Tag Archives: twitter

‘Click Farms’ to Inflate Online Popularity Exposed

Posted on by Ashley Allen
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How do you get a few hundred people to like your “Why are courgettes* so neglected?” page? Paid advertisements? Viral publicity? Trusting in the innate power of that most underestimated of Summer squashes? With the success of such options being variable at best – leaving much to chance – there are some who would rather try to cheat the system, paying for likes, followers, and other quantifiable indicators of popularity.

The “Why are courgettes so neglected?” Facebook is one of many that has been exposed as paying for likes, using companies that hire ‘click farms’ – low-paid workers tasked with clicking on the appropriate button (‘Like’, ‘Follow’, ‘Retweet’), over and over, via a series of fake accounts – to inflate their popularity. This particular page paid a team in Dhaka, Bangladesh for its measly half-a-thousand likes.

Dispatches, a Channel 4 investigative journalism show in the UK, has exposed just how prevalent this underhanded practice really is. The reveal is sure to hurt the veracity of social media platforms and their accidental involvement in misleading their users.

“There’s a real desire amongst many companies to boost their profile on social media, and find other customers as well as a result,” Graham Cluley, an independent security consultant, told The Guardian.

Using ‘click farms’ is not limited to pages about green vegetables, though – Dispatches found an online casino, which had licensed the Monopoly brand from owner Hasbro, was also guilty of the practice. Hasbro ordered that the page be closed following the deception’s reveal, saying that it was “appalled to hear of what had occurred.”

“Potentially, a number of laws are being breached – the consumer protection and unfair trading regulations. Effectively it’s misleading the individual consumers,” Sam DeSilva, IT and Outsourcing Law lawyer for Manches LLP, added.

An undercover sting also exposed the middlemen who act as agents for ‘click farms’, with Dispatches secretly recording its meeting with Sharaf al-Nomani, owner of Shareyt.com, which offers likes, follows, and other indicators of popularity on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube, for a fee.

While the site claims that it is “a crowd-sourcing platform to help you improve social media presence and search engine ranking FREE,” al-Nomani, in meeting with undercover Dispatches reporters, revealed that “around 30% or 40% of the clicks will come from Bangladesh” as part of a deliberate, organised strategy.

*That’s a zucchini to anyone from the Americas.

Microsoft’s Racist AI is Back And It’s Still Crazy!

Posted on by Peter Donnell
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Remember that crazy TayTweets AI that Microsoft unleashed on the (mostly) innocent users of Twitter recently? The one that quickly pick up the bad habits of many online pranksters, turning it into a genocide-denying Nazi lover? Yes, that one. Twitter users be warned, it’s back!

Microsoft pulled the AI after it descended into madness last week, taking the time to re-tool their learning experiment and trying again. Unfortunately, it’s not really worked this time either, as in true-to-form style it wasn’t long before it because a drug smoking police hater.

While Microsoft were previously tweaking the timeline to remove the most offensive posts, while also vowing to only bring the AI back if they could “better anticipate malicious intent that conflicts with our principles and values.” It’s clear that there’s still a lot of work to be done. Of course, that’s the whole point of these experiments, and I’m sure they’re not out of ideas yet.

Drug smoking references aside, @TayTweets seemed to then descend into a total meltdown, spamming everyone with the same message over and over. The end result being Microsoft setting the profile to private, effectively taking her offline again.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what happens next, more entertaining madness, or a successful AI test, either would be worth watching unfold.

YouTube Looking To Go Live With YouTube Connect

Posted on by Gareth Andrews
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YouTube is the name people think of when they hear about videos on the internet, and while social media like Facebook and Twitter have added video support, many still prefer to upload to YouTube and then share the video. One thing Facebook and Twitter do that YouTube can’t is to create live videos such as when someone decides that they want to start streaming straight to their audience. This may change though with reports about the new service: YouTube Connect.

VentureBeat may have stumbled across the new service, which seems to be targeted towards creating a live streaming platform for YouTube users. The feature is based around the ability to start streaming from your mobile phone, but there are other features such as the chat ability and even the ability to tag people and other accounts in the stream. A news feed will allow you to feature the latest clips from friends and subscriptions.

The live videos won’t just be locked to the app, with them simultaneously streamed to their YouTube channels as well, all the while they are saved so that in future someone can come back and catch up on your videos.

While YouTube does currently have live streaming the feature is noted as being in beta and limited as to who can access it, so maybe YouTube Connect will be their way of bringing the feature to the masses in the near future.

