Posts tagged twitter

“Gay marriage conversation peaked at 7,347 Tweets per minute at 3:22p ET yesterday.” — @gov. It more or less kicked off with Matthew Keys’ (ProducerMatthew) Twitter post breaking the news.

“Gay marriage conversation peaked at 7,347 Tweets per minute at 3:22p ET yesterday.” — @gov.

It more or less kicked off with Matthew Keys’ (ProducerMatthew) Twitter post breaking the news.

Twitter’s terms of service make absolutely clear that its users ‘own’ their own content. Our filing with the court reaffirms our steadfast commitment to defending those rights for our users.

Ben Lee, lawyer, Twitter, to the BBC. Twitter resists US court’s demand for Occupy tweets

The News: A New York state court asked Twitter to release posts written by New Inquiry Senior Editor Malcolm Harris who was arrested last fall during Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City.

Twitter said no.

Via the BBC:

Mr Harris’s lawyer had tried to block access to the postings, but a judge ruled that once the messages had been sent they became the property of Twitter, meaning the defendant was not protected by Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure.

Twitter’s lawyers argued that the judge had misunderstood how the service worked, noting that the Stored Communications Act gave its members the right to challenge requests for information on their user history.

“Law enforcement agencies… are becoming increasingly aggressive in their attempts to obtain information about what people are doing on the internet,” Aden Fine, Senior Staff Attorney, writes at the American Civil Liberties Union. “If internet users cannot protect their own constitutional rights, the only hope is that internet companies do so.”

A depressing hope, but good for Twitter.

Twitter search result for “Obama” about 15 minutes after news broke that he now supports gay marriage.

Will not be surprised if the Twitter breaks sometime soon.

The other day I talked about Insurgents vs Incumbents. This is the framework we use at [Union Square Ventures] to think about a lot of things. And in the world of patents, the advantage goes to the Incumbents who can hoard patents and use them to their advantage. The insurgent, three engineers in a walk up in Bushwick, can’t even afford the lawyer or the time to file a patent. So it is very encouraging to see an emerging incumbent, Twitter, do something like this. They are saying to the world that they do not intend to compete on the basis of patents and instead they will compete on the basis of product, feature set, user experience, etc, etc.

USV is committed to support this initiative. We are instructing the startup lawyers we work with to insert the patent hack language in our standard forms. We are reaching out to our friends in the startup world including other VCs, accelerator programs, and the startup lawyer universe to suggest that they to insert the patent hack into their standard forms. And we will recommend to our existing portfolio companies that they adopt it as well. Of course, entrepreneurs and their companies will have to be the ultimate determinator of whether they want this provision in their inventions assignments agreement. If an entrepreneur we invest in does not want this provision, we will certainly support that decision. But we will want to have a conversation about why they would want to do that.

Fred Wilson, Principal, Union Square Ventures. The Twitter “Patent Hack”.

Background: Yesterday Twitter announced its Innovator’s Patent Agreement whereby it will put patents in control of its designers and engineers. The goal is make sure that patents are only used defensively against potential lawsuits. As Adam Messinger, Twitter’s vice-president of engineering writes:

Typically, engineers and designers sign an agreement with their company that irrevocably gives that company any patents filed related to the employee’s work. The company then has control over the patents and can use them however they want, which may include selling them to others who can also use them however they want. With the IPA, employees can be assured that their patents will be used only as a shield rather than as a weapon.

An important move, to be sure. M-CAM, a global asset management firm, reports that there are “over 30,000 patents that describe key aspects of social networking, ecommerce, and data management” with companies spending $83 billion each year defending themselves against them.

Twitter’s IPA move is the company’s attempt to reinvent how patents are used (for defense only) and we hope others are inspired to do the same. It’s great to see major tech players like Union Square Ventures looking to bake the concept into all the startups it works with — Michael

Storified: The Carole King Twitter Sing-A-Long of 2012

nprfreshair:

Carole King is the guest on Fresh Air today. I asked some of my public media friends to help let people know via a sing-a-long on possibly the most hilarious medium to have a sing-a-long: Twitter. Naturally, This American Life started us off.

