MEDIAPOST - Jan 13 - 53% of Americans get their news from social media at least some of the time, but an increasing percentage of them feel it is making them more confused about current events. That's the finding of a new report from the Pew Research Center, which has been tracking Americans' use of social media for news for several years. The report suggests that social media is becoming a less reliable source of news for many Americans. Not surprisingly, Facebook is the primary social media source of news, with 36% of Americans citing it the social network as a "regular source" for news, followed by YouTube (23%), Twitter (15%), Instagram (11%), Reddit (6%), Snapchat (4%), LinkedIn (4%), TikTok (3%), WhatsApp (3%), Twitch (1%) and Tumblr (1%).
456 posts categorized "Twitter"
Report Finds Many Americans Rely on Social Media for News
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Twitter Acquires Social Podcasting App Breaker
TECH CRUNCH - Jan 6 - Twitter has acquired the social broadcasting app Breaker (founded in 2016). The deal will see Breaker's team joining Twitter to help "improve the health of the public conversation" on the service, as well as work on Twitter's new audio-based networking project, Twitter Spaces. The Breaker app, however, will shut down on January 15, 2021. According to Leah Culver's tweet as the CEO of Breaker, she'll be joining Twitter with a focus on Twitter Spaces, Twitter’s audio-based social networking product, and Clubhouse rival. Spaces lets Twitter users chat in real-time using voice instead of text.
by Sarah Perez & Alex Wilhelm
See full article at Tech Crunch
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Google and Snap in Talks To Invest in India's ShareChat
TECH CRUNCH - Jan 5 - ShareChat, a Bangalore-based social network that added Twitter as an investor in 2019, is in advanced stages of talks to raise money from Google and Snap, as well as several existing investors, including Twitter, three sources familiar with the matter. ShareChat has raised about $264 million to date and was valued at nearly $700 million last year. Ankush Sachdeva, co-founder, and chief executive of ShareChat, said the app was growing "exponentially" and that users were spending, on average, ~30 mins on the app each day. If the deal goes through, it would be the first investment from Snapchat's parent company into an Indian startup.
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Twitter Confirms Periscope Is to Close
APPLE MAGAZINE - Dec 17 - Twitter has confirmed that its live-streaming platform Periscope, which it acquired back in 2015, will be shuttered in March 2021, with its core features being baked into Twitter itself. Twitter took ownership of Periscope at the same time as the app was named App of the Year by Apple, and though the company has enjoyed some success with the platform, it's now an "unsustainable" business model, and the company plans to close it and transition any remaining Periscope-exclusive features over to the main Twitter app.
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Twitter Acquires and Then Shuts Down Screen-Sharing Social App Squad
THE TECH PORTAL - Dec 14 - Twitter acquired Squad, a screen sharing social app. This acquisition doesn't include the Squad app, but just the co-founders of Squad being CEO Esther Crawford and CTO Ethan Sutin, and the rest of the team. Instead, the company has announced that with the acquisition, the app shut down on Dec 12. "Squad's talented team, led by Esther Crawford and Ethan Sutin, bring a deep understanding of how people engage in interactive audio and video conversations - an important pillar in the spectrum of conversations we seek to serve on Twitter," said Twitter's vice president of product Ilya Brown in a couple of tweets.
by Nikhil Makwana
See full article at The Tech Portal
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All the Social Media Giants Are Becoming the Same
WIRED - Dec 1 - Social media companies have taken unoriginality to new levels. Twitter now has Fleets, a rip-off of Instagram Stories, originally copied from Snapchat. Snapchat now has Spotlight, similar to Instagram Reels, brazenly stolen from TikTok. TikTok grew from the ashes of Vine, which was acquired by Twitter, which is now pursuing a concept called Audio Spaces, a carbon copy of Clubhouse. Companies are always eyeing their competitors to see what works; that's just market research. But copycatting on social media has led to platforms that look suspiciously similar, with fewer things that set them apart. The biggest differentiator is that they all call their Xeroxed features by different names, leading to the maddening vocabulary of social media. For the companies, reproducing the same features and formats is often an attempt to juice engagement.
