WebProNews

Tag: tweets

  • NPR’s Scott Simon Is Live-Tweeting His Mom’s Final Days, and It’s Heartbreakingly Beautiful

    NPR’s Scott Simon is currently doing something that some may call inappropriate, and others may call brave. Whatever the case, it’s inarguably fascinating, and at times heartbreaking.

    Simon is currently live-tweeting what seem to be his mother’s final days as she lies in an ICU bed. Between tweets praising the ICU nursing staff, lamenting missed opportunities, and doling out incredible insight, Simon is doing something that I’ve never seen done on Twitter. He’s making it feel more human that it’s ever felt before.

    Of course, it’s Simon and his mother than are the real human elements here. Twitter is just a medium – a delivery system for everything Simon is saying. But I tell you guys, it’s powerful. It’s not inappropriate, it’s not in bad taste, and it’s not outside the purview of “what Twitter is for.”

    This is precisely what social media was made to do.

    From the heart-wrenching:

    To the funny:

    And the beautiful:

    This is truly something. It’s making waves on Twitter, as it should:

    Enough of me talking. Go follow @nprscottsimon right now.

  • George Zimmerman’s Acquittal Sparked 4 Times As Many Angry Tweets As Supportive Ones

    If you were on Twitter during the aftermath of the George Zimmerman not guilty verdict, you probably noticed that the majority of tweets referencing the trial did not support the decision. Hashtags like #justicefortrayvon and #nojustice spread quickly, as many users expressed shock, outrage, and sadness.

    Pew Research has crunched the numbers and used statistical patterns to identify the breakdown of Twitter sentiment following the trial’s conclusion – and it looks like your eyes did not deceive you. There were many more tweets expressing anger over the verdict than tweets expressing support.

    It wasn’t even close, really. Pew says that 31% of the nearly 5 million tweets sent out in the 26 hours following the verdict expressed “anger.” Only 7% expressed support for it. So, by a more the 4:1 margin, Twitter did not agree with the six-woman jury’s decision.

    That means that you likely saw more of this:

    And less of this:

    According to Pew, the majority of tweets (39%) were simply broadcasting the decision – with no bias. 11% of the tweets discussed, in some way, the media’s coverage of the trial.

    Also, the verdict sparked a massive surge in tweets that equaled the number of tweets made during the entire duration of the trial:

    “The level of Twitter engagement in the case spiked dramatically after the verdict. The nearly 5 million tweets (4.9 million) in the first 26 hours after the verdict virtually equaled the total volume of tweets (5.1 million) about the case posted during the entirety of the 33-day trial. By way of comparison, there were 4.7 million tweets alone on July 14 in contrast with an average of about 151,000 tweets each day during the trial,” says Pew.

    It’s clear that if Twitter sentiment decided the case, Zimmerman would not be a free man today.

  • Twitter Tests Showing Articles Where Popular Tweets Are Embedded

    Twitter appears to be testing a new feature that will provide users with a way to view popular tweets in better context by pointing them in the direction of articles where those tweets have been embedded.

    The new “embedded on these websites” feature, only being seen by some users, appears just below the tweet and links to sites where the tweet has been embedded. It’s as simple as that. For instance, check out this tweet from the White House that had been used in articles from CNN, ABC News, and more:

    Twitter first launched embeddable tweets back in December of 2011. But this is the first time that tweets have contained information on where they are embedded across the web.

    This is an interesting feature, one that will hopefully help users find more information and context on individual tweets. For websites, this could be a new way to send Twitter users to their way. Let’s say a tweet catches your eye, but you don’t really understand its significance of simply wish to learn more about why it may be important. You look down and see that the tweet was featured in a NYT article. And there you go – context.

    [Mikko Hypponen via The Verge]

  • Twitter Turns Tweets into Crazy Elevation Maps

    Twitter has just unveiled an awesome new data visualization. The premise is simple – they took billions of geotagged tweets and turned them into an elevation map. But the execution is beautiful.

    Right now, there are three cities available to explore: San Francisco, New York City, and Istanbul. There are also eight different styles of elevation maps that you can use to view the data: Heat, Fill, Watermark, Clear, Contour, Terrain, Grid, and Dark.

