Twitter remains quiet about OurMine attack on its CEO’s account
Early Saturday morning the team that has been breaking into high-profile social media accounts managed to temporarily hijack Twitter accounts for the CEOs of Yahoo and Twitter. Despite repeated requests from Engadget, Twitter has not commented on the incident and Jack Dorsey has not tweeted about it. Twitter’s Trust & Info Security Officer Michael Coates did take time to refute a claim made by the OurMine hackers, after they posted a screenshot they claimed proves Vine has access to its users passwords.
We securely store our passwords per industry best practice (bcrypt).
— Michael Coates ஃ (@_mwc) July 9, 2016
According to Coates, on Vine “the admin site is restricted to Twitter IPs, is https, and never shows passwords in any form.” OurMine claims they only took it from Dorsey’s Dropbox, but as ZDNet points out, some of the info in the capture suggests it’s just a fake. We still don’t know exactly what hole the group used to tweet from @Jack, but check the post from Saturday for some tips on what you should do to be as secure as possible.
Twitter will livestream the Democratic and Republican conventions
Twitter isn’t limiting its livestreaming to major sporting events. The social network has revealed that it will stream both the Democratic and Republican national conventions, which respectively start on July 25th and July 18th. The coverage (technically provided by CBSN) will be available through both the web and Twitter’s official mobile apps, and won’t require an account to start watching.
Like it or not, the events themselves may well be foregone conclusions when both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have enough delegates to clinch their nominations. However, this is still a big deal. Many people are likely to turn to Twitter to comment on the conventions — now, they can watch it in the same place. Twitter is no doubt using this to reel in some sorely needed new users, but it’ll help everyone if it widens exposure to the electoral process.
Via: Wired
Source: CBS News
Twitter code determines the most exciting goals of Euro 2016
The just-finished Euro 2016 tournament had its share of exciting goals, but how do you decide which ones were the most thrilling? If you’re Twitter, you leave it up to code. The social service has posted an interactive chart that shows the most exciting goals from the football/soccer tourney as judged by a peak detection algorithm sifting through tweets. It didn’t just count the sheer number of tweets in response to a goal, either — each goal counts as a percentage of a game’s tweets, so group stage matches carry as much weight as those from the knockout rounds.
Using those criteria, the results aren’t entirely what you’d expect. While late goals were more likely to have people on the edge of their seats, it wasn’t necessarily the game-clinchers or big teams that had everyone enthralled. Éder’s tournament-winning goal for Portugal produced only middling excitement. The most captivating goals were from underdogs like Northern Ireland (during its first win in a major tournament), Wales (in its quarter-final victory over Belgium) and Iceland (when it stunned Austria in the group stages). We’re sure that some human fans would beg to differ with the findings, but they’re still worth a look if you’re curious about how your favorite moment stacks up.
Source: Twitter Interactive, Twitter Blog
Twitter kicks off live sports streaming with Wimbledon
Twitter paid a reported $10 million for the rights to live stream NFL broadcasts, and now we have an idea as to what that will look like. The social network is now livecasting its first live sports event, Wimbledon, using an ESPN feed. The company emphasized, however, that it’s using the world’s most popular tennis tournament as a trial run. “This livestream is an extremely early and incomplete test experience, and we’ll be making lots of improvements before we launch it in its final form,” the company said in a statement to Recode.
That said, the quality of the stream looks good, as several Twitter users have observed (a frame grab is shown above). For now, though, it’s just a basic feed accompanied by the #Wimbledon Twitter stream. While Twitter intends to sell ads for its NFL livestreams, there are no signs of them for Wimbledon, either in the video or feed beside it. The stream doesn’t appear to be geolocked for now, either, because it’s working fine for me here in France.
Live @ Wimbledon – Day 9. Watch LIVE now: https://t.co/JI7WEdvcQQ … #Wimbledon
— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 6, 2016
Twitter hasn’t said how much its paying Wimbledon or ESPN to broadcast the feed. While it’s an unusual place to catch sports, folks love to tweet during sporting events and even shows like Game of Thrones, so it makes some sense to have the video in the same place. Anyway, the social network needs to try different things, because despite having hundreds of millions of users, it’s still losing money.
