'Will the Queen tweet?' and more on Twitter

Oprah does it. So does Martha. Now, Queen Elizabeth II can have her say on microblogging site Twitter.

Will followers of @BritishMonarchy get 140-character glimpses into what the British monarch's having for lunch? Or rants on delays for the royal plane? Not likely.

Unsurprisingly, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson has said that the account won't be used to air personal opinions. As the Guardian put it, "Those whose interests extend to links to galleries of the Queen meeting people, knighting people and so on will find it agreeable. Next."

The account has just over 2,000 followers as of this writing, but follows just three other users. One of them: Scottish tennis star Andy Murray.

Birth of the 'Twintern'

The Big Money has an interesting profile of 22 year-old Alexa Robinson, the first Twitter intern for Pizza Hut. The UNC-Chapel Hill grad spends most of her days sending out tweets about the restaurant chain's products and responding to customers on the microbblogging site. How's that for a sweet savory summer gig?

We've written before in this space about the impact a strong presence on Twitter can make for a company. But the Big Money article cautions companies who would follow Pizza Hut's lead, unleashing an inexperienced worker on Twitter without oversight.

How much trouble can 140 characters really stir up? A lot, it turns out. In London, a twittering intern for home-furnishings retailer Habitat got in big trouble last month after he sent out misleading tweets that included commonly searched words related to the protests in Iran. He added keywords—called "hashtags" in Twitterspeak—such as Iran and Mousavi to messages so that people who searched for information about the protests would see his employer's ads instead.

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