Hey, Twitter: might want to look into this one.

Two fake Twitter accounts for former Gossip Girl star Blake Lively have each garnered tens of thousands of fans – perhaps thanks to the fact that each of them have a much-coveted verification check mark.

But, uh – both are fake, photoshopped into the account’s cover photo.

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Internet Week NY is in full swing, and one of the most packed events so far was Joan Rivers’ keynote yesterday afternoon.

The mother of irreverent comedy was interviewed by Shira Lazar, the cofounder of What’s Trending, for a conversation about the Internet’s impact on comedy.

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If you want to be mean to someone anonymously, there are lots of ways to do this online, but few provide assurances that your target will actually see what you’ve said about them. So you risk wasting that nasty little witticism . . . unless the person is on Twitter, that is.

One can be fairly certain an @mention will be seen on Twitter – and appropriately sting (just like a passive-agressive blog comment)!

And yes, even when you’re tweeting to celebrities, they see them. Well, THESE celebrities do, at least.

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Have you seen Iron Man 3 yet?

It opened in North America on May 3. But Robert Downey Jr. fans in China got to see the blockbuster film starting May 1.

Indeed, Hollywood has been making a major play for the Chinese market. According to a recent report by the Motion Picture Association of America, China is now the second-largest box office market in the world. Not only that – last year, more than half of the country’s box office profit was from foreign (read: American) films.

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Singer Demi Lovato’s millions of fans flocked to Twitter yesterday to declare their love for her – or, more specifically, her latest tracks.

The singer’s fourth studio album, Demi, isn’t set to drop until May 14.

But the singer challenged fans to unlock each song early online by tweeting its title as a hashtag, releasing each single on her website LovaticsSpeedUpTime.com after a certain amount of crowd-sourced excitement.

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Apparently all you need to do to get verified on Twitter is be Warren Buffet.

The influential Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway joined Twitter yesterday afternoon, sent out a single tweet, and already has the coveted blue check mark next to his Twitter handle.

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Did you follow @michaeljordan before Twitter suspended the account in March 2010?

What about @KimJongNumberUn? Or @Bristol_Palin, before the account holder was forced to rename herself to Palin Fan Number 1? @WillyFerrel? @NotTinaFey?

The Shorty Awards, the Oscars of social media, has released an infographic using data from Unmetric to compare celebrities’ authentic Twitter account with their (sometimes hundreds of) fake accounts.

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In an interview with the Seattle Times, iconic American author Joyce Carol Oates had much to say about Twitter.

Despite her advanced age and her line of work – publishing books – Oates is a prolific tweeter with almost 34,000 followers.

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