news and technology: Twitter

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Tuesday, July 5, 2011

FTC reviewing Twitter: reports (Reuters)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The Federal Trade Commission is reviewing social networking company Twitter and its dealings with at least one company that makes software designed to interact with the service, according to media reports.

The review is being led by the FTC's antitrust division, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal citing an anonymous source. The report described the FTC's review as "narrow" and having no impact on Twitter's advertising business.

UberMedia, which owns several software applications that make use of Twitter data and has had a rocky relationship with Twitter, said it has been contacted by the FTC.

"We intend to fully comply with their request for information," UberMedia said in an emailed statement to Reuters. A spokeswoman declined to provide more details about the nature of the FTC's interest.

Representatives from Twitter and the FTC declined to comment.

Twitter, which allows people to send 140-character text messages, or Tweets, to groups of so-called followers, is one of the Web's most popular social networking services, along with Facebook and Zynga.

On Thursday, Twitter said that its users now send 200 million Tweets every day on the service, up from 65 million Tweets a year ago.

As Twitter has built new features for the service -- such as a photo-sharing tool and special versions of the site for smartphones -- its relationship has grown strained with some of the third-party developers who traditionally developed many such tools.

In February, Twitter temporarily blocked several UberMedia applications from accessing Twitter data citing violations of its terms of service. And in May Twitter acquired TweetDeck, a third-party application for using social networking services which had been in acquisition talks with UberMedia.

The blog Business Insider was first to report the story and said that the FTC is "actively investigating" Twitter and the way it deals with the companies that build applications that use Twitter data.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic with additional reporting by Diane Bartz; editing by Carol Bishopric)

Sunday, July 3, 2011

NBA faces $1 million fine for using Facebook or Twitter during lockout (Yahoo! News)

Contract negotiations enact tough new rules against social media leaks

Salary negotiations, salary caps, revenue sharing and just about every other negotiation has come to a standstill today between the NBA and its players. Since the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement last night between the owners and players, the league has barred any interaction between them through Facebook or Twitter until a new contract is reached.

Should the owners communicate with the players via social media tools, the offender is not only facing a million dollar fine from the league, but the owner's eligibility to participate in draft picks for the new season could also be yanked. This could be devastating to a team that is trying to rebuild for a run at the national title.

The ban on Facebook is particularly tough, extending to coaches, managers and front office personnel. The Twitter blackout is a little more lax. Players can be followed on Twitter, but messages cannot be sent via the social service, nor the retweeting of their updates.

All of this is part of a bigger lockout strategy that puts an end to scouting, European preseason games and support for this summer's Olympic qualifying tournaments. If the two sides don't come to an agreement before the official start of the season, Twitter leaks may soon be the least of their problems.

(Source)

Post by Dan O'Halloran

President Obama to hold town hall on Twitter (Yahoo! News)

The President will take your questions over Twitter

The President of the United States will be taking your questions about jobs and the economy on July 6 at 2 p.m. EDT over Twitter for what is being billed as the first Twitter town hall. Those interested in asking him a question can use the hashtag #AskObama and follow @townhall to hear his answers.

While we don't yet know how the president will choose which questions he answers or how long the tweeting session will last, check out Twitter's special page dedicated to the event for more information.

This isn't the first time the president and other politicians have reached out to constituents via interactive social media. President Obama has previously done a Facebook town hall and delivers weekly addresses via YouTube, and Republican presidential candidates will hold a debate on Twitter in late July. The president will even be issuing tweets himself occasionally on @BarackObama, signing his tweets with "-BO."

For more information on Twitter, check out our guide on how to get started, as well as a run down on some of the different apps you can use to help keep track of what happens on the social media service.

(Source)

Post by Adam Holisky

Founder of TwitPic tweets his run-in with the law via his own Twitter photo-sharing service (Yahoo! News)

Twitpic founder Noah Everett shows off Twitter indiscretion at its finest

A single errant tweet may have cost a prominent politician his job this month, but one high-profile Twitter user opted to live-tweet an indiscretion to top that — his own arrest. Late last night, TwitPic founder Noah Everett found himself in a run-in with the law for apparently going on a moonlit walk with no shirt on. Naturally, he tweeted the whole thing and posted a photo from the back of the police car over his own photo-sharing service.

Everett first sent the missive "Getting arrested...in the back of a cop car now" followed by the siren-lit TwitPic as self-proclaimed proof. Happily, Everett was only having a little good, arguably-clean fun; he later revealed the reason for his arrest: "...I guess you can't walk down your own street half naked...who knew - I got a free ride home by the nice police officer."

TwitPic is a service that lets Twitter users upload photos and share them across their respective micro-blogging universes, for better or worse. Of course, not all of TwitPic's applications are quite as silly as Everett's late-night adventure. The instant visual sharing afforded by such services has inspired a wave of global citizen journalism and social media-fueled uprisings — most notably, the ouster of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak earlier this year.

Update: According to a set of new tweets from Everett, he wasn't arrested at all, merely detained briefly and questioned.

Twitter via Mashable