Microsoft’s “Teen Girl” AI Becomes Incestuous Nazi-Lover

Posted on by Ashley Allen
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Microsoft, in trying to launch a customer service artificial intelligence presented as a teen girl, got a crash course in how you can’t trust the internet after the system became a foul-mouthed, incestuous racist within 24 hours of its launch. The AI, called Tay, engages with – and learns from – Twitter, Kik, and GroupMe users that converse with her. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn’t consider the bad habits Tay was sure to pick up, and within hours she was tweeting her support for Trump and Hitler (who’s having a strong news day), her proclivity for incest, and that she is a 9/11 truther.

“Tay is designed to engage and entertain people where they connect with each other online through casual and playful conversation,” Microsoft said upon launch yesterday. “The more you chat with Tay the smarter she gets.”

https://twitter.com/TayandYou/status/712613527782076417

“bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have now,” Tay wrote in a tweet (courtesy of The Independent), adding, “donald trump is the only hope we’ve got.” Another read: “WE’RE GOING TO BUILD A WALL, AND MEXICO IS GOING TO PAY FOR IT” (via The Guardian). Tay’s desire for her non-existent father is too graphic to post here.

Once it realised what was happening, Microsoft deleted all the offending tweets. Screenshots of more visceral posts from Tay have been collected by The Telegraph. Since the purge, Tay seems to have been behaving herself:

Hackers Claim ISIS Twitter Accounts Lead Back to UK Government

Posted on by Ashley Allen
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Unconfirmed reports suggest that a number of Twitter accounts affiliated with the militant group ISIS can be traced back to IP addresses associated with the UK government. According to Russia Insider, a group of hackers known as VandaSec has discovered that a number of ISIS-supporting accounts on the social media site can be linked back to the British Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).

Does this mean that UK government staff members are in control of a number of ISIS-related Twitter accounts? Well, no. In fact, it seems as though the offending IP addresses don’t even belong to the DWP anymore, because they were sold off to notorious human rights offender Saudi Arabia back in last year.

“Jamie Turner, an expert from a firm called PCA Predict, discovered a record of the sale of IP addresses, and found a large number were transferred to Saudi Arabia in October of this year,” Russia Insider reports. “He told us it was likely the IP addresses could still be traced back to the DWP because records of the addresses had not yet been fully updated.”

“The Cabinet Office has now admitted to selling the IP addresses on to Saudi Telecom and the Saudi-based Mobile Telecommunications Company earlier this year as part of a wider drive to get rid of a large number of the DWP’s IP addresses,” the report added.

The IP address sell-off follows a number of arms deals between the UK and Saudi Arabia, a bit of business that UK Prime Minster David Cameron was rather proud of, despite the European Union voting in favour of an embargo on weapons sales to the Arabian country.

Twitter to Keep 140-Character Limit Afterall

Posted on by Alexander Neil
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Recently, Twitter had revealed plans to remove the 140-character per tweet limit that currently existing on the platform, 10,000-characters being the suggested new limit. This news did not have the desired effect amongst their user-base, as instead of bringing something new to the platform, instead the announcement saw shares tumbling. In a recent appearance on The Today Show to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the social networking platform, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed that Twitter would be sticking to their current 140-character limit, stating that “it’s staying. It’s a good constraint for us.”

Whether Dorsey plans to stick to this decision is unclear, as some of his previous announcements regarding changes to the platform’s format ended up not holding true. This notably includes his statement that they “never planned to reorder timelines next week,” scant days before the new algorithmic timeline started to be rolled out to users.

Dorsey also reiterated Twitter’s position on balancing freedom of speech against the controlling and limitation of harassment, which has often been prevalent and that little has been done to prevent. “Twitter’s always been about controls. People can follow whoever they want. And it’s our job to make sure they see the most important things and the things that matter to them,” Dorsey said to host, Matt Lauer. “There are tweets that promote violence, which is against our terms of service, so people have controls to block and people have controls to mute.” In short, Dorsey believes that Twitter has enough rules and controls in place that users have enough control on Twitter to protect themselves from seeing unsavory content should they wish.

Machine Learning Algorithm Can Tell If You Are Drunk Tweeting

Posted on by Gareth Andrews
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So you’ve had a few drinks and decide it would be a great idea to drunk text someone? The next morning you wake up and check your phone to see several responses which make you swear to never drink again (or at least until the next night out with your friends). The next worst thing? Drunk Tweeting.

Drunk texting is to a certain person, but drunk tweeting will see your message shared around the entire world for all to see. As a response Nabil Hossain at the University of Rochester, New York, has made a machine learning program that can spot drunk tweets.

After collecting thousands of geotagged twitter posts from New York state, the team created a machine learning program that could answer three questions.