    “The mountain ranges you see here are not natural geography but the landscape of Tweets — billions of them, visualized across cities. The peaks represent the places most Tweets are sent from, the troughs the fewest. Explore New York closely and you can pick out the Brooklyn and the Queensboro bridge — even the Staten Island ferry,” says Twitter.

    Every map is interactive, and can be toggled from low to high quality and elevation. Check it out here.

    This isn’t the first time that Twitter has created a stunning visualization with geotagged tweets. Do yourself a favor and check those out too.

  • Netflix Uploads Videos Of Ron Howard Narrating Tweets Arrested Development-Style

    Ron Howard has been narrating tweets in Arrested Development style, and the Arrested Development Twitter account has been sharing Vines of them for a while. Today, Netflix uploaded a bunch of them to YouTube:

  • Twitter Loses French Appeal, Told to Give Up Anti-Semitic Users

    Twitter has lost its latest appeal in a racist tweet controversy that’s persisted for nearly 8 months. According to a French court, following French law is not optional for U.S.-based Twitter, and they will be compelled to turn over the identities of users deemed in violation of French anti-discrimination laws.

    It’s a long story, but here’s the quick version. Back in October of 2012, a hashtag emerged on Twitter that many users found gravely offensive. The hashtag, #unbonjuif, roughly translates to “a good jew” in English. The hashtag was used to make anti-Semitic jokes – like posting a photo of a dustpan alongside the hashtag. Soon, a few French anti-racism groups spearhead by the French Jewish Students Union (UEJF) demanded that Twitter remove the offending tweets. After enough pressure mounted as to become unbearable, Twitter finally caved.

    But the tweet removal didn’t satisfy the UEJF. They then demanded that Twitter disclose the identities of the anti-Semitic users so that they could ace prosecution under local anti-discrimination laws. Twitter drew the line there, and it led to a lawsuit.

    In January, a French court ordered Twitter to provide the identities of the users. Twitter said that they would review the decision, and proceeded to appeal.

    Back in March, the UEJF sued Twitter for $50 million for witholding the identities of the anti-Semitic users.

    And that brings us up to date. Now, a French court has rejected Twitter’s appeal.

    “We have made ​​significant progress with Twitter since December. Associations that fight against discrimination can intervene to stop the avalanche of hate speech that regularly pour [out] on the Internet. But illegal [messages] posted on Twitter remain no less illegal, and the application of French law is not [optional],”, said a government spokesperson. “Twitter must execute court decisions to allow identification, and thus the conviction of the perpetrators of these heinous tweets ”

    The UEJF applauded the court’s decision.

    “The French Justice confirms that Twitter is ultimately responsible for racist and anti-Semitic content posted by users, as the UEJF argued for months. That Twitter can no longer play with the French justice was extremely clear. Our goal is to put a halt to the feeling of impunity for racist and anti-Semitic authors on the Internet. Twitter must cooperate when this is the case,” said the group’s president, Jonathan Hayoun.

    “We are disappointed that the Court has decided not to hear our appeal,” said Twitter in a statement. “We are considering our options, including resubmitting the appeal.”

  • Twitter’s New Geotagged Tweet Visualizations Are Incredible

    Twitter’s Visual Insights team has gone and done something awesome. They’ve created some maps of a bunch of major cities, countries, and continents using geotagged tweets – using only geotagged tweets.

    Everything you see in the maps below are tweets – every dot is a tweet and the color of the dot is the tweet count. Twitter says that these maps make use of every single geotagged tweet since 2009 (billions and billions of tweets).

    What you’ll notice is that you can totally recognize these cities and other areas of the world based solely on boundaries created by tweets.

    Look at Europe, for instance:

    Here are some more:

    New York City

    Moscow

    Tokyo

    There are a bunch more over on Twitter’s Flickr page. I’ve intentionally failed to disclose the identity of the location mapped out in the lead image. I’ll let you see if you can figure it out.

  • Twitter Finally Launches Two-Step Verification

    After a series of high-profile hacks and calls from the user base, Twitter has finally unveiled their form of two-step verification.