FJP: We’d been trying figure out what the best use for Storify is. Compiling a sing-a-long seems to top the list.

NPR

MySQL is the persistent storage technology behind most Twitter data: the interest graph, timelines, user data and the Tweets themselves. Since we believe in sharing knowledge and that open source software facilitates innovation, we have decided to open source our MySQL work on GitHub under the BSD New license.

The Twitter Engineering Blog. MySQL at Twitter.

The Twitter MySQL repo on GitHub.

Dataminr, the social media analytics firm that verified bin Laden’s death before the press (or the president), is now partnered with Twitter A New York firm that fishes through Twitter for newsworthy clues to send its financial/government clients will soon get more access than almost anyone else to Twitter’s “Firehouse,” or the current of wide-open, real time messages of the entire tweeting human race. Dataminr, which claims it verified the bin Laden death rumors before any official announcements were made, will use its privilege to give clients information before anyone else knows. The company recently said it learns a lot by seeing whats talked about, and by whom. via a company press release: On any given day, Dataminr alerts its clients to numerous relevant events that are either pre-news or off the mainstream radar… In recent days, these ranged from an assassination attempt on high-ranking Arab leaders in Tajikistan, to a tsunami warning in Chile, to panic-buying of fuel by the UK public in reaction to an oil tank driver strike. Seeing Twitter through the Firehouse would probably be really confusing, with so many different languages and half-finished personal conversations. But the firm has been able to find a lot of trends/events from a more limited vantage point (according to the same press release): Dataminr’s real-time analytics engine processes public Tweets in the aggregate, detecting linguistic and propagation patterns across the over 340 million messages shared on Twitter daily. In addition, Dataminr takes the unique approach of merging Tweets with third-party and client proprietary data to perform multi-variable event detection. And on what has become Dataminr’s legitimizing moment (its alert of bin Laden’s death), ars technica quoted the following: “Dataminr sent an alert in this instance at 10:20 [p.m. Eastern time on May 1, 2011], based on only 19 messages,” Dataminr founder and CEO Ted Bailey told the Twitter Devnest crowd. “This was, for our clients, the earliest warning system in the entire financial industry for this event, which had a dramatic effect on the market once it hit the financial radar. This was also one of the most viral events in Twitter’s history. Messages went from 19 in this 5 minute period where we caught it, up to 20,000 per minute in just half an hour.” FJP: I guess someone has to make money from it. H/T: ars technica

Dataminr, the social media analytics firm that verified bin Laden’s death before the press (or the president), is now partnered with Twitter

A New York firm that fishes through Twitter for newsworthy clues to send its financial/government clients will soon get more access than almost anyone else to Twitter’s “Firehouse,” or the current of wide-open, real time messages of the entire tweeting human race.

Dataminr, which claims it verified the bin Laden death rumors before any official announcements were made, will use its privilege to give clients information before anyone else knows. The company recently said it learns a lot by seeing whats talked about, and by whom.

via a company press release:

On any given day, Dataminr alerts its clients to numerous relevant events that are either pre-news or off the mainstream radar… In recent days, these ranged from an assassination attempt on high-ranking Arab leaders in Tajikistan, to a tsunami warning in Chile, to panic-buying of fuel by the UK public in reaction to an oil tank driver strike.

Seeing Twitter through the Firehouse would probably be really confusing, with so many different languages and half-finished personal conversations. But the firm has been able to find a lot of trends/events from a more limited vantage point (according to the same press release):

Dataminr’s real-time analytics engine processes public Tweets in the aggregate, detecting linguistic and propagation patterns across the over 340 million messages shared on Twitter daily. In addition, Dataminr takes the unique approach of merging Tweets with third-party and client proprietary data to perform multi-variable event detection.

