The Associated Press is running sponsored tweets as part of a deal with Samsung during the Consumer Electronics Show. While this is allowed under Twitter’s rules, it also clearly threatens the network’s future as an advertising medium. How long will it allow this to continue? Read more »
As Twitter becomes an increasingly global media entity — and one that controls its own platform — it is running into demands from governments in countries like France and Germany to censor or block access to certain kinds of speech. How will it respond? Read more »
It’s official: you can now download all your old tweets. What does mean? In the short, a trip down memory lane but, in the long term, a rich cultural treasure. Read more at GigaOM »
In an acknowledgement of the growing importance of the “second screen” for TV watchers, Nielsen is unveiling a new set of ratings that will measure a given show’s popularity on Twitter. Read more at GigaOM »
Instagram says it is removing the ability for Twitter to embed photos because it wants users to go to its own website instead of Twitter’s to see that content. Other media companies should probably also be asking themselves similar questions about their relationship with Twitter. Read more at GigaOM »
Prismatic, a San Francisco-based startup that uses machine-learning algorithms to recommend news and other content to users based on their social activity, has raised a $15-million Series A round from a star-studded group of investors including Accel Partners and Russian investor Yuri Milner. Read more at GigaOM »
After critics accused its new Jerusalem bureau chief of making inappropriate comments about the Middle East on Twitter and Facebook, the New York Times has appointed a senior editor review her posts — but this robs social media of the power it has when used for journalism. Read more at GigaOM »
A study of Black Friday cyber-shopping said that social media advertising was a big bust with few people buying things in response to an ad from Facebook. The story is very different if you use other metrics to define “responded.” Read more at GigaOM »
New forms of media are often disruptive to existing forms, but Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says that his network is complementary to traditional forms like television, because it adds the kind of real-time discussion we associate with the town square or the “pulse of the planet.” Read more at GigaOM »
Twitter has been restricting the ways in which external services can use its API, and has also said that it plans to launch curation tools for journalists — both of which could potentially affect Storify’s future. But co-founder Burt Herman says the company isn’t afraid. Read more at GigaOM »
In the past, information flow during a military campaign was mostly controlled by the armies involved, but now that everyone has the ability to publish and distribute data including photos and videos, it changes the nature of attacks like the latest Israeli campaign against Hamas. Read more at GigaOM »
Being falsely accused of a crime like child abuse is a traumatic experience that has become worse with social media. Two recent incidents in the US and UK highlight the problems — and show America’s approach to libel works better in the age of Twitter. Read more at GigaOM »
Social media chatter claiming incorrectly that a British politician was a pedophile has proven a far-reaching scandal in the UK — and one of the rare times that the network has self-corrected a lie. Is this a new dawn? Don’t get your hopes up. Read more at GigaOM »
Israel is waging war on Hamas, but it is also waging an information war using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other tools. How firmly do these networks support the principle of free speech, and how do they decide what content to permit and what to remove? Read more at GigaOM »
How does it change the way we perceive a war when the armies involved become media entities — publishing their own live news reports, uploading photos and videos and even live-tweeting their attacks as they happen? The Israeli army has started doing just that. Read more at GigaOM »
Some prominent users of Facebook such as billionaire sports-team owner Mark Cuban are complaining that the social network wants to charge them to reach their users with marketing messages — but shouldn’t it be fairly obvious that this was part of Facebook’s plan all along? Read more at GigaOM »
Fake Twitter accounts for Nate Silver, Diane Sawyer and Mitt Romney offered humorous moments on election night — but one day they may also be important sources for political historians. Read more at GigaOM »
Twitter has changed the way it responds to DMCA copyright notices. Rather than removing tweets, it is “withdrawing” them instead. This helps show when and why tweets go missing, and also brings new transparency to the DMCA process. Read more at GigaOM »
An MIT researcher says he has created an algorithm that can identify Twitter trends hours before the service can itself. If the algorithm works as he says, it could help Twitter — and many more companies — make a lot of money. Read more at GigaOM »
A New York man who used Twitter to send fake news reports during Hurricane Sandy is one of the city’s biggest jerks. But should he also face criminal charges? Read more at GigaOM »