    “Every day, a growing number of people log in to Twitter. Usually these login attempts come from the genuine account owners, but we occasionally hear from people whose accounts have been compromised by email phishing schemes or a breach of password data elsewhere on the web. Today we’re introducing a new security feature to better protect your Twitter account: login verification,” says Twitter.

    It works similar to other two-step verification systems you may be familiar with (Google, for instance). Once you enable login verification, the next time you attempt to log in you’ll also need to enter a code that Twitter will send to your mobile device. So, it’s your password + mobile code. Two steps.

    All you have to do to enable it is visit your account settings page.

    Twitter says that you existing applications you’ve enabled via Twitter login should be unaffected:

    “With login verification enabled, your existing applications will continue to work without disruption. If you need to sign in to your Twitter account on other devices or apps, visit your applications page to generate a temporary password to log in and authorize that application.”

    Of course, two-factor authentication won’t solve all of your security problems, and it’s not foolproof. But it’s a much-needed buffer between you and everyone out there eyeing your account with malicious intent.

  • Bieber May Sue Guests for Tweeting About Party Happenings

    If you ever happen to get an invite to one of Justin Bieber’s house parties (you won’t, but you can keep on reading), just make sure you don’t tweet about it or post any photos to Instagram. If you do, Bieber reserves the right to sue the absolute hell out of you.

    TMZ obtained a copy of a waiver that guests must sign upon admittance to his Calabasas, California home.

    There, in plain writing, it reads that “”under no circumstances will you divulge the details of you entering and being on the Property or engaging in the Activities by any means or through any media whatsoever, including without limitation, through photographs, video, blogging, texting, ‘Tweeting’ or posting any such information on any social media site.”

    The waiver also forbids guests from discussing “all information concerning [Bieber and company’s] business and personal activities, including, without limitation, their legal and financial affairs, physical health, or the philosophical, spiritual or other views or characteristics.”

    The document stipulates damages of up to $5 million for violation of the terms.

    TMZ notes that this is hardly news in the celebrity community – other celebs also make guests sign these types of waivers.

    (image)

  • Darius Rucker: Racist Tweet Gets Response ‘So The World Can See It’

    In the last few years, former Hootie & the Blowfish singer Darius Rucker has been refashioning himself as a country music artist. And a recent performance and the surprising reaction on Twitter led Rucker to express disbelief at the racism happening in the year 2013.

    One Twitter user took issue with Rucker recently covering the Bob Dylan-inspired Old Crow Medicine Show hit “Wagon Wheel” at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

    “Leave the country to white folk,” said user @pqkullman.

    “WOW is this 2013 or 1913,” tweeted Rucker. “I’ll take my Grand Ole Opry membership and leave your racism. Wow.”.

    He was then asked why he responds to racists on Twitter:

    Since Sunday, Rucker has had to battle even more pointed racist tweets. Like this one, for instance:

  • Yahoo/Twitter Partnership Brings Tweets to the Yahoo Newsfeed

    Attention Yahoo users: you’re about to see a big change to the homepage newsfeed – tweets.

    Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced the new partnership today in a post on the Yahoo blog. “Tweets have become an important information source for many of our users, so we are thrilled to announce our partnership with Twitter to bring Tweets directly into the Yahoo! newsfeed,” saus Mayer.

    Look above. Notice anything different about the Yahoo newsfeed? I know, it looks the same – but look closer. Direct your attention to the third item on the main feed. Yes, there it is – at tweet from ABC World News, complete with a timestamp, link, and a follow button.

    “As users explore our nearly endless stream of content, we will seamlessly include relevant and personalized Tweets alongside stories from Yahoo! and our other sources. With this greater breadth of compelling content, we’re excited to give our users even more opportunities to learn and connect. Users now also have an easy way to discover relevant and interesting people and publishers to follow on Twitter, personalized to their interests and preferences,” says Mayer.

    Relevant and personalized – so that seems to indicate that users that are signed-in to Twitter will enjoy a more robust experience with the new integration. The types of tweets that will fill Yahoo’s newsfeed will come from all types of newsworthy areas including sports, entertainment, music, and more.