Source: Twitter
Social networks need to be more like online forums
Social networks are the modern day watering holes for the internet. But back in the ’90s, I didn’t have Twitter and Facebook. Instead, my destination was the online forum, a site where I could discuss a variety of topics in the form of posted messages (hence the term “message board”). Be it a bulletin board system (BBS) or a Usenet news group, these message boards were my first introduction to the social web. They’re still around today of course, but I’ve largely stopped using these forums in favor of the aforementioned social networks. But there is one thing I do miss about them: a sense of community.
When I first hooked up my computer to a dial-up modem in 1997, it was a revelation. See, I was a lonely nerdy girl in a small Southeast Asian country. But through the magic of the internet, I stumbled onto a world where I was no longer alone. I came upon online discussion groups, which offered me the chance to interact with like-minded people. Some were local, while others indulged in my interest in comic books, Conan O’Brien and MTV’s Daria. These were places where my thoughts and opinions mattered, where I was no longer just a quiet, meek face in a crowd. Soon, I found new friends, several of whom lived tens of thousands of miles away. I eventually met a few of them in real life, fostering friendships that last to this day.
On Twitter, however, I am just one of many voices. While I can certainly use it to keep abreast of what’s going on in the world, that feeling of being a part of a community is diluted. Sure, I can joke around with friends but it’s a lot harder to make new ones and connect with people outside of your immediate circle. After all, no one can see you tweet if you have no followers.
Most message boards have some kind of Newbie forum or an Introduction stickie where newcomers can wade in, but on Twitter, it’s often up to you to branch out and make first contact with specific people. Even Facebook is really only beneficial if you already have a network of existing friends. Of course, it’s also a lot harder to keep away from nasty trolls and spammers on Twitter compared to a message board that’s moderated.
And this, right here, is the problem. On the face of it, it seems that both message boards and social networks bring people together. But social media isn’t about building communities; it’s about sharing your thoughts with the world. Unfortunately, this often just means shouting into the void. Instead of a place where your thoughts and opinions matter, social media is where you need to fight to get your voice heard. This creates a culture of one upsmanship where the popular get more popular, the obnoxious get louder and people are vulnerable to hate.
If Twitter and Facebook want to start earning more goodwill, they need to do more than just tweak their algorithms. They need to start building communities too.
[Image credits: Getty]
Twitter launches Dashboard app for small business accounts
To help business owners connect with their fans and soothe angry patrons, Twitter is launching yet another stand-alone app with a specific audience in mind. Twitter Dashboard is the social network’s attempt to streamline engagement for business accounts, whose users probably have better things to do than babysitting their mentions or constantly searching their own name.
Dashboard lives both in a web and iOS version, and includes features that have popped up in other Twitter products in the past. In both versions, Twitter guides you through a quick process to create a custom “About You” feed tailored to show tweets about your company or business (or personal brand, as the case may be). The feed takes into account what type of business you’re running (say a restaurant or an art gallery), then combines @-mentions and keyword searches to find people talking about your brand, even if they don’t tag your handle directly. In addition to a tweet scheduling feature and a reconfigured analytics page, Dashboard also offers tips so business owners who might be new to Twitter can get the most engagement out of their tweets.
At this point, Twitter’s app ecosystem is starting to look a little fractured with the standard Twitter app, Tweetdeck for the power users and Engage for the celebrities. But, more than anything, the app lineup speaks to the range of different ways in which people actually use the social network.
Twitter confirms it’s launching an AR division with new hire
Following its acquisition of Magic Pony earlier this month, Twitter confirmed to me on Tuesday that it had hired Alessandro Sabatelli as its new Director of VR and AR. He will head up the Augmented Reality team within Twitter Cortex, the company’s upstart machine-learning division.
Sabatelli used to be a UI designer at Apple and is credited with helping create the iTunes visualizer. He has also worked with IXOMOXI, a startup focusing on developing contextual overlays for AR and VR systems.
The additions of Sabatelli and Magic Pony, which is now also part of the Cortex division, bode well for Twitter. Sabatelli’s expertise with visual overlays combined with Magic Pony’s data compression patents could lead to fuller, more immersive content — think streaming 3D Periscope videos or a virtual Twitter client — without defenestrating your monthly mobile data allocation.
Source: Upload VR
Brad Neely’s weird Adult Swim cartoon premieres on Vine
Adult Swim is consistently debuting new shows season after season, but usually not on Vine, right? That’s why the fact that China, IL creator Brad Neely’s Harg Nallin Sclopio Peepio is available on the network is such an interesting change. Neely’s upcoming comedy show can be found via one six-second clip that looks like any other Vine at first, but when you click on it a full version of the 10-minute episode is available (all thanks to the service’s new rules for “select publishers.”)
Adult Swim is all about pushing the boundaries when it comes to both content and the way it’s delivered (especially the topics covered within) so this definitely doesn’t come as much of a surprise. If anything, it’s welcome — we get to check out what Neely’s been up to after the insane and hilarious China, IL.
The full show is debuting on Adult Swim on July 10th, but if you want to check it out right now, it’s available here.
Here’s a full episode of my new show for adult swim.
It airs July 10. https://t.co/daYnv1zuYp
— Brad Neely (@bradneely) June 27, 2016
Via: The Verge
Twitter’s searchable stickers can add pizzazz to your photos
Post a lot of photos to Twitter but feel like they’re lacking something? Twitter’s changing that with today’s announcement of #Stickers, which will let you spice up your pictures with props, emoji and more.
Soon, you’ll be able to pick and choose various “stickers” you can place on photos you upload to the service. Whether you’re showing your support for a cause or need to dress up your family pet, you’ll likely want more engagements with each tweet, and stickers look like an interesting way to do it.
Coming soon! Unleash your creativity by adding fun #Stickers to your photos on Twitter: https://t.co/Ph92Oivyhy pic.twitter.com/NZoM6nHenD
— Twitter (@twitter) June 27, 2016
When you tweet out a photo that utilizes stickers, your photo will become searchable via hashtag. This will allow users to search specific sticker hashtags to see how other Twitter denizens used certain stickers for effect on their own timelines.
Connect your photos to the world with a visual spin on hashtags: tap #Stickers to peel back a fun new way to search. pic.twitter.com/YVy7r53Nja
— Twitter (@twitter) June 27, 2016
Twitter spent some time testing these photo augments some time ago, but the company has officially adopted the feature and will be rolling it out over the next few weeks for anyone using Twitter on iOS and Android.
Source: Twitter
Twitter Announces New ‘Stickers’ Feature With Visual Search Options
Following in the footsteps of a few changes and additions to its social networking features, Twitter today announced that a new photo-enhancing suite of stickers will be coming to iOS and Android users “over the next few weeks.” The update will let users place Twitter’s custom “rotating sets of stickers” onto any photo — along with the hundreds of emojis offered on iOS and Android — to personalize a picture before posting it on Twitter.
Image via TechCrunch
Similar to Snapchat, and the enhanced additions coming to Messages, users will be able to place multiple stickers on one photo, resize and rotate them, and show support for a timely cause or big event in entertainment with stickers that will only last for a short period of time.
In addition, stickers will be searchable “in a new, visual spin on the hashtag,” letting you click on a sticker in any Tweet and see similar trending pictures related to your photo. To do this, the company said that tapping on any sticker in a picture will reveal a new timeline, “where you can see how people all over the world use that sticker in different ways.”
Coming soon! Unleash your creativity by adding fun #Stickers to your photos on Twitter: https://t.co/Ph92Oivyhy pic.twitter.com/NZoM6nHenD
— Twitter (@twitter) June 27, 2016
Although no specific release window was given, the company said the rollout for stickers on iOS and Android would be completed over the next few weeks. A version of the sticker service will be headed to Twitter.com as well.
Tag: Twitter
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