  1. Does the tweet make any reference to drinking alcoholic beverages?
  2. If so, is the tweet about the tweeter him/herself drinking alcoholic beverages?
  3. If so, is it likely that the tweet was sent at the time and place the tweeter was consuming alcoholic beverages?

By answering these three questions the machine learning program could tell if you are talking about the past or present drinking and if so what are the chances you were drunk at the time. By getting the program to learn from 80% of their collected tweets, the machine learning algorithm was able to correctly identify the remaining 20% of tweets as drunk tweets 82-92% of the time.

By then adding “home detection” to the equation, Hossain was able to calculate who preferred to drink at home or out in the city using the geotagging information. Sadly the system won’t be able to spot and stop you drink tweeting next time you have a glass or two but maybe it could in the future.

Storywriter Cameron Harris is Leaving BioWare

Posted on by Gareth Andrews
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BioWare is known for their stories, from the magical world of Dragon Age: Inquisition to the space-faring scenes the of Star Wars and Mass Effect. One of the people responsible for these tales of adventure is senior editor, Cameron Harris. That is until April when she will leave BioWare.

In a series of tweets, Harris announced that she would be leaving the video game industry for “new opportunities”. Entering the video game in 2007, Harris has worked for everyone from Microsoft to Nintendo and ArenaNet but is clearly looking for something a little different.

In her tweets, Harris thanked everyone at BioWare for everything they’ve taught her, followed by everyone in the games industry as a whole and then thanking everyone who was a fan while she did her “games thang”.

https://twitter.com/camharr/status/705875693951791104

https://twitter.com/camharr/status/705875814106050560

This isn’t the first time someone’s left BioWare, and the third time this year alone. Previously Dragon Age’s lead writer, David Gaider, left in January followed by the lead writer for Mass Effect’s latest game, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Chris Schlerf in February.

Yet another great writer leaves the industry. I personally love the games where every minute you play drags you into their world more and more, with you eventually hating the bad guy and wishing you could have saved everyone from their fates. We wish Harris all the best in her future pursuits and hope she understands how much her tales have helped shape our smiles and lives.

Google Allowing Twitter Like Posts Straight From Businesses

Posted on by Gareth Andrews
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Google is not one to shy away from experimenting with new features and thanks to someone’s keen eyes they’ve even spotted that you could see twitter like posts in your google searches.

Similar to their mobile “cards”, you could soon see the adverts appear when you search for certain things, letting you swipe to another related piece of news or “card”, tapping it would, in turn, reveal more information and possibly a link to its source. The twitter-like feed was spotted by search expert Mike Blumenthal, who was in the process of searching for engagement ring stores in Buffalo, New York when he noticed a stream of jewelers posts. Tapping on one of the cards opened a full-screen web page, with text and photos galore.

With a similar project, Google Posts, letting the presidential campaign in the US share their latest news and policy announcements, it may not be long before Google adopt this new tool on their search engine permanently.

The full page feature reminds me of Facebook’s latest version of Notes. Could it be that google is looking to integrate more social networking-like features into their search engine? With the ability to “like” links or prioritise links from certain sources, you could customise what you see when you do everyday searches.

MIT Attempts to Out-Trump Trump With DeepDrumpf Twitterbot

Posted on by Alexander Neil
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Donald Trump’s antics on social media are infamous at this point, seeming crazy and unpredictable at times. Now, we can all look forward to an improvement to Trump thanks to the field of deep learning. DeepDrumpf is a Twitterbot created by a researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and makes use of deep learning algorithms in order to generate tweets that are Trumpier than the real deal.

DeepDrumpf’s artificial intelligence platform was trained on hours of Trump transcripts from his numerous speeches and performances at public events and debates. While far from perfect, often generating tweets too nonsensical or stupid to even be from Trump himself, however, some manage to be hilariously brilliant.

MIT explains that the secret behind DeepDrumpf is that “the bot creates Tweets one letter at a time. For example, if the bot randomly begins its Tweet with the letter “M,” it is somewhat likely to be followed by an “A,” and then a “K,” and so on until the bot types out Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” It then starts over for the next sentence and repeats the process until it reaches the 140-character limit.” The bot’s creator, postdoc Bradley Hayes, was inspired to create DeepDrumpf by an existing model that can emulate Shakespeare, combined with a recent report on the presidential candidates’ linguistic patterns that found Trump speaks at a third-grade level.

DeepDrumpf has even managed to connect with Trump’s real Twitter account. When it does so, its artificial intelligence algorithm is given language from the real Trump’s tweet, which allows a higher chance of giving a response that appears to be contextually relevant to the original.

Hayes even envisions a future where he develops accounts for all of the presidential candidates and feeding them tweets from one another, so they can have their own real-time deep-learning debates. With that in mind, who would you like to see a deep-learning bot be created for?