    Mayer says that the Twitter integration will rollout to U.S. desktop and mobile users in the next few days. No mention on the terms of the deal, however.

    Speaking of partnerships between Twitter and search companies (I know, but Yahoo is still primarily a search company), Google and Twitter had a famous falling out back in the summer of 2011. Thanks to an inability to reach an agreement Google’s realtime search, which leveraged tweets, got the ax. Google talked about it’s imminent return shortly after the failed deal, but nearly two years later Twitter and Google are still on the outs.

  • Nick Offerman Is Back Reading Mindless Celeb Tweets

    One of the funniest minutes on late night is back for its 9th installment, and we couldn’t be happier. Ladies and gentlemen, I present Nick Offerman from Parks and Recreations reading tweets from young female celebrities.

    In this episode, TV’s Ron Swanson reads tweets from such starlets as Katy Perry, Miranda Cosgrove, and Jennette McCurdy.

    If you’re interested, there’s a lot more where that came from.

    [TeamCoco]

  • ‘Geography of Hate’ Project Shows Racist, Homophobic Tweet Concentrations Across the U.S.

    If you’ve spent any time at all on Twitter, you know that it can be a great place for a variety of things – real-time news, celeb-watching, comedy, and the list goes on and on. But you also know that Twitter is full of the kind of homophobic and racist language that can make you physically recoil. Now, a group of researchers have developed an interactive map of all the hate speech that Americans are pumping out on a daily basis.

    The map was created by geography students at California’s Humboldt State University, the same group of people who brought us the post-election Twitter racism map back in November. Back then, they looked at racist tweets the focused on President Obama’s reelection and found that Mississippi and Alabama were the two hotbeds for such activity.

    “Rather than focusing just on hate directed towards a single individual at a single point in time, we wanted to analyze a broader swath of discriminatory speech in social media, including the usage of racist, homophobic and ableist slurs,” say the researchers.

    For instance, here’s the map of generally “homophobic” tweets, which are determined by the use of words like “dyke,” “fag,” “homo,” and “queer.”

    And here’s the map of racist tweets – those containing the words “nigger,” “chink,” “wetback,” “gook,” or “spick”:

    Of course, analysis like this is never going to be 100% accurate. Keyword analysis has inherent issues. For instance, the word “queer” is not always used in a derogatory, hate-filled manner. People could be tweeting out the word “fag” in another context, such as bemoaning its usage.

    On the other hand, it’s hard to justify many used of words like “wetback” on Twitter. Sure, it’s not completely solid analysis, but it’s pretty close. You have to to imagine that the majority of people tweeting about fags, dykes, niggers, and chinks are doing so in a hateful manner.

    But to completely cut out this sort of uncertainty, the researchers manually read and coded each tweets to judge the sentiment, “in order to address one of the earlier criticisms of our map of racism directed at Obama.” This way, they could know, for sure, whether a tweet that contained the word “queer” was actually posted in a hateful context.

    Using DOLLY to search for all geotagged tweets in North America between June 2012 and April 2013, we discovered 41,306 tweets containing the word ‘nigger’, 95,123 referenced ‘homo’, among other terms. In order to address one of the earlier criticisms of our map of racism directed at Obama, students at Humboldt State manually read and coded the sentiment of each tweet to determine if the given word was used in a positive, negative or neutral manner. This allowed us to avoid using any algorithmic sentiment analysis or natural language processing, as many algorithms would have simply classified a tweet as ‘negative’ when the word was used in a neutral or positive way. For example the phrase ‘dyke’, while often negative when referring to an individual person, was also used in positive ways (e.g. “dykes on bikes #SFPride”). The students were able to discern which were negative, neutral, or positive. Only those tweets used in an explicitly negative way are included in the map.

    You can check out the full interactive map here, where you can zoom in to see specific concentrations of twitter hate speech.

    [Floating Sheep via MIT Technology Review]

  • Twitter Two-Step Verification Finally on the Horizon [REPORT]

    Following Tuesday’s hack of the AP’s Twitter account that temporarily tanked the stock market and showed just how powerful a false tweet can be, Twitter is looking to slowly roll out two-step verification to some users.