And on what has become Dataminr’s legitimizing moment (its alert of bin Laden’s death), ars technica quoted the following:

“Dataminr sent an alert in this instance at 10:20 [p.m. Eastern time on May 1, 2011], based on only 19 messages,” Dataminr founder and CEO Ted Bailey told the Twitter Devnest crowd. “This was, for our clients, the earliest warning system in the entire financial industry for this event, which had a dramatic effect on the market once it hit the financial radar. This was also one of the most viral events in Twitter’s history. Messages went from 19 in this 5 minute period where we caught it, up to 20,000 per minute in just half an hour.”

FJP: I guess someone has to make money from it.

H/T: ars technica

Darwin’s Theory Pervades Twitter Too  via The Atlantic: In a new paper entitled Competition Among Memes in a World With Limited Attention, Indiana University researchers Lillian Weng, Alessando Flammini, Alessando Vespignani, and Filippo Menczer analyzed 120 million retweets connected to 12.5 million users and 1.3 million hashtags in order to model how information (as discrete units, or memes) disperses on the social network. What did they find? According to co-author Vespignani, having millions of followers does not denote an important message. Rather, the messages with the most immediate relevance tend to have a higher probability of resonating within a certain network than others. Think of it as “survival of the fittest” for information: those tweets that capture the most attention, whether related to a major geopolitical or news event or a particular interest, are likely to persist longer. This competition sounds bad, but it’s generally good for messages in general: thousands of tweets about Japan’s 2011 earthquake or the ongoing conflict in Syria don’t cancel each other out, but help refocus the attention of the wider Twitter audience on those issues, which in turn provides an added lift to individual messages over other off-topic ones. The study reinforces what most journalists and marketers have known intuitively for some time now: that piggybacking on the trending ideas that constitute “the conversation” online maximizes the ability to spread tweet-sized ideas. Where people fit into preexisting networks certainly matters: Ashton Kutcher’s millions of followers represent a powerful hub of connections. But could Mr. Kutcher’s messages about Nikon’s new camera overwhelm hundreds of tweets about Trayvon Martin from hundreds of smaller, less-connected individuals? The research suggests that it doesn’t fully matter who you are or how many connections you have, but what you’re saying relative to the existing conversation is what really matters in spreading knowledge online. FJP: Though not a shocking revelation, it does feel nice to see research support the power of Twitter.

Darwin’s Theory Pervades Twitter Too 

via The Atlantic:

In a new paper entitled Competition Among Memes in a World With Limited Attention, Indiana University researchers Lillian Weng, Alessando Flammini, Alessando Vespignani, and Filippo Menczer analyzed 120 million retweets connected to 12.5 million users and 1.3 million hashtags in order to model how information (as discrete units, or memes) disperses on the social network.

What did they find? According to co-author Vespignani, having millions of followers does not denote an important message. Rather, the messages with the most immediate relevance tend to have a higher probability of resonating within a certain network than others. Think of it as “survival of the fittest” for information: those tweets that capture the most attention, whether related to a major geopolitical or news event or a particular interest, are likely to persist longer. This competition sounds bad, but it’s generally good for messages in general: thousands of tweets about Japan’s 2011 earthquake or the ongoing conflict in Syria don’t cancel each other out, but help refocus the attention of the wider Twitter audience on those issues, which in turn provides an added lift to individual messages over other off-topic ones.

The study reinforces what most journalists and marketers have known intuitively for some time now: that piggybacking on the trending ideas that constitute “the conversation” online maximizes the ability to spread tweet-sized ideas. Where people fit into preexisting networks certainly matters: Ashton Kutcher’s millions of followers represent a powerful hub of connections. But could Mr. Kutcher’s messages about Nikon’s new camera overwhelm hundreds of tweets about Trayvon Martin from hundreds of smaller, less-connected individuals? The research suggests that it doesn’t fully matter who you are or how many connections you have, but what you’re saying relative to the existing conversation is what really matters in spreading knowledge online.

FJP: Though not a shocking revelation, it does feel nice to see research support the power of Twitter.

News Orgs: their Fans and Followers, March 2012

The Onion, holding its own.

UPDATE: Just to clarify, this is US-based. H/T: Ben Piven.

