The priceless treasures of Syria’s history – of Crusader castles, ancient mosques and churches, Roman mosaics, the renowned "Dead Cities" of …

 

Damascus, Syria, Aug 3, 2012 / 05:06 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church encouraged Syria's Eastern Catholics to offer prayers for peace during their church's traditional August 1–14 fasting period in honor of the Virgin Mary. During the run-up to the August 15 feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God (known in the West as the Assumption), Melkite Catholics will be “praying especially for the safety of all Syrians and for the cessation of the violence,” Patriarch Gregorios III said in a letter marking the two-week fast.

“We pray too during this period for the return of charity, friendship, fellowship and compassion among all citizens,” wrote the patriarch, whose headquarters are located in the Syrian capital Damascus. He called for liturgical services to be supplemented with “special litanies for peace and reconciliation,” and for the faithful “to participate in these services, with fasting, prayer and repentance.” Syrians, he said, “ are still capable of loving and forgiving each other, being reconciled and showing tolerance to one another … United together, they can rebuild what has been destroyed and work for development and prosperity, for a better future for all citizens.”

The patriarch's prayer is for “a renewed, free, secure, conciliatory Syria, in which citizens regardless of group, party, religion or affiliation can enjoy freedom, dignity, employment and education.”

Here are our top 10 Twitter stories of the week.

 

1. Twitter Cuts Off Instagram: Is This Sour Grapes Or Will We Soon Face A Difficult Choice?

Are you fond of connecting with Twitter followers on Instagram? Well, unless you already synced up your accounts and followed everyone you wanted to, you’re out of luck. Twitter no longer allows Instagram to access its API and pull in “friends from Twitter.” The move does not bode well for apps seeking frictionless sharing with the platform in the future.

2. The Psychology Of Social Networking [INFOGRAPHIC]

With 90 percent of U.S. internet users having signed up for at least one social network, and one out of every eight people on the planet active on Facebook, social media has come a long, long way in a very brief period of time. Indeed, one in every five minutes online is now spent using these social channels, a figure that has more than doubled since 2007. In each and every minute, we generate some 694,980 Facebook status updates and write 532,080 tweets. And 80 percent of those posts are about our favourite person – ourselves.

3. On Twitter, Men Are Retweeted Far More Than Women (And You’re Probably Sexist, Too)

Social media is dominated by women, and Twitter is no exception, but it appears that when it comes to sharinginformation on our favourite micro-blogging network, men are far more likely to be retweeted than women. Yep, that’s right. Twitter has a gender bias. And there’s every chance that you have one, too.

4. The Current State Of Social Networks 2012 [INFOGRAPHIC]

Did you know that Twitter is the social network with the strongest growth rate in 2012, ahead of LinkedIn, Pinterest and Reddit? Facebook? That didn’t even make the cut. Still, when you’re closing in fast on one billion users, your annual growth rate does tend to slow down a smidgen. Still, don’t shed a tear for Mark Zuckerberg – save those for the owners of Digg, Bebo, Friendster and, of course, MySpace, who are the four social networks most in decline, reminding us that success in this space can be both dramatic and fleeting.

5. 10 Helpful Twitter Lists for Social Media Marketers

Twitter lists allow users to categorize their followers into different segmented lists based on a particular subject or theme. For instance, Twitter users can create a list of their friends or favorite brands to follow. Lists can also be made private or public; if they’re public then other Twitter users can subscribe to the list and see the tweets of members included on that list without having to follow each individual member of that list. This presents an opportunity to follow curated lists of experts on a variety of subjects.

 

People all around the world are going crazy on Facebook for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Thanks to the wide availability of data, we can see just how crazy. Olympics fans can play games, use applications to gain more information about their favorite athletes, like an Olympian’s Facebook page, or simply mention them in a status update. So what have been the most popular apps and who have been the most popular athletes so far?

 

Athletes’ Facebook pages

The most popular athlete on Facebook isn’t even competing in London. English footballer David Beckham has more than 20 million Facebook fans, but he was not chosen by Great Britain to play on his home pitch. Oddly enough, Beckham has never competed in the Olympics. Statistics from AlchemySocial, an Experian company, show that American basketball star Kobe Bryant is the most popular athlete on Facebook who is actually playing