    According to Wired, Twitter has such a system currently undergoing internal testing, and they will soon begin to roll it out “incrementally.”

    Two-step verification, as you probably know, is really any approach to account authentication that involves two layers. Usually, this involves the typical password layer, beefed up by a mobile alert (usually an additional code sent to an account holder’s device). Plenty of companies with online log-ins like Google and Apple have already implemented some version of this security measure.

    Back in February, a job posting on Twitter’s employment site suggested that Twitter was getting more serious about two-step verification. The posting, for a software engineer specializing in product security, listed duties to ““design and develop user-facing security features, such as multifactor authentication and fraudulent login detection.”

    Two-step verification isn’t a panacea for every product security issue, and it’s not going to prevent every hack. But it is a necessary blockade between your account and the bad guys who wish to use it for nefarious purposes. It’s about time that Twitter launched something like this, and there’s no better time than now – especially after the recent high-profile hacks.

  • Here’s an Epic Song Full of Inane Celebrity Tweets

    Sometimes, 140 characters can be used to express something important, thought-provoking, or otherwise newsworthy. And sometimes not, as evidenced by the bulk of the musings coming from a handful of celebrities’ Twitter accounts.

    YouTuber Shane Dawson penned this epic tribute to the more inane aspects of Twitter – you know, the parts of the service that aren’t breaking news and providing insightful commentary on world events. It kind of sounds like a certain Rihanna song, and it’s pretty great. Check it out:

    If you’re looking for a less-musical but equally-awesome teardown of dumb celebrity tweets, check out Nick Offerman from Parks and Recreation reading tweets from young female celebrities.

    Keep doin what you’re doin, celebs.

  • Watch Adorable Kids Read Author and Twitter Comedian Kelly Oxford’s Tweets

    Jimmy Kimmel has a thing where he makes people on the streets read the tweets of some of his guests, you know, when the guest is particularly prolific on Twitter. He did this a few weeks ago when he had comedian Rob Delaney on the show.

    That time, it was the elderly who were made to read the oftentimes obscene tweets. This time, it’s adorable little children and the Twitter comedian is Kelly Oxford (who just published a book).

    This is predictably hilarious:

  • Pakistan’s Mobiilink Offers Free Tweeting to Its Customers

    Whenever a country that has a history of internet censorship gains better access to one of the internet’s most important tools, it’s big news.

    And that’s exactly what has happened today. Starting today, Pakistan’s largest provider of cellular services has announced that its prepaid customers can tweet away – for free.

    “Data charges for accessing Twitter have been made ZERO for all Mobilink prepaid subscribers. Subscribers don’t require to subscribe to this offer since it is available for all prepaid subscribers by default,” says Mobilink.

    That means that users can tweet and retweet all they want without incurring any data charges. This removes one of the impediments from Pakistani Twitter users, who have faced state censorship of Twitter in the past.

    Back in May of 2012, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority shut off Twitter access for the entire country for approximately 8 hours following the circulation of content deemed blasphemous on the network. Some speculated that the move had less to do with the specific content and more to do with a simple test as to whether a state-wide blockage was feasible.

    As far as the rest of the internet goes, the Pakistani government has a history of censorship in the areas of so-called blasphemy and pornography. Recently, that censorship has moved to content that falls in the realm of political speech. In a country with this track record, free access to Twitter is a significant opportunity for its people – considering access remains open.

    There are some caveats to the deal. Mainly, tweets must be sent via mobile.twitter.com – not Twitter’s native apps.

    Also:

    “[G]oing on external links will result in data charging. Whenever a subscriber clicks on an external link, he will be shown a notification indicating that standard data charges apply to view the link. External link will be opened after subscriber’s consent only.”

    But for the purposes of simply communicating (being that all-important amateur reporter), this is a great thing for Pakistani tweeters.

  • Twitter Archive Now Supports 12 New Languages

    Twitter has just announced that they’ve made Twitter archive available for a bunch of new languages: Danish, Filipino, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Urdu. Now, Twitter users using the service in those languages can access and download a complete archive of every tweet they ever sent.