How to Decide What is Public/Private on Twitter & Facebook.

Another internet ethics question. What’s acceptable to publish when sourcing information from social media networks that wasn’t originally intended for publication? 

via Poynter:

Most journalists agree that Twitter is inherently public, and anything said on Twitter is generally fair game to be reported upon. This is evident with the rise in popularity of tools like Storify, which allows reporters to aggregate public tweets around a breaking news event or other story.

Public tweets seem to be fair game. That’s the point of Twitter, after all. Anything shared privately should require asking the person to go on record.

One professor, however, worries about the risk of bad journalism from pulling tweets out of context. Jacqui Banaszynski, a professor of journalism at the University of Missouri and editing fellow at Poynter, says:

If I’m going to quote someone, the smart journalistic thing to do is to be in touch with that person beyond what you pulled off that site. Journalists should let people know when they’re performing journalism. I also think that pulling something off a site without contacting [a] person further doesn’t allow the journalist to do deeper reporting or put the comment in context. It’s very easy to take just 140 characters out of context – and that’s bad journalism.

Facebook is a bit more tricky. Because its privacy options are so complicated, users don’t always realize their profile or comments are public. Banaszynski thinks:

If it’s a public fan page, I have no problem looking at that and pulling from that. But if it’s a post between friends, I would hope a good journalist would contact the person, verify their identity and let them know they are using that info.

Until standards are set across the industry, Poynter suggests considering the following questions when deciding what’s fair game to publish:

  • What was the author’s intent? If shared in a closed group or personal profile, was it intended to be kept private?
  • How did the source respond when you asked about including the information in a story?
  • Is the author a public figure? How public? There is a difference between a school principal and a professional athlete.
  • What harm could come to the individual if the information is made public? Is that harm justified by the public benefit of the information?
  • What alternatives do you have for getting similar information? 

FJP: Good Questions. 

#OpenJournalism

In ten concise tweets Guardian Editor in Chief Alan Rusbridger tries his hand at defining open journalism.

Select to embiggen.

horaciogaray: While the United States Supreme Court might not approve of social media during its proceedings, thousands of people have taken to Twitter to talk about the legal battle surrounding the Affordable Care Act, including top Republicans and Democrats. The two parties are now engaged in an all-out digital war to get more support for their side of the health care argument.

horaciogaray:

While the United States Supreme Court might not approve of social media during its proceedings, thousands of people have taken to Twitter to talk about the legal battle surrounding the Affordable Care Act, including top Republicans and Democrats. The two parties are now engaged in an all-out digital war to get more support for their side of the health care argument.

Mashable

Information Credibility on Twitter

Platform matters, according to Yahoo researchers.

In the experiment, the headline of a news item was presented to users in different ways, i.e. as posted in a traditional media website, as a blog, and as a post on Twitter. Users found the same news headline significantly less credible when presented on Twitter.

Interested in further Twitter analysis? The researchers point to Truthy, a project at the Indiana University that further analyzes Twitter and its credibility.

Lady Gaga's $30 Million Twitter Account

The Wall Street Journal estimates that Lady Gaga’s Twitter account is worth $30 million.

The math is kind of fuzzy but they arrive at the number by saying that her ability to connect with, promote to and otherwise engage with her 20 plus million followers is worth about a third of the estimated $90 million that she earned over the past year.

Twitter’s a cash cow for other celebrities as well:

Reality stars fit right in with Twitter’s instant-fame ethos. The highest celebrity endorsers can earn up to $20,000 for a single tweet, but some companies have offered $100,000 to sponsor a celebrity’s Twitter account, according to Jennifer P. Brown, of social media agent SponsoredTweets. Brown recently received one such offer, but declined as she says the brand in question wasn’t a right fit for the celebrity. She wouldn’t name the brand or celebrity. Reality star Khloe Kardashian’s tweets to her 6.4 million followers are worth $9,100 each, Brown says.

For those curious, the FJP earns approximately zero dollars for our posts but find Twitter invaluable.