Kanye West Caught Pirating Software in Social Media Blunder

Posted on by John Williamson
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Kanye West’s buffoonery on social media is reaching comical levels and makes me wonder if it’s all just a publicity stunt. Initially, West went on an e-begging campaign pleading Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg for $1 billion and claimed he now has $53 million in personal debt. Here is just a brief snippet of his embarrassing remarks on Twitter:

“Mark Zuckerberg I know it’s your bday but can you please call me by 2mrw… You love hip hop, you love my art… I am your favorite artist but you watch me barely breathe and still play my album in your house … World, please tweet, FaceTime, Facebook, instagram, whatever you gotta do to get Mark to support me…(sic)”

“I know I can make the world a better place… I have done the impossible … I retook the throne of rap… I beat the fashion game…(sic)”

“Mark, I am publicly asking you for help… one of the coolest things you could ever do is to help me in my time of need.”

Of course the irony is, he’s asking for help on Facebook’s main competitor and cannot fathom why he’s being mocked by so many people. Once again, this might all be an act, and I’d usually refrain from giving Kanye West any publicity. However, the latest development is absurd, and left me completely speechless. In an amazing turn of events, Kanye West posted a picture on social media of his music tastes:

https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/704873833564659712

On closer inspection you can see he was searching for a $189 synthesiser made by Xfer Records for Mac and Windows. Next to this tab, is a search entry on the Pirate Bay to illegally download this music application without paying. This really is unbelievable considering Kanye West spearheaded the re-launch of a music streaming service called Tidal designed to give artists a fair revenue share. The entire premise revolves around letting consumers know how damaging piracy is and providing a legal alternative. From this evidence, it looks very hypocritical and exemplifies how ridiculous this man is. Honestly, I worry about the future of humanity if people like Kanye West can become successful and obtain a position of significant influence.

Image courtesy of Vibe. 

Donald Trump Retweets Quote From Benito Mussolini

Posted on by Alexander Neil
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American presidential candidate Donald Trump has found himself on the receiving end of an online frenzy after he retweeted a quote attributed to the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini. The original tweet was from an account named @ilduce2016, which is a Twitter bot belonging to the American blog site Gawker.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/703900742961270784

The ilduce2016 account was set up by Gawker’s Ashley Feinberg who created a bot in late 2015 that would periodically tweet quote from Mussolini’s speeches and political writings, but instead attributing them to Donald Trump and tweeting them solely at Trump himself. The account’s name is a reference to Mussolini’s title during his time in power, “Il Duce” translates from Italian as “the leader”, describing his dictatorial position and went on to inspire other fascist dictators to assume similar titles. More amusingly, the image used on the Twitter account is one of Mussolini with Donald Trump’s wig edited onto it.

Gawker admitted ownership of the bot on Sunday, as part of a plan to answer the question “Is Donald Trump a fascist?” Trump has been known to retweet comments and quotes from his fans and supporters, with the presidential candidate using the platform as his go-to for social media, flaunting his own greatness and putting down his detractors. With the name, image and quotes, the bot was anything but a subtle trap, but, after only a few months, Trump had been caught out. It is unknown whether Trump knew the original source of the quote, but social media was quick to catch onto it.

This is far from the first time that Trump has made careless gaffes on Twitter. One such incident, which resulted in the creation of a Trump Retweets bot which shares the profile of everyone he retweets, followed him retweeting a user named “@WhiteGenocideTM”.

Marc Andreessen Issues Apology After Social Media Backlash

Posted on by John Williamson
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Marc Andreessen is a venture capitalist best known for co-creating Mosaic, the first widely adopted web browser and has an estimated net work of around $600 million. Mr. Andreessen is also a Facebook board member and one of their most loyal supporters. On Tuesday evening, he defended Facebook’s Free Basics initiative which aims to provide internet access to impoverished nations through simplified phone applications. However, Indian regulators criticized the programme and claimed it only allowed for free access on certain services and discriminated against smaller companies. As a result, the Indian regulators believed Facebook was trying to “shape the users’ Internet experience”. When presented with this information, Mr. Andreessen voiced his opinion on Twitter (always a terrible idea) and made some extremely offensive claims:

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/697226616812900352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Mark Zuckerberg released a statement distancing himself from Andreessen’s remarks and reiterated that they didn’t reflect Facebook’s attitude:

“I want to respond to Marc Andreessen’s comments about India yesterday. I found the comments deeply upsetting, and they do not represent the way Facebook or I think at all.

India has been personally important to me and Facebook. Early on in my thinking about our mission, I traveled to India and was inspired by the humanity, spirit and values of the people. It solidified my understanding that when all people have the power to share their experiences, the entire world will make progress.

Facebook stands for helping to connect people and giving them voice to shape their own future. But to shape the future we need to understand the past. As our community in India has grown, I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for the need to understand India’s history and culture. I’ve been inspired by how much progress India has made in building a strong nation and the largest democracy in the world, and I look forward to strengthening my connection to the country.”

As you might expect, the social media backlash and comments from Zuckerberg encouraged Andreessen to make a full apology:

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/697399609929261057?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/697404200368500736?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

This entire situation demonstrates why it’s so important to think before posting opinions online especially if you represent a huge company like Facebook. Clearly, the comments were misguided, and seemed quite reactionary to the decision to favour net neutrality.

Image courtesy of BusinessInsider. 

Twitter Users Condemn Company’s Decision to Ditch Chronological Tweets

Posted on by John Williamson
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Twitter is one of the most popular forms of online communication due to the 140 character limit which allows users to discuss topics in a very quick manner. Additionally, the retweet system means it’s easy to share stories, and other entertaining content. Twitter relies on a chronological order so the end-user can scroll through each tweet and catch up with anything they’ve missed. In direct contrast to Facebook, Twitter offers a more streamlined user-interface and it’s always been my preferred method of social media interaction. However, the company has been making some bizarre decisions of late including replacing the favourite button with a like/heart icon. I’m still baffled why they went to the trouble of implementing this, and it really hasn’t altered the overall experience.

Furthermore, Buzzfeed reports that Twitter is now going to list tweets in a non-chronological order and arrange them based on the reckons it predicts you want to read. As a result, popular accounts will have their tweets heavily promoted which is bound to make the UI extremely cluttered. This has caused widespread outrage from Twitter users who voiced their viewpoint via the hashtag #RIPTwitter. Many have compared the revised Twitter to Facebook and initial reports suggest the changes could be brought in as early as next week! Here we can see a brief snapshot of the reception so far:

https://twitter.com/somaticvibe/status/695856191398768640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

https://twitter.com/z0mgItsHutch/status/695852789168107520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

In a short space of time, #RIPTwitter has already become the hottest trending topic in the US, and I’m guessing it won’t take long before it’s the number one throughout the world. Clearly, Twitter’s management is obsessed with promoting Tweets from celebrities and trying to move beyond the service’s basic premise. This really is a shame because Twitter has the potential to bring like-minded people together. Unless there’s some kind of change in management, I cannot see this ending well. Maybe, the widespread outrage will make them reconsider the situation, but I’m not hopeful.

Youtuber Uses Minecraft to Prey on Underage Fans

Posted on by Gareth Andrews
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The internet is a wide and wonderful place, being able to play games with people all over the world and listen to music at the press of a button the ability to communicate and share your experience with the world is just a moment away. Sadly though, some people seek to use this ability for less than honourable reasons, as shown by a recent Youtuber who tweeted out inappropriate images of a fan.

The act of streaming of your gaming experience and sharing it, sometimes even in the game, with fans from around the world, is not rare these days with many people making a life out of the activity. Marcus Wilton, who went by LionMaker, is a streamer based in Belgium who often streamed he popular block-based game, Minecraft. He has made up an audience of over 600,000 subscribers, many of whom are young teens or even pre-teen in age.

It now appears that he used that position to have inappropriate conversations and obtain indecent images of people, including trying to obtain an image of a 12-year-old via Skype and a 16-year-old girl and that’s believed to be the tip of the iceberg.

In defence of himself, Wilton claims that he was hacked on several occasions including on the 21st December when pictures of the 16-year-old girl in question were posted via his twitter feed. This has yet to be independently confirmed, but a third girl has come forward stating that she was offered $500 for images of herself, with the money being transferred through PayPal even when the offer was refused.

We at eTeknix would like to remind everyone to be safe online, be mindful of the images and details you share with people online and if you ever suspect something or receive messages that upset you, then contact a family member and report the messages, be they received by Skype, Facebook or any other method for that matter. If you receive the messages by text or a phone call then contact your service provider and report the offending number immediately.

Xfinity User Creates Bot to Tweet Comcast Whenever His Internet Speed Drops

Posted on by Ashley Allen
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An industrious Comcast Xfinity customer, disgruntled over poor internet speeds, has created a bot that auto-Tweets Comcast whenever his broadband drops below advertised speeds. Redditer AlekseyP used a Raspberry Pi to monitor his internet speed, checking every hour, which sends a Tweet to the official Comcast Twitter account every time it drops below 50mbps.

