Twitter

This is a guest column. See below for Greg Lukianoff's bio.

Last month was a bittersweet seventh birthday for Twitter. The Union of Jewish French Students sued the social-media giant for $50 million in a French court in light of anti-Semitic tweets that carried the hashtag #unbonjuif ("a good Jew"). In January, Twitter agreed to delete the tweets, but the student group now wants the identities of the users who sent the anti-Semitic messages so that they can be prosecuted under French law against hate speech. Twitter is resisting. It claims that as an American company protected … Read more

In the latest triumph for the real-time social network, Twitter will now be incorporated into the Bloomberg terminals popular with Wall Street traders.

The company says it plans to incorporate tweets into its data service, widely used in the financial industry, so that people can monitor social media buzz about companies, according to The New York Times.

The irony is that financial services firms have long blocked the service as a potential risk in violating the regulations that govern the communications of their employees.

In this example, though, Twitter isn't a channel for employee output, but public input.

More … Read more

The European Union has long championed its citizens' right to submit requests for data that companies hold on them in order to ensure the information is up to date and correct. In recent years, an Austrian law student brought this "habeas data" right into the public spotlight by demanding his Facebook data from the social network.

Americans don't have this right -- and generally, relative to the EU, they have little legal protection from the state or federal government against data theft, unauthorized disclosures, and other privacy-related matters.

Though the EU and the U.S. have never … Read more

Update: 11:30 AM PT Earlier today, the U.S. embassy in Cairo pulled a tweet that managed to annoy Egypt's government. The apparently innocuous link to a "Daily Show" episode from earlier in the week, which tweaked Egypt's government for going after a prominent television critic, had quickly transmogrified into a mini-diplomatic crisis yesterday after Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi's office tweeted a tart response: "It's inappropriate for a diplomatic mission to engage in such negative political propaganda."

In the last year the two governments have … Read more

When you see a photo, article summary, or video in a tweet from a Web site, it most likely was done with a feature called Twitter Cards. The social network announced today that it's expanding this feature to include "deep-links" to mobile apps and also offer up some new Cards, such as product information and photo galleries.

"We first introduced expanded Tweets with three card types: summary, photo, and player/video," Twitter's head of platform, Jason Costa, wrote in a blog post. "Since then, we've heard that publishers want to be able … Read more

Update: 5:09 PM PT The only thing missing from this contretemps is Stephen Colbert coming to the rescue. On second thought, scratch that. Bad idea.

But mark this one down as the latest episode in the annals of humorless politicians who wouldn't know a funny punchline if their lives depended on it. Turns out that the the office of Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi did not at all care when the U.S. Egyptian Embassy retweeted a link to an episode of "The Daily Show" in which host Jon Stewart skewered the government for ordering the arrest … Read more

Twitter has taken down eight Vine videos associated with the artist Prince, after his record label sent a letter warning of copyright infringement.

The notice, posted on Chilling Effects last week and noticed by The Next Web today, described the Vines in question as "unauthorized recordings" and "unauthorized synchronizations." The label, NPG Records, requested that Twitter immediately remove the Vines and any future Vines featuring Prince. The Vine is a mobile service that allows people to create and share short, looping videos.

The links to the Vines in the request no longer work. A Twitter spokesman … Read more

The Securities and Exchange Commission confirmed today that public companies can announce key information on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, so long as investors are informed as to which accounts may publish news.

The acknowledgment was published in the SEC's report of investigation on Netflix, and makes room for social media disclosures to be in compliance with Regulation Fair Disclosure (Regulation FD), a rule that requires companies to distribute material information to investors and the general public non-exclusively. In essence, companies and their executives can reveal news on investor-aware accounts without fear of retribution.

"Companies … Read more

Twitter is lighting up with tweeps questioning Google's choice of doodle for this Easter Sunday. The main search page today features no mention of the Easter Bunny, brightly colored eggs (which are on full, beautiful display on Bing), or Jesus, but instead commemorates what would have been the 86th birthday of labor leader and activist Cesar Chavez.

Just to be clear, I don't feel strongly about Google's choice. Chavez, Jesus and the Easter Bunny all seem pretty cool to me. But Glenn Beck and other prominent Christians are tweeting their disbelief.

Dana Perino of Fox News also … Read more