    As you may remember, Twitter opened up their archive service to English-speaking users back in December of 2012, after promising the service for a few months. With the Twitter archive, users get to look at every single tweet they ever made – including retweets. It’s a nice trip down memory lane, but beware: it’s pretty painful to see how much of a Twitter-noob you were when you first began.

    If you want to obtain your Twitter archive, simply go to your settings (desktop). Scroll all the way to the bottom and you’ll see a link the says request your archive.” Once you click it, Twitter will let you know that it may take a few minutes to prepare. When it’s ready, Twitter will email you a link.

    Twitter has been busy adding language support for Twitter archive. Earlier this month, they added support for another 12 languages: Dutch, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, & Spanish. That brings the total up to 25 languages supported by Twitter’s archive feature.

  • Twitter Turns 7, Boasts 400M Tweets Per Day

    Join me in wishing a very happy birthday to Twitter, who turns 7 years old today. Yes, if you were wondering, you can sing the Happy Birthday song in less than 140 characters.

    Twitter, which first began with a tweet from co-founder Jack Dorsey back in March of 2006, now boasts over 200 million monthly active users. Today, they’re also announcing that tweets per day has hit an impressive 400 million.

    Here’s where it all started:

    “As we’ve grown, Twitter has become a true global town square — a public place to hear the latest news, exchange ideas and connect with people all in real time. This is where you come to connect with the world at large. Get on your soapbox to critique elected officials, or go sotto voce to the neighbor next to you. And as in other gathering places, commerce happens too (and jokes and art-making and debating, and — you get the idea),” says Twitter in a blog post.

    Last March, when Twitter turned 6, they announced 140 million active users. Today, on their 7th birthday, they can boast well over 200 million active users. Twitter says that it’s a steep trajectory that they could have “only dreamed about back in 2006.”

    Take a look at Twitter’s video below, which takes you from Jack Dorsey’s first tweet in 2006, the the first use of the hashtag in 2007, to a funny exchange between Oprah and Shaq.

  • Donald Rumsfeld Is Having a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day on Twitter

    This week is the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom, which led to the nearly 9-year Iraq War.

    Beginning on March 20th, 2003 and lasting until December 18th, 2011 (when Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta officially declared the war over), the Iraq War is one of the most contentious periods in American history.

    That is clearly evidenced in the response that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is receiving over on Twitter right now.

    Earlier this afternoon, Rumsfeld tweeted this:

    It has sparked a monsoon of replies, and to be perfectly blunt, it’s an all out sh*tstorm for the former Secretary. And thanks to Twitter’s recent update that expanded tweet pages to include more replies, we can see even more of what the Twitterverse is saying about the tweet:

    (image)

    (image)

    (image)

    (image)

    And that’s not even half of it. In my years of following Twitter, this is one of the most universally ill-received tweets I’ve ever seen. Ouch.

  • Pope Francis Tweets for the First Time as @Pontifex Account Tops 2 Million Followers

    Last Wednesday, a plume of white smoke emerged in Vatican City, signaling that the papal conclave had chosen a new leader for the Catholic Church.

    Shortly after, Argentinian cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio addressed the crowd as Pope Francis, the 266th pontiff of the church. At that time, the previously hibernating @Pontifex Twitter account sent out a simple tweet: HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM – roughly translating to “we have Pope Francis.”

    A few days later, Pope Francis has sent out his first tweet.

    The new Pope’s first official tweet was simple, asking his followers to continue to pray for him and thanking them for their support:

    The @Pontifex Twitter account was created late last year as the official Twitter account of the papacy, then held by Pope Benedict. Upon his resignation, the account went “sede vacante,” and all of Bendict’s 39 tweets were archived on Vatican website.

    At the time, the Vatican made it clear that the Twitter account was not being shut down, only deactivated temporarily as the new pope was chosen. They said that the decision to continue to tweet or not would rest solely with the new pope.

    “Obviously we leave all decisions to the new man. But we would hope that he might continue to use @pontifex, which would maintain continuity,” said Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications Paul Tighe.

    And it looks like Pope Francis has decided to continue the social media outreach.

    As of the writing of this article, the @Pontifex account has just topped 2 million followers.