Capitol Police Eyes React to Ludic Onion Tweets

The Onion’s Twitter stream suffered from an expected spate of unpopularity today, which was unexpected even considering its eponymous etiology. The cause of the stink? The strong-arming of Washington, D.C. police into investigating successive “Breaking News” tweets made by the satirical newspaper. The tweets, hashtagged #CongressHostage, asserted that members of Congress were demanding $12 trillion in exchange for the return to safety of 12 schoolchildren they had taken hostage. Many found the satire to be lacking good literary form and, more generally, thought the joke to be unfunny.

People wondered if The Onion’s Twitter account had been hacked and some living in the District of Columbia even called the police to inquire about the tweeting commotion. The men (and women) in blue issued a formal statement to reassure the public that the tweeted assertions were false and that an investigation into the postings had been started.

The gem that started the ruckus was: “BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building.” “BREAKING: Capitol building being evacuated. 12 children held hostage by group of armed congressmen #CongressHostage,” quickly followed it.

The reaction of @MrMcLeez was quoted in The Washington Post: “I work at the Capitol and I just yelled at my coworkers that there was gunfire… you scared the [expletive] out of me #fakenewsscares.”

Commentators cut the folks in the District much slack for their humorless reactions given that that the less aggressively satirical news outlets had been reporting about the apprehension of man suspected of planning an attack on the Pentagon and Capitol with explosives-carrying remote-controlled airplanes.

Read More:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/the-onion-tweets-screams-and-gunfire–wheres-the-humor/2011/09/29/gIQASpCI7K_blog.html

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/the-onions-hostage-tweets-draw-scrutiny/

Congressional Bi-Partisan Caucus Throws the Book at Facebook

Is Facebook tracking you without lawful permission? The co-Chairs of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Caucus seem to think so. The concerned and chairing congressmen are Ed Markey, from Massachusetts and Joe Barton, from Texas — their political persuasions correspond to well-established national topoi of northern and southern states.

Jointly, they’ve signed and sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission requesting that an investigation be made into Facebook’s practice of “gathering information about the websites its users visited even after users logged out of Facebook.”

The Democrat and Republican made reference to Nik Cubrilovic with their “Australian technology blogger” shout-out and went on to say:

We believe that an investigation of Facebook tracking its users even after they log out falls within the FTC’s mandate as stipulated in Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act with respect to protecting Americans from “unfair and deceptive acts or practices.”

Subsequent to his calling foul, Nik Cubrilovic has accepted that Facebook has taken measures to mend the problem of tracking user activities after they’ve logged out. In his own words he’s said: “Over the course of the past 48 hours since that post was published we have researched the issue further and have been in constant contact with Facebook on working out solutions and clarifying behavior on the site.”

Read More:

http://markey.house.gov/docs/ftc_facebook_letter_09.28.11.pdf

http://nikcub.appspot.com/facebook-fixes-logout-issue-explains-cookies

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/09/ftc-facebook-cookies-log-out.html

Backlash to Facebook’s Awesome Timeline

Around the start of summer, Facebook brass kept commenting about a “something awesome” that would soon be unveiled. Well, as of yesterday everybody knows what the social network’s most awe-inspiring launch to date is: the FB Timeline. It seemed media watchers couldn’t keep pace with the torrent of positive feelings and thoughts that were too awkwardly lurching their way to their keyboards and screens.

Nevertheless, amid all the high-fiving and heart-felt hurrahs, some couldn’t help spelling out a few apprehensions about Timeline. At AllthingsD, Kara Swisher wrote about the “creepy” factor of a “cradle to grave” online profile/existence. She also ruminated about the consequences of having a detailed visualization of one’s entire existence available for self- and public-scrutiny throughout the extent of one’s life, and even beyond it.

Most of the rather mild backlash centers around Facebook’s unexamined aim to provoke ever greater sharing from its users. With Timeline, FB users will be updating friends in real time about such ordinarily minor things as listening to a song or watching a TV show. Taken instance by instance, the action is minor, but the accumulated storing, over time, of every such action is something major — for users, for Facebook, and for advertisers.

Besides the perhaps steeper-than-thought fee that Facebook may be extracting from its “free” service, writer Maura Johnston also griped (a little) about the complexities of tying up “technology” with “persona.”

Read More:

http://allthingsd.com/20110923/from-cradle-to-well-you-know-the-creepy-factor-of-facebooks-timeline/

http://maura.tumblr.com/post/10548489653/on-facebook-privacy-and-the-hindered-development-of

Twitter’s Coattails Extend With Arrival of Paid Political Ads

Everybody knows that despite this year’s Weiner scandal, Twitter is still really big with politicians as it is with all the usual talking heads — apparently 80 percent of Congress tweets. Twitter honchos have undoubtedly known as much for a while, and that’s why it makes so much sense for them to open up their platform to purchased political advertising. Politicians’ ads are relevant to the Twitter readership and the company needs the cash. The first paid-for political ad on Twitter appeared this week: a “promoted tweet” for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign that ran on Wednesday, September 21st.

Contrary to what would be expected, there seems to be no need to summon any bracing fortitude in preparation for an overwhelming campaign onslaught on your Twitter stream, at least not yet. Leadership at Twitter seems to be intent on introducing advertising in as an intrusive a way as possible. Adam Bain, the company’s president of global revenue was quoted in Politico, where the takeaway of his comments was found to be that Twitter did not wanting to look like it was “cash[ing] in on its massive popularity and cultural cachet,” on account to the advertising. Bonus points for that. Political ads on Twitter will be marked with a purple checkmark and hovering over them will produce a political disclosure.

Read More:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63985.html#ixzz1Yj2sWZyt

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/09/twitter-begins-selling-political-advertising.html

Facebook announces new changes, including Timeline

Today at Facebook F8 conference, which is a conference held by Facebook for developers, Mark Zuckerberg and gang showed off some new upcoing features of facebook, including something called a Timeline and also features for Music and Movies. The conference was held in San Franciscio with around 2000 attendees.

The Timeline feature will basically provide a new view of your page, which will have on it’s right panel a chrononical time graph, which your visitors can click on to see what updates you have done in teh past.

They are also making some changes to teh LIKE button. Zuckerberg said Facebook will now let users connect to things even if they don’t want to “like” them.

“We are making it so you can connect to anything you want. Now you don’t have to like a book, you can just read a book,” he said. “You don’t have to like a movie; you can just watch a movie.”

TechCrunch just published an article on how to enable the TIMELINE feature right now. However, they noted that this feature is currently good for developers and could still be a little buggy. Here is a link to the article:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/22/how-to-enable-facebook-timeline/

How not to get banned by Twitter

Ever think back to that time you had finally settled on a winning first tweet for your long-before opened Twitter account but when you tried to log in to post you realized that your account had been suspended? What was that? you asked then, before briskly deciding on another sparkling and witty Twitter handle. Having chosen to proceed with the posting of your long-brooded-over tweet, perhaps at the time you didn’t feel especially put upon by that first brush with a Twitter suspension. However, with a flourishing Twitter marketing account, you might not like to think that some unsuspecting and careless mistake might bring forth another account closure. Here’s what to do so the next time you go to tweet you don’t find out that your account, or a smarty-pants nom de net, that’s been snatched away.

First off, do everything you can to adhere to the rules and regulations established by the DMCA, which is no rap group, but 1998’s very seriously minded Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And, yes, it’s quite the tallish pile of papers to read, but it’ll keep you in the clear of many unpleasantries related to copyright violations. Eeek!

Next piece of advice: there are a number of marketing methods and practices that can be easily mistaken for spamming, which, being the big no-no that it is, should be avoided at all costs. If Twitter suspects your account of spamming it will close it down, there’s no doubt about that, so stay away from promoting methodologies that produce outcomes with too-strong a semblance to spam.

The third recommendation is to keep prudence in mind when you meddle with another attribute of your Twitter account that is being monitored: your rate of Following and Unfollowing. Circumspection is recommended because any actions in the matter that are too blatantly sudden, like unfollowing thousands of users with a few hours, or days, may lead to your account being shut down. It is a heavy(ish) open-hand that Twitter wields so take care it does not strike down on you or your projects.

Finally, the updates you make should not consist solely of links. Bald links are never good. If you want to post many links, you can do so, but make sure to personalize them with tidbits that characterize them as belonging to, or at least originating from, a real person and not a robot.

Read More:

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2011/09/01/dropping-the-banhammer-on-twitter.aspx

Facebook Introduces Subscribe Button

If you haven’t noticed already, Facebook has added to its suite of features the Subscribe button, a new way for users to filter exactly what they see in their News Feed. Mainly geared toward people with a lot of friends, the new tool allows users to select the information they see from friends in the News Feed, view posts from people who are not friends, and allow people who are not friends to view their posts.

