The knee-jerk reaction to yesterday's news that the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok had used Twitter to quickly spread information about a terrorist threat appear to have been blown out of proportion.
While there is no denying that Facebook, Twitter and other social networks help spread critical information when emergencies strike, they can still be problematic and ineffective when compared to other forms of communication. Even the Bangkok terror alert was met with initial skepticism, and while the embassy has close to 40,000 Twitter followers, many of those were not in the area of the threat.
The man who invested $300 million in Twitter last month likes to call himself "the Warren Buffett of the Middle East" and has a knack for investing in U.S. companies just before they take off, according to a Business Insider Profile.
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud is also the second biggest investor in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which may explain why Murdoch opened a Twitter account at the end of 2011 and, more recently, has been making comments about how News Corp. "screwed up" MySpace.
This year's Consumer Electronics Show is getting ready to wrap up in Las Vegas tomorrow. There may not have been a single blockbuster product announcement, but when it comes to the future of television, CES is always good for a few hints about what to expect. By piecing together some of those clues, we can begin to see a picture of what the future holds.
There are a number of trends toward the future of television that are already well underway, some of which will be built upon in 2012. Web connectivity is increasingly standard on new TV sets, time-shifting content is becoming the norm and viewers are supplementing the TV experience using the "second screens" of smartphones and tablets. Nobody knows what Apple has in mind for the TV hardware industry, but consumers and industry incumbents alike have been conditioned to expect it to make a big impact.
Don't be fooled: Nicole Scherzinger, No Doubt and Rise Against have not officially (or even unofficially) signed-on as Ron Paul supporters.
The Twitter accounts of all three recording artists appear to have been hacked early Wednesday morning, according to MSNBC. The hacker or hackers posted messages supporting Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.
"As you would all assume, We DO NOT support Ron Paul," Rise against said in a message to fans after the posts were discovered and removed.
Twitter's rapid and recent growth is causing the workplace to seem "chaotic" and some employees are finding their work sometimes overlaps work being done by others, according to an anonymous post on Quora written by someone claiming to be a Twitter engineer.
"The work culture is good, though chaotic," the engineer said. "We're on a ridiculous hiring spree, and getting to the size where communication is difficult, and duplicate work is starting to happen."
There's no way to verify if the poster actually works for Twitter, but the evenhanded tone of the post suggest its authentic. Among the perks of working at Twitter listed in the post: free meals, flex time, "Macbook Pros for everyone" and a flat organizational structure.
"Overall, Twitter's setting a really high standard for what I want from my workplace," the engineer said.
The long overly romanticized idea of the writer holed up in a cabin off of Walden Pond, furiously writing by candlelight and drinking warm whiskey until the wee hours is so. freaking. over. The writer of today is busy tweeting away on the Internet, connecting with like-minded folks while writing their next. big. novel.
"If I am having a crappy day writing, I will on occasion send out a goofy tweet on Twitter to see how others are doing," Oak Park-based writer Gint Aras tells me via phone. "Then it will help me get through a period of blockage - but I don't think that's any different from getting on the phone and talking to a writer buddy."
A watchdog group says Twitter lags behind Facebook, Bebo and other social networks when it comes to protecting children from abuse.
The London-based Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre said it believes some pedophiles still use the site to discuss crimes against children and link to pornographic images, despite efforts by Twitter to act immediately when it receives complaints about such activity.
In a statement Del Harvey, Twitter's Director of Trust and Safety, said "we receive a report and identify it as valid, we take action immediately."
There has been a lot of noise in tech circles about the upset Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos pulled off over the Pittsburgh Steelers Sunday night. Tebow's 80-yard pass on the first play of overtime ended up generating 9,420 tweets per second -- the most ever for a sporting event and the third most of all-time.
People tend to get excited every time one of these records fall - already in 2012, the second and third most tweeted about events of all time have been recorded (the start of the New Year in Japan weighed in at 16,127 tweets per second and crashed Twitter's servers). But as I watch stories about each record falling, I can hear the words of my very first editor at the very first newspaper I worked at.
"So what?"
Twitter will have to comply with a ruling by U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady to turn over information collected in the accounts of three WikiLeaks backers.
Icelandic parliament member Birgitta Jónsdóttir, computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and Dutch activist Rop Gonggrijp had filed a request blocking the subpoena while the case was considered by a federal appeals court. O'Grady denied the motion, saying their appeal had little chance of success based on existing U.S. case law.
"Litigation of these issues has already denied the government lawful access to potential evidence for more than a year," O'Grady said in his ruling. "The public interest therefore weighs strongly against further delay."
The Twitter brand pages launched last month need to work hard to engage the user to be successful, according to an eye track study released Wednesday.
SimpleUsability studied four of the 21 brand pages that went live last month. While Twitter had previously allowed promoted tweets and corporate accounts, the brand pages launched in December more closely resemble the way Google+ and Facebook handle corporate presences. Twitter brand pages include space for company logos and taglines, as well as space to embed videos and other media.
While some initially heralded Twitter brand pages as a "game changer," that scenario may not play out. One of the major problems facing brand pages, as noted in the SimpleUsability study, is that once someone starts following a Twitter account or brand page, there is usually no reason for them to return to the page as all of the new and relevant information will show up as tweets in the followers own timeline.