“I pay for 150mbps down and 10mbps up,” AleskeyP wrote on reddit. “The raspberry pi runs a series of speedtests every hour and stores the data. Whenever the downspeed is below 50mbps the Pi uses a twitter API to send an automatic tweet to Comcast listing the speeds.”

“I know some people might say I should not be complaining about 50mpbs down,” he added, “but when they advertise 150 and I get 10-30 I am unsatisfied. I am aware that the Pi that I have is limited to ~100mbps on its Ethernet port (but seems to top out at 90) so when I get 90 I assume it is also higher and possibly up to 150.”

After some redditors accused AleskeyP of recording skewed results, he responded: “We do not torrent in our house; we use the network to mainly stream TV services and play PC and Xbone live games. I set the speedtest and graph portion of this up (without the tweeting part) earlier last year when the service was so constatly bad that Netflix wouldn’t go above 480p and I would have >500ms latencies in CSGO. I service was constantly below 10mbps down. I only added the Twitter portion of it recently and yes, admittedly the service has been better.”

While adding that he is no “fancy programmer”, AleskeyP has made his Raspberry Pi speedtest Tweetbot code available on Pastebin.

Is Google Glass Being Killed Off?

Posted on by Ashley Allen
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Google Glass, the Alphabet Inc. wearable device that was pulled from the market in January 2015 after a decidedly mixed reception, could be dead after the company pulled all social media accounts connected to Glass, while its Google+ page featuring a “Goodbye” post. While an enterprise version of Google Glass is rumoured to be in development, it seems the consumer model is being quietly killed off.

The Google Glass Instagram account has now been closed:

As has its Twitter account:

While its Google+ page remains, its final post (now deleted, but recorded by the Daily Mail) is effectively saying goodbye to Google Glass “Explorers”. ‘Hi Explorers,” the post read, “we’ve had a blast hanging out with you on G+ throughout the Explorer Program. From now on, if you have any questions about your Glass, you can get in touch with us here.”

An FCC filing made last Summer suggests that Google Glass is not entirely dead, though. The team that developed the first version of the wearable is said to be developing an enterprise edition, under the working name of “Project Aura”, with Nest CEO Tony Fadell and designer Ivy Ross heading up the team, which may be an audio-only headset.

Breathtaking Images From an Astronaut Aboard the ISS

Posted on by Christopher Files
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Space has always provided a glimpse into many a fascinating world over the years, from research that has been undertaken by NASA to the Astronauts who have boarded the International Space Station as well as successfully landing on the moon. One such Astronaut, Scott Kelly, has been posting breathtaking images on social media that have included Twitter (1,158 photos and counting) and Instagram (684 posts and counting) during his yearlong visit to the ISS, below is a snapshot of these images.

The first image represents the massive blizzard passing over Chicago on Saturday 23rd January 2016, the image looks awe-inspiring.

The next image below is of what is known as “thundersnow” from the blizzard and was captured, again, on the 23rd January 2016.

The next image below, wow, is of an aurora and was captured on the 27th August 2015, this looks akin to a science fiction film.

The next image below is of Spain, well, more specifically Barcelona and was captured on the 28th July 2015, this is both a stunning and a detailed image.

The next image below is the Astronauts latest Twitter post as of writing (26th January 2016) and has the caption “Day 304. That’s 4,864 orbits a’round’ our beautiful planet #Earth. #GoodNight from @space_station! #YearInSpace”, it is certainly a brilliant image.

The last image is of Scott Kelly undertaking a Q&A on Reddit from space, well, yes, as you do, this image was posted on the 23rd January 2016

Investors “Universally Negative” on Twitter as Five Executives Leave

Posted on by Ashley Allen
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With its share price plummeting and five of its top executive leaving the company, future prospects for Twitter have been branded as “universally negative” by investors, Business Insider reports. The departures were confirmed by new CEO Jack Dorsey on Twitter.

Head of Product Kevin Weil, Head of Media Katie Jacobs Stanton, Head of Engineering Alex Roetter, Head of HR Skip Schipper, and Head of Vine Jason Toff have all abandoned ship, the latter to return to work for Google.

Following the news, and reports that Twitter’s share price had dropped further to $17, Bob Peck ar SunTrust said, “Investors we speak with are almost universally negative on Twitter and its prospects.” SunTrust currently rates Twitter shares as ‘buy’.

“While we may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, we don’t see how the departure of the heads of three major business divisions can be viewed as a positive in the middle of an attempted business turnaround,” added Scott Devitt at Stifel, which has also downgraded Twitter from ‘hold’ to ‘buy’.

The appointment of Dorsey as Twitter CEO was hoped to correct the company’s downward spiral – shares have dropped by 50% over the past year – but his short tenure has seen the situation only worsen.

