(160525) -- HO CHI MINH CITY, May 25, 2016 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama (C) speaks as he meets with members of the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative in Ho Chi Minh City's Gem Center, Vietnam, May 25, 2016. Obama was on an official visit to Vietnam from May 23 to May 25. (Xinhua/Nguyen Le Huyen)
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New York, Aug 12 (IANS) Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo had secretly ordered employees to filter out abusive and hateful replies to US President Barack Obama during the May 2015 #AskPOTUS town hall meeting, the media reported on Friday.

According to Buzzfeed, Costolo asked employees to deploy an algorithm which was built in-house to filter out abusive language directed at Obama.

"Another source said the media partnerships team also manually censored tweets, noting that Twitter's public quality-filtering algorithms were inconsistent," the report added.

The decision was kept secret from senior employees who followed Twitter as long-standing commitment to free speech.

After a month Obama's town hall meeting, Costolo stepped down as CEO.

In an exit interview with The Guardian, he defended Twitter's commitment to free speech, saying that "I will say directly that I think regulation is a threat to free speech".

In its early years, Twitter took several stands against censorship, even in the WikiLeaks case.

Ex-Twitter CEO censored abusive tweets to Obama

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New York, Feb 26 (IANS)

Twitter has also reportedly removed the "hide media" option which will enable tweets with media to be expanded by default.

The embedded timelines also have in-line sharing on every tweet to facilitate easy retweeting, the report added.

All existing timelines will also be upgraded automatically but will maintain the current sizing and customisation preferences.

Publishers "need a powerful visual storytelling tool to truly engage your users, so we’ve built an embedded grid which displays your curated content in a rich, responsive, media-forward format,” Twitter wrote in an earlier blog post.

The move gives publishers and developers more control in how tweets around specific conversations can be featured.

The design is part of an effort by Twitter to show that its technology and service can have an impact outside of its domain.

Embedded tweets power more than one billion unique visitors to developer apps and sites each month.

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New York, Feb 24 (IANS) After five months of development, micro-blogging website Twitter has launched an app for its Fabric mobile development toolkit so that developers can address various issues related to their app including sudden crash through smartphones.

Fabric is a tool that developers use to keep constant pulse on their apps once out in the wild and helps them track crashes or user behaviour within the apps.

"No longer will app developers need to rely on their desktops and laptops in order to check on the health of their apps, find out the number of monthly active users or the average length of users' sessions, or discover crashes affecting certain users," tech website Venturebeat reported.

According to Meekal Bajaj, Twitter product manager, more than 1.6 billion devices currently use some part of Fabric and more than 225,000 developers started using it within one year of it becoming available.

Fabric has certain ready to go dashboards and it can automatically display the top issues worth addressing.

"It's something we see from developers all the time: 'What could I address today that would actually help with my app's stability?'" Bajaj was quoted as saying in the report.

"Rather than send emails about issues, the app, naturally, uses push notifications about alerts," Bajaj added.

Users can also read and write comments on issues right from within the mobile app.

"When you get a push notification from us, we will give you everything you need to know: full stacktraces, number of affected users, and breakdown of devices and platforms - