Twitter sees a big increase in account info requests

Law enforcement agencies are making social media part of more and more investigations these days, based on Twitter’s latest transparency report. Between January 1st and June 30th this year, the company saw a 52 percent increase in account information requests (affecting 78 percent more Twitter, Vine and Periscope users) compared to the second half of 2014. Majority (56 percent, to be precise) of those came from the US, followed by Japan, Turkey and the UK, and only 12 percent came from non-government parties. Out of the 4,363 total number of requests, the microblogging website complied and provided info for 58 percent of them.

In addition to more instances of account info scrutiny, the transparency report also revealed that the company received 26 percent more removal requests this period compared to June to December 2014. Twitter got 442 court orders and 561 more takedown requests from government agencies, most of which came from Turkey and Russia. Many of these notices were filed based on defamation and violation of personal rights, but Twitter filed legal objections when it could and tried not to comply with the ones that limit free speech.

The social network’s latest report also includes less interesting details like email privacy practices and trademark notices, which you can read on the same transparency portal. But if you’d rather get your hands on those juicy government takedown memos, you can check out Chilling Effects, where the company continues to upload them where the public can see. Just do a search for “Twitter,” and you’ll get quite a number of results.

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Misc

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Twitter (1), (2)

Tags: social, SocialNetworking, transparencyreport, twitter

Retailers’ Apple Pay rival is ready for testing, three years later

Merchant Customer Exchange is an alliance of several of the US’ biggest retailers and restaurants, including Wal-Mart and Target, aimed at bringing mobile payments under their own control — and not by tying themselves to a particular tech company. Public tests will finally start in Ohio in the coming weeks, according to the WSJ‘s sources. Crucially, or hilariously, the tests will start not long after MCX loses its exclusivity deal with retailers. That’s why some of them didn’t pick up Apple Pay when it launched.

Commitment to MCX isn’t particularly strong: Rite Aid said it was would start accepting Apple Pay, as well as Android Pay, starting August 15th. In April, Best Buy, one of MCX’s founding retailers, said it had plans to take Apple Pay later this year. CurrentC, as MCX plans to call it, links mobile payments to checking accounts, gift cards or private debit and credit cards directly, sidestepping credit card surcharges and fees. Old-school style, a code on your phone is scanned to pay. This could be important: some retailers, including Wal-Mart, haven’t installed the wireless terminals necessary to use either Apple or Google’s payment methods.

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Internet

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WSJ

Tags: applepay, bestbuy, currentc, MCE, MCX, mobilepayments, riteaid, target, walmart

Wildcard launches a slick news app you might actually use

Here’s the evolution of mobile news reading in a nutshell: First there were browsers; then RSS readers; and eventually we saw a slew of news reading apps like Flipboard, Feedly and Nuzzle that aimed to make it easier to discover and read news. Now Wildcard, an iPhone app that previously tried to turn the entire internet into mobile-friendly cards, is stepping up the mobile news game with its latest version. Like the competition it also highlights breaking news based on your preferences, and it also takes into account what your Twitter friends share. But it has a few big advantages. It’s simply gorgeous, with an interface that feels perfectly suited to browsing on your phone; and it also features some helpful editorial curation. After testing, and giving up on, plenty of news apps over the years, Wildcard stands out for one reason: It actually makes me want to read more news. Slideshow-311827

At the core of the Wildcard experience is the notion of mobile cards, small blocks of information that are easy to browse on your phone. It’s something we first saw on Palm’s Web OS devices, but it’s also come back into fashion on Twitter, Pinterest and services like Google Now. While the original Wildcard app tried to tackle both mobile web browsing and commerce, the new version is now focused entirely on news. The company had developed an intriguing way to replicate mobile shopping with its earlier app, but according to Khoi Vinh, Wildcard’s VP of user experience, nobody was using it.

The Wildcard home screen is fairly simple: Featured stories up top, and a collection of recent stories below. For now, the app gives you curated news and also algorithmically determines stories that you might like. You can also connect it to your Twitter account to get even more personalized results. Tapping into a card either opens up the story in a mobile web browser view, or you can choose to view it as a stripped down card. For bigger stories, there are also collections of cards to help you contextualize the entire story.

For example, the card for Hillary Clinton’s recently announced college affordability plan has a card collection featuring a Bloomberg post at the top, as well as content from other outlets below. The editorial team has also added additional context for the story between some of the cards, and the app pulls in related tweets and stories at the bottom of the card collection. Altogether, Wildcard allows you to choose how deep you go into understanding a story. You could just browse the card summaries and interstitial snippets, or dive into each post for the fully story.

It’s sort of like a balance between the now defunct mobile news app Circa and a traditional news reader. You can also save cards for reading offline, similar to Instapaper or Pocket, or choose to receive notifications when there are updates to stories you’ve read.

“There are not many experiences that can give you satisfaction in the two minutes you’re waiting in line, as well as the two hours driving to the beach,” Wildcard CEO Jordan Cooper said.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/135979630

While its functionally useful, Wildcard’s design also makes it fun to use. The app teaches you how to use it with a slick onboarding tutorial, and simply moving around the app and tapping into cards has a polished feel. It’s clear that a lot of thought went into practically every design element of Wildcard (Vinh detailed his design process on his blog).

One thing I’ve learned after testing dozens of news apps is that they mostly come down to personal preference. Wildcard’s selection of news and slick interface appeals to my own aesthetic, as well as my disdain for being overloaded with a ton of stories to read. If you demand instant access to entire RSS feeds full of stories, there are plenty of other apps for that. But Wildcard proves you can build a solid news reading experience with some tasteful curation and solid design.

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Mobile

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Source:
Wildcard (iTunes)

Tags: apps, JordanCooper, KhoiVinh, mobilepostcross, news, Wildcard

User accounts are now available on sports app theScore

Popular sports app theScore, is sending out an update today that will allow users to create personalized accounts. The account will allow users to synchronize their favorite leagues, teams, and players across multiple devices.

• Synchronize your favorite leagues, teams and players and alert settings across multiple devices.

• Save these settings so they follow you everywhere – invaluable if you change devices and don’t want to start personalizing again from scratch.

In addition to these new features, theScore will now give the option to suggest leagues and teams you may be interested in based on your location or when you like something on Facebook if you use social sign-in.

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Source: theScore

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