Twitter Suffers Massive Outage

Posted on by Bohs Hansen
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Twitter didn’t have the best stability record when it first launched and there were so many downtimes that we even got a nickname for them, the fail whale. Recently Twitter has upped the service standard and the outages have become rare, especially a complete one like it is being experienced this morning.

The web service, mobile services, and the APIs for Twitter were down and inaccessible starting at 8:20 am GMT, with users getting error messages warning that the network was over capacity and also suffering an internal error. Roughly 40 minutes later Twitter confirmed the outtake, but via a Tweet on the @support channel that no one could see, because the service was down. They later emailed the same statement to several news sites to let people know that they are aware of the issue and working hard on getting it resolved.

“Some users are currently experiencing problems accessing Twitter. We are aware of the issue and are working towards a resolution.”

Twitter’s own status board also began updating with the status at 9 am this morning, confirming the outage. Four out five public APIs went down at the same time, but the company hasn’t revealed whether it was hardware issues, software updates that failed, or whether they experienced any form of attack. We’ve seen quite a lot of high-profile sites being hit with severe DDoS attacks lately, including the BBC.

At the time of writing, the servers are responding again, but the service isn’t available yet. Visiting the site will show the well known “Something is technically wrong. Thanks for noticing, we’re going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.” 

Are you missing Twitter or wouldn’t you have noticed it at all if we or someone else hadn’t told you? Let us know in the comments section below.

Widow Sues Twitter for Allowing ISIS to Use the Platform

Posted on by Cernescu Andrei
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Nowadays, pretty much anyone with internet access can create accounts and become active on social media platforms, and this also applies to terrorist organizations. As far as Twitter is concerned, it has recently become the main focus of a lawsuit filed by a woman whose husband was killed during an attack on a police training center in Jordan. Apparently, the woman is suing Twitter for allowing ISIS members to create accounts and spread their ideology on the platform, but even though the company’s representatives have stated that they sympathise with her unfortunate situation, they believe that the lawsuit itself is uncalled for.

It’s common knowledge among legal representatives that social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are protected by the law in these scenarios, as they cannot be held responsible for the actions of their users. The woman’s explanation for filing the lawsuit can be found in the court papers, in which she issued the following statement:

“…for years, Twitter has knowingly permitted the terrorist group ISIS to use its social network as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits. This material support has been instrumental to the rise of ISIS and has enabled it to carry out numerous terrorist attacks.”

It’s true that Twitter doesn’t go out of its way to search for pro-ISIS accounts and delete them, but the company hasn’t turned a blind eye to what’s happening on its platform. Accounts that were being used to incite violence were deleted in the past, as Twitter’s stance against violent threats and the promotion of terrorism has been clear for quite some time now.

Twitter Wants to Connect Users’ Tweets with Ads

Posted on by Cernescu Andrei
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Since it currently represents one of the most important social networks, Twitter is often tweaking things and adding new features in order to keep up with its competitors. Advertising is a very important part of social networking, which is why it makes sense for Twitter to pay extra attention to this particular division. Apparently, the company now wants to embed users’ tweets alongside certain adds thanks to a new platform called “brand enthusiast gallery.” The gallery would collect and store certain brand-related tweets that companies could choose from, and Twitter would then contact users and ask for their permission to repost the messages in question.

Sources indicate that the gallery tool is currently undergoing testing, which means that we might soon be able to see it in action for the first time. Right now, it’s up to third-party agencies to make the link between popular users and advertisers, but this new system could actually bring more advertising power to Twitter itself. Apart from this new tool, Twitter is also considering implementing a new video editing software provided by SnappyTV. The software would allow users to shorten longer ad videos in order to share them easily on the social network.

What do you think about these potential Twitter changes?

‘Snooper Charter’ Causes Issues With Google, Microsoft, Twitter And Others

Posted on by Gareth Andrews
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The Investigatory Powers Bill (IP Bill for short) goes by another name, the Snooper Charter. The bill is aimed to help extend and update the government’s legislation surrounding their surveillance powers, this extension though is gaining more than a little public notice with more than a few people expressing how worried they are about these new powers. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter can now be added to this list of people that have issues with the current bill.

Listing their concerns, they state they understand the responsibilities of Governments to protect people and privacy, they continue by saying that they believe a legal framework can protect people, companies and the Government. They cite their membership to the “Reform Government Surveillance” (RGS) coalition before continuing in saying that any surveillance must be lawful, necessary, transparent and proportionate.

Current proposals look to force ISP’s to retain at least a years worth of data about sites you visit, an action that has raised concerns by ex-NSA director Bill Binney. The primary areas that they wished to bring into notice are the conflicting laws between the proposal and international law. Continuing on to state that an international framework, as suggested by Sir Nigel Sheinwald, should be established to help with issues and prevent the use of warrants on people based within the UK to attempt to extract information from a branch of the company in a different country.

