Yesterday Pinglio founder Patrick Bisch noticed some changes to his Twitter timeline that no one else did.

What appears to be a currently silent, very tiny and/or slow rollout of new features sees the Twitter timeline—which has famously remained simple and true to its roots, unlike Facebook—get some subtle enhancements. First, the reply and retweet icons have been moved from the bottom of tweets to the top. This seems pointles at first but it's actually to pave way for Open, a new feature that allows you to expand tweets to obtain more information.

For example, if the tweet links to a photo or video, you can "open" the tweet within Twitter (that is, you do not open a new window or tab or load a new page). The tweet box expands to reveal the media. It can also reveal threaded conversations (this should come in handy for many) and other activities like who retweeted something.

Pat briefs us on the changes he observed in a short YouTube video.

While bloggers claimed one victory from the Supreme Court of Canada last week as hyperlinking was deemed to not be libel, they may face yet another hurdle in the coming months led by the fallout from the Rupert Murdoch phone hacking scandal and the Quebec Federation of Journalists.

Serious questions were being raised at Thursday night's Canadian Journalism Foundation event about whether or not regulation is needed across a field that includes journalists, reporters, bloggers, or whatever one may be. Simply put, the Internet has made it possible for many to rise above traditional reporters and journalists, and not more so in the age of Twitter. 

It's not the first time the question has been raised, but never has the Internet played such a massive role in media.

With lots of talk about HootSuite being swallowed up by Facebook, the social media upstart made news this morning with an acquisition of their own. HootSuite has acquired fellow Vancouver startup Geotoko.

Geotoko is HootSuite's fifth acquistion following What the Trend, Twapper Keeper, TwitterBar and Swift App.

Geotoko is a geo-aggregation tool which gathers audience information from check-in tools like Facebook Places and Foursquare. The addition of this tool within the HootSuite dashboard will round-out the existing geo-capabilities and help brick and mortar businesses with multiple locations to understand the nuances of their audience based on location, sentiment and demographic. Then savvy companies can outreach with specific offers, promotions and adjustments to campaigns.

In May 2010, Founder Adarsh Pallian launched Geotoko at TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield and earlier this year Pallian (along with HootSuite's Ryan Holmes) was named to Techvibes Digital Media People to Watch in BC list for 2011.

Pallian has had some success building on Twitter in the past - in 2009 Howard Lindzon's StockTwits purchased Pallian's Chart.ly for an undisclosed amount.

A new report has revealed that in settling a lawsuit, Twitter has finally gained control over the trademark of the word "tweet."

Once a sound reserved for describing the utterances of our feathered friends, "tweeting" has become ubiquitous thanks to the tremendous rise of social microblogging platform Twitter.