Critics of social media like to focus on how much fake news gets circulated during events like Hurricane Sandy, but Twitter and other services are also quick to correct those kinds of reports, and have become part of an expanding ecosystem of real-time news. Read more at GigaOM »
Journalists like Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward have questioned whether social media or the web have anything to contribute to journalism, but the case of Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong shows alternative sources like blogs and Twitter can play a powerful role in breaking news. Read more at GigaOM »
The folks at News.me closed their doors to future iOS downloads on Wednesday, saying they would no longer attempt to compete with Twitter in the curation space as the social network closes down on third-party requirements. In other words, another Twitter app bites the dust. Read more at GigaOM »
Posting to Twitter from someone’s funeral might be seen as inappropriate, but to me it seemed like the perfect way to honor my friend — and it also allowed others to feel as though they were part of the ceremony even though they couldn’t be there. Read more at GigaOM »
First Reddit and now Twitter have had to confront issues related to freedom of speech recently, and decide which way they are going to go when it comes to protecting it. As social media becomes more mainstream, such battles will likely become more frequent. Read more at GigaOM »
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says the most powerful feature of Twitter is the way it can show us what others watching the same event are thinking, and that the best use of this feature is as a companion to a televised event like the Olympics. Read more at GigaOM »
Your hunches about the Twitter population are probably correct. A new study by an analytics firm of 36 million users confirms some assumptions but also present some intriguing facts about ordinary Twitter users. Read more at GigaOM »
This week’s flap over Big Bird shows how unexpected digital media events can provide companies with amazing advertising opportunities — so long as they are nimble enough to make and buy ads in a matter of hours. Read more »
The debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney was the most tweeted-about event in U.S. political history — but is the kind of real-time commentary and instant analysis that Twitter provides a good thing or a bad thing for the political process or society as a whole? Read more at GigaOM »
Prismatic founder Bradford Cross doesn’t come from a traditional media background — he is a data scientist who specializes in machine learning — but what he is doing with content recommendations says a lot about how the media business is evolving and what the future might look like. Read more at GigaOM »
New research from the Pew Center into news consumption habits shows that the impact of mobile and social continues to grow. Almost twice as many users got news from a mobile device compared with 2010, and almost three times as many got news from a social network. Read more at GigaOM »
News that Neil Young is on Twitter led thousands of exultant fans to follow him. It’s too bad, then, that Young appears to have nothing to do with the account. The fake hype reflects badly on both the company and the musician. Read more at GigaOM »
Former executives from the NBA and the NFL say that teams and leagues should encourage players to use Twitter — even if some foreseeable headaches occur. The marketing benefits are worth it and the number of gaffes may subside as players get used to the medium. Read more at GigaOM »
The ability to distribute real-time information through social networks like Twitter is a powerful thing, but a new study points out that one of the downsides of this phenomenon is the fact that much of the content that gets linked to eventually disappears. Read more at GigaOM »
News-filtering service Prismatic has just launched a new “friend following” feature. Although this may look like a social-networking copycat move, founder Brad Cross says it is all about increasing the amount of data the service has about its users so that it can make relevant recommendations. Read more at GigaOM »
Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo announced a major redesign to the site that puts media and photographs front and center. The company also launched a new iPad design. Read more at GigaOM »
Twitter has argued that it doesn’t own a user’s tweets, but at the same time the company wants to control what users do with their content so that it can monetize the network. There’s an inherent conflict there that is becoming increasingly difficult for Twitter to avoid. Read more at GigaOM »
If you think fake online reviews are bad now, just wait a few years. Gartner predicts that in two to three years, 10 to 15 percent of all online reviews will be bought and paid for by businesses. Read more at GigaOM »
Despite all the gloom in the newspaper business, which he says will likely still have to suffer more pain and possible bankruptcies, New York Times media writer David Carr says he believes that thanks to the internet we are living in a “golden age for journalism.” Read more at GigaOM »
A New York judge who has been disciplined in the past for misusing social media today forced Twitter to turn over the tweets of one of its users. The surrender serves to undercut Twitter’s right to appeal part of the closely watched social media case. Read more at GigaOM »