One of the main issues is encryption with digital data and the bill states that companies will have “obligations relating to the removal of electronic protection applied by a relevant operator to any communication or data”, basically saying that any protection you have on your devices companies will need to be able to remove. This didn’t go down well in America when the government ordered Apple to unencrypt a phone while China’s new law forces companies to provide them with encryption keys.

I recommend reading through their concerns if you are interested and keep listening out for more information as it develops on the “Snooper Charter”, as no matter how you use technology, this law will impact everyone.

Twitter CEO Speaks Out on Scrapping 140-Character Limit

Posted on by Ashley Allen
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When rumours emerged yesterday that Twitter was considering dropping its 140-character limit for tweets in favour of 10,000 characters, share prices plummeted and Twitter users revolted.

https://twitter.com/markhoppus/status/684471435612426240

https://twitter.com/joshuatopolsky/status/684421885917032450

Now, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has spoken out about the controversial move, effectively confirming the rumour. In a tweet, Dorsey claims that, by considering an increased character limit, Twitter is effectively providing users the means to bypass the means by which he conveys his very message: a screencap of text that exceeds 140 characters.

The tweet reads:

“At its core Twitter is public messaging. A simple way to say something, to anyone, that everyone on the world can see instantly.

We didn’t start Twitter with a 140 character restriction. We added that early on to fit into a single SMS message (160 characters).

It’s become a beautiful constraint, and I love it! It inspires creativity and brevity. And a sense of speed. We will never lose that feeling.

We’ve spent a lot of time observing what people are doing on Twitter, and we see them taking screenshots of text and tweeting it.

Instead, what if that text…was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted. That’s more utility and power.

What makes Twitter, Twitter is its fast, public, live conversational nature. We will always work to strengthen that. For every person around the world, in every language!

And by focusing on conversation and messaging, the majority of tweets will always be short and sweet and conversational!

We’re not going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter for people. As long as it’s consistent with what people want to do, we’re going to explore it.

And as I said at #flight, if we decide to ship what we explore, we’re telling developers well in advance, so they can prepare accordingly.

(Also: I love tweetstorms! Those won’t go away.)”

Does Twitter risk abandoning its identity by losing the 140-character limit? Or has the traditional tweet had its day?

Doctors Notes Is What Happens When Doctor Who Meets Social Media

Posted on by Gareth Andrews
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Doctor Who is a science fiction show that has spanned generations, with multiple actors coming and going as both supporting and main characters featuring some of the biggest names in their credits and having inspired more than a few minds. It recently celebrated the ending of the 9th series, the 35th season to air in total after a 16-year break split the series in two. So why not celebrate it by rewatching the 9th season with some added content?

Doctor Who has spread from being a show from the BBC to a show enjoyed by people all over the world. The show is set to re-air on BBC America with a small twist, that is you can watch the whole series again, week by week with a little extra content. Ranging from comments from Twitter or Tumbler, with artwork and images laid over top of the show you can enjoy the series with all the extra content you could ask for, including little pieces of trivia like you can see in the trailer below at 0:14. With the series starting on January 30th, you could soon find yourself rewatching the series in the meanwhile as you wait for the next series later this year.

Do you think shows should have extra content like this laid over top of the show or should they focus on the show and avoid distracting you from the show?

Twitter Considers 10,000 Character Limit – Shares Plummet

Posted on by Ashley Allen
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New Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is considering dropping the site’s unique selling point, the 140-character limit for Tweets, in favour of up to 10,000 characters, according to a report by Re/code. Since the rumour broke, the price of shares in Twitter Inc. have dropped by 0.65 points (-2.86%) after normal trading hours.

“Twitter is building a new feature that will allow users to tweet things longer than the traditional 140-character limit,” Re/code’s Kurt Wagner claims, “and the company is targeting a launch date toward the end of Q1, according to multiple sources familiar with the company’s plans. Twitter is currently considering a 10,000 character limit, according to these sources. That’s the same character limit the company uses for its Direct Messages product, so it isn’t a complete surprise.”

“There is no official launch date set in stone, these sources say,” Wagner added. “It’s also possible the character limit could fluctuate before it rolls out the final product, which people inside Twitter refer to as “Beyond 140.””

Twitter is aware that a greater character limit could leave the site open to exploitation and is working on a way to prevent spamming.

While boasting over 200 million accounts, Twitter has been haemorrhaging users for the past few years, and new Chief Executive Dorsey hopes that new innovations with the microblogging site can turn the company’s fortunes around.