Although the default News Feed provides “most updates” from friends, users can now choose to see “all updates” or “important updates only.” With the Subscribe button, users can also narrow down the type of updates they see, such as only photographs from one friend, and no complaints from another.

However, the most interesting part of the new feature is that users can now subscribe to hear from people they’re not friends with, such as celebrities, artists and journalists. As long as they see a Subscribe button on another person’s profile, they can select the button to begin receiving updates in the News Feed. If users want to share their public posts with more than just friends, they can simply add the Subscribe button to their profile. Facebook members who subscribe to them will receive updates the user selects as “Public.”

So what does this mean for Facebook’s similar offering, Pages? According to the social networking site, the new Subscribe button allows users to maintain a single profile, instead of two separate ones. Luckily, those who have a Page and a Profile can merge the two instead of starting over with the Subscription feature.

The new feature is opt-in only.

Read more:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/14/facebook-launches-twitter-like-subscriptions-lets-you-share-with-unlimited-users/

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150280039742131

Google+ Now Available to All

Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of engineering, today took to the company’s official blog to post about Google+’s newest added features, numbered 92-100, respectively. The biggest news out of his rather longish list was really the 100th: as of now, anybody who wants one can sign up for a Google+ account, that’s with or without an invitation from a peer with more social media diligence.

If Google is really intent about catching up with Facebook’s accumulated 750 million users, opening its social network to everyone is a move in the right direction because unlatching the floodgates is bound to do much in terms of bridging the remaining gulf.

Also announced were a Google+ search feature, new tools for screen sharing, shared doodling, and a rattle of tweaks for Hangouts — these last can now be named, accessed through mobile phones, and recorded and broadcast live. The fresh cherry on top is that Hangouts APIs have also been released. Google+ has been out for less than 90 days, so all this amounts to more than one daily improvement that’s been introduced since day número uno.

Gundotra’s post also touched on Google’s newfangled — and still challenging — focus: “bring[ing] the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software.”

Read More:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/google-opens-up-to-all-comers/?ref=technology

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/google-92-93-94-95-96-97-98-99-100.html

Twitter Web Analytics, Finally Here

Twitter Web Analytics has arrived. If you have a website, you can use this new tool to gauge in more fine detail the volume and type of traffic that Twitter is generating for you. Likewise, everybody with a Tweet button will be able to better understand the benefits that integration is supplying them with.

If you want to thank somebody for this godsend of an herramienta (Spanish word of the day = tool), say thank you to Twitter itself and its savvy acquisition of BlackType back in July. Together, they were able to make this recent rollout possible.

According to Christopher Golda, a developer at Twitter, Twitter Web Analytics will:

• Understand how much your website content is being shared across the Twitter network
• See the amount of traffic Twitter sends to your site
• Measure the effectiveness of your Tweet Button integration

While it’s still in its pilot stage, the tool will be available for use by all sometime in the coming weeks. Golda also announced that developers should continue to expect the eventual release of Web Analytics API so that they can integrate “Twitter data in their products.” It was about time arithmetic joined in the twittering fun!

Read More:

http://mashable.com/2011/09/13/twitter-web-analtyics

https://dev.twitter.com/blog/introducing-twitter-web-analytics

Facebook’s IPO Not Until Late 2012?

This week the Financial Times reported that Facebook’s will not have its initial public offering until late 2012. The FT cited sources close to the company in the report for the scoop, but all that was obtained from Larry Yu, Facebook’s spokesperson, was: “As is our typical practice, we just don’t get into speculation about an IPO.”

Although there are apparently some 200 companies sitting on their IPO start time because of the uncertain market, it seems that what’s prompting the delay is CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s desire to keep his team “focus[ed] on developing products” instead of on “collecting an IPO payout.”

Financial watchers expect there to be a “frenzy” like the one last seen when Google went public in 2004.The private markets are currently giving Facebook a valuation that hovers at $80 billion and investors are ready to buy Facebook shares, clearly. Even without any help from the public markets, Facebook was able to come up with $1 billion.

This January Facebook’s number of shareholders went beyond 500, which is a threshold set by the Securities and Exchange Commission: once that number is passed, companies must open up financial results within a short, specified timeframe. Previous calculations had set Facebook’s IPO date for April 2012. Seems investors will have to wait a bit longer.

Read More:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/2b842146-dec3-11e0-a228-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1XybpqE00

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