Twitter

Twitter needs to deal with the Twitter Accuracy Problem

Twitter's had a bad couple of weeks.

First, the Boston marathon bombings and subsequent manhunt led many (including me) to question the role of fast-moving, potentially inaccurate real-time Twitter reporting and its effect on mainstream news.

Then today, a false tweet from a hacked Associated Press Twitter account claimed that the White House had been bombed and that President Obama had been injured. The news caused a sudden plunge in the stock market (and, one can probably assume, some massive profit-taking by the hackers).

Twitter has always had an accuracy problem. It's a lot of voices, its information … Read more

A bad day in Twitterland

Twitter is having a tough day. First, parts of the service were having performance problems, and then the @AP Twitter feed got hacked, causing the stock market to tank nearly 150 points before recovering.

Twitter has vastly improved in the last few years in keeping the site up, but the hacks are escalating. The Twitter accounts of CBS News programs "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours" were hacked over the weekend, with bogus messages going out, such as "The US government is hiding the real culprit of the Boston bombing." In February, an estimated&… Read more

AP Twitter feed hacked; White House has NOT been bombed

The White House has NOT been bombed, folks, despite what you might have seen on the Associated Press Twitter account.

Hackers apparently got ahold of the wire service's Twitter feed and tweeted out "breaking" news of a White House bombing that injured President Barack Obama.

Not so, say the Twitter feeds of AP corporate and some employees.

When the tweet went out, Twitter immediately erupted with notes from sleuthing tweeps who noted that the suspicious tweet did not use the normal all caps style for BREAKING news, and was sent from the Web, which is unusual for … Read more

Twitter goes down for some

Twitter experienced some hiccups early Tuesday.

The company said today there were service issues that were affecting some users. The message was posted to its Tumblr blog at about 7:30 a.m. PT. By 8:50, Twitter updated the post saying the issue was resolved.

The outage appeared to be affecting parts of the site. The main feed was working for some, while the connect and discover pages were down.

"Our engineers are currently working on this issue," the company earlier said in its post.

Update, 10:05 a.m. PT: The service appears to be back … Read more

Anthony Weiner gets a new handle on Twitter

On balance, there may be worse things in life than sending someone pictures of yourself in your underpants.

However, there may be fewer more ill-advised things, especially if you've never met the recipient and you happen to be a politician held in some regard.

For his intimately twittered transgression, Anthony Weiner paid a certain price and that price was what, in some media, is defined by the word "disgrace." It seems odd that this word might be damning, as it is one so often used to describe politicians.

Some might have imagined that Weiner would seek a quieter, more contemplative life after events which saw the Democratic Representative for New York resign in 2011 for his socially networked unseemliness.

A decent amount of time has passed, however, and Weiner seems to be girding his loins for a run at the mayor's office. With this perhaps in mind, he has returned again to the place of alleged disgrace, Twitter. … Read more

Securities regulators balk at employee social-media privacy

Securities regulators are advocating for special exemptions to new and pending state laws that prevent employers from snooping on employee Twitter or Facebook accounts.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, an independent U.S. securities regulator that seeks to protect investors, is asking lawmakers in around 10 states to amend their legislation to allow financial firms to peak at social media accounts when employee misuse is suspected, a spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal.

The fear seems to be that brokers could use their social media accounts to spread information that would influence stocks, and that misdeeds would go unchecked without … Read more

Bill Nye, LeVar Burton in first White House Vine

What do you get when you combine some celebrities with serious nerd cred and a few incomplete sentences? The first official Vine from the White House, of course!

Bill Nye the Science Guy, LeVar Burton, and uh, this other woman took a quick 6 seconds to welcome us all to the White House Science Fair in a Vine tweeted out from the official White House Twitter feed today.

Students from across the country were invited to the White House to share their creations -- from marshmallow launchers to robots to 3D-printed widgets -- with the president and others. Some projects also got the Vine treatment. … Read more

Twitter reportedly bags huge payday with 'milestone' ad deal

Twitter's been hammering home its value as an advertising medium, and Madison Avenue is apparently nodding in agreement. The company has reportedly nailed a multiyear deal with Publicis' Starcom MediaVest Group that's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the Financial Times.

It's a big deal -- a really big deal, which the FT describes as a "milestone" -- and one which undergirds the argument the social media giant has been making to advertisers still sitting on the fence about whether to sign on the line which is dotted. According to the report, which … Read more

Six social network 'phones' we'll never see

At last, the Facebook phone has been unveiled, except it's not really a phone, it's more of a suite of apps with a launcher.

Social networks have been able to infiltrate most aspects of our lives so far without having to entangle themselves in the messy business of designing or making a hardware product, so why start now?… Read more

Twitter partners with Comedy Central to host laugh fest

If you've got time for quick joke, Twitter will be the place to be next week.

While there there's already plenty to laugh at on Twitter, the microblogging site is partnering with Comedy Central on a five-day laugh festival that will occur almost entirely on Twitter, according to The New York Times. Comedy legends such as Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner will be joined by young comics in tweeting jokes and posting video clips on Vine, the app Twitter launched in January that allows users to share six-second video clips.

Utilizing Vine's brevity, comedian Steve Agee will … Read more