How long will Facebook continue as the predominant social network? Has Twitter reached its peak or will it become a mainstream tool used by more than just the political and media elite? How long will our social media addiction last? Will social media have a net positive or negative effect on journalism in the long term? Will the benefits of promoting content and helping to engage with readers outweigh the costs of social media taking a larger share of ad revenue and replacing some of the roles of newspapers?

UPDATE: It appears the advert linked to above has been removed. Obviously the company did not value it going viral.

An example of how the 'Contributors' feature could look with a tweet authored by Twitter founder Biz Stone. Image: Twitter

Twitter has announced that it is testing a new feature that will allow newspapers to add bylines to tweets. The feature called 'Contributors' is currently in beta testing. Tweets from the accounts of organisations will include bylines naming the individuals who wrote them bringing a more personal touch to feeds. Twitter say that the bylines will mean users know more about the real people behind organisations.

One of team developing the new feature wrote on the Twitter blog: "It enables users to engage in more authentic conversations with businesses by allowing those organizations to manage multiple contributors to their account. The feature appends the contributor's username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal."

The feature will bring more links between individual journalists and readers. Some news organisations have built up large amounts of followers to their Twitter feeds, but is has mostly only been star columnists that have attracted large-scale followings to individual journalist feeds.

'Contributors' is being tested with a limited amount of users before a full launch.