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Indonesia Adds Twitter, Zoom to Tech Companies That Must Pay 10% VAT
REUTERS - Sep 8 - Indonesia has added 12 more companies, including Twitter and video-conferencing site Zoom, to a list of internet-based businesses that must pay a 10% VAT on sales. The companies must start charging VAT to advertisers and other customers from Oct. 1.
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Twitter Is Testing Automatic Tweet Translation
PCMAG - Aug 11 - Rather than having to tap a translation button, Twitter is experimenting with automatically translating tweets into users language of choice.
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New Bidders Emerge for TikTok
TECH CRUNCH - Aug 11 - TikTok and Twitter have held talks about a potential merger, even as the video sharing company defends itself against Trump's pressure to force the sale of the business or potentially ban it. Microsoft remains the front-runner for TikTok's business in the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and that a potential tie-up with Twitter would just be for TikTok's North American business. TikTok is valued anywhere between $15 - $50B dollars - far too big a bite for Twitter, which has a market capitalization of $29B. Bytedance has to find a buyer before Sept. 15, or shut the business down in the US. But any sale could be scuttled by lawsuits challenging the President's executive order. On Saturday, National Public Radio reported that TikTok is planning to do just that. The company will reportedly argue that the executive order didn't follow due process, and that its underlying argument that TikTok poses a national security threat is baseless.
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Twitter Faces FTC Probe Over Ad Targeting Practices
REUTERS - Aug 4 - Twitter said it estimates probable loss of between $150M and $250M in settlement charges. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is probing Twitter for alleged violations of a law that prevents the social network from using personal data provided for security purposes to target ads.
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Twitter Reportedly Gave 1,000 People Access to Its Admin Panel Before Hack
MASHABLE - July 27 - Last week, hackers targeted the Twitter accounts of Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and other verified users. On Thursday, it was reported that ~1K people had access to internal tools that made the hack possible. "The attackers successfully manipulated a small number of employees and used their credentials to access Twitter's internal systems," explained Twitter last week in a blog post. In this case, all the hackers needed was "a small number of employees" to carry out the attack. But hackers had a pool of 1K people to choose from.
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Twitter May Start Testing a Subscription Model
THE TIMES OF INDIA - July 24 - Twitter is reportedly thinking about testing a paid model for its platform as CEO Jack Dorsey has hinted that the company is in a "very, very early phase of exploring" in the quarterly earnings call with the investors. There is no clarity when the company plans to test this model as Dorsey only said that there will be "likely some tests this year". Twitter has just announced its Q2 results (total revenue down 19% YOY to $683M, advertising revenue totalled $562M, down 23% YOY.
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Twitter Q2 Financial Results
TECH CRUNCH - July 24 - Revenues came in at $683M with a loss per share of $0.01, with both figures down on the same quarter a year ago (Q2 2019 revenue was $841M). Analyst consensus was for $700M in sales, while Twitter expected a 27% higher figure. Advertising accounted for $562M of its revenues, down 23% YOY. Twitter noted that the pandemic and "civil unrest" that led to many advertisers pausing campaigns both contributed to the decline.
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Social Networks Aim to Erase Hate But Miss the Target on Guns
ECONOTIMES - July 23 - Mark Zuckerberg recently announced plans to ban a "wider category of hateful content in ads." Twitter, YouTube and Reddit have also taken additional steps to curtail online hate, removing several inflammatory accounts. But they all overlook a gun talk. The word "gun" appears but once in Facebook's policy on "Violence and incitement" to bar the manipulation of images to include a gun to the head. And neither "guns" nor "firearms" are mentioned in Twitter's policy on "Glorifications of violence," or YouTube's guidelines on "Violent or graphic content" or within any of these networks' rules on hate speech. Gun references have become prevalent in social media dialogues involving the nationwide protests over racial injustice, police reform and the BLM movement.
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Twitter Hacked
DUBLINLIVE - July 15 - Twitter has suspended all verified accounts after Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and others hacked in a Bitcoin scam. Tweets sent from the accounts promised to double all payments to a Bitcoin address for the next 30 minutes. A tweet sent from Gates' account read: "Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time." Twitter Support said they were aware of the incident and are investigating it.
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