Twitter sues US government for the right to release surveillance information October 7, 2014 Twitter is taking on the US government. The social media giant has filed a lawsuit against the FBI and the Department of Justice for restrictions preventing it from revealing the extent of US government surveillance of the site. Twitter argues the prohibitions are “unconstitutional” and deny its users a sufficient level of transparency. [...]
Chief executives and Twitter: Are they losing out? October 1, 2014 Only a handful of business leaders tweet, which may be a good thing. "I owe you one @BenKaufman! Here’s my #IceBucketChallenge. You’re up Sarah and Steve Immelt and Ken Chenault!” So tweeted General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt on 21 August. It’s difficult to imagine the company’s august co-founder and former president Charles [...]
Twitter is investing $10m in MIT partnership to make sense of social data with a new Lab for Social Machines October 1, 2014 Twitter is investing $10m in a partnership with US university MIT, renowned for its tech credentials, to make sense of the huge amount of social data shared by people across the world. The Lab for Social Machines (LSM) will focus on “the development of new technologies to make sense of semantic and social patterns across [...]
Did another Tory MP defect to Ukip? No. Here’s how Twitter reacted and bookies’ changed odds October 1, 2014 Another tory MP defection to Ukip was almost certain the bookies said. With Ukip calling a press conference, everyone was pretty confident this was the moment for a third defection after Mark Reckless and Douglas Carswell. Alas no. To much disappointment, there was news (of sorts), but not the much anticipated defection everyone was holdng their [...]
David Cameron speech: Twitter reaction to benefit cuts, NHS and Russell Brand October 1, 2014 David Cameron's speech to the Conservative Party conference was hijacked by campaign group Ukuncut – on Twitter. Analysis of the Twitter reaction to the Prime Minister's speech by Impact Social showed the response was largely negative and that an attempt by Russell Brand to help UKuncut commandeer the hashtag #CPC14 was successful. Here he comes! @David_Cameron – [...]
Twitter chief exec Dick Costolo goes for Iranian president Hassan Rouhani – but fails “foriegn” relations September 28, 2014 Iranian president Hassan Rouhani may be enjoying thawed relations with leaders of United Nations countries thanks to his efforts to stop Islamic State militants, but Silicon Valley is rather less easy to please, it turns out. Rouhani, who is a prolific tweeter, was happily tweeting from last week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York [...]
#MuslimApologies – what is it and why is it taking Twitter by storm? September 24, 2014 Twitter was flooded by tweets ending with the hashtag #MuslimApologies this morning. Across the nation, Muslims were apologising for all sorts of things – both to do with their religion and, well, not related at all. Why are they doing it? We asked one participant, Akhal, to explain what was happening. He said: "It [...]
Twitter goes in search of Gareth and Ed Miliband’s Mili-Clan – Labour party conference September 23, 2014 Ed Miliband really likes normal people. He likes them so much, he mentioned a bunch of them in his big speech at the Labour conference in Manchester yesterday. Name-dropping celebs is so last year, it’s all about ordinary folk – Ed’s Mili-Clan. Gareth was the stand out Mili-Clan member – within minutes of Ed [...]
The FTSE 100’s Twitter power-users (and its social flops) September 21, 2014 FTSE 100 companies have upped their game on Twitter according to social media agency Battenhall, sending out a total of 1.4 million tweets in the past year compared with 582,227 in 2013. The agency puts companies’ increased efforts on Twitter down to the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2013 legislation, which gave firms permission to [...]
Scottish #indyref visualisation: See how Twitter reacted September 18, 2014 Well, the votes are in and an army of people will now spend the night counting. Twitter, though, may have an early indication of which way the vote went. The company released a map using #indyref to show how the conversation spread across the world during polling day. It also pointed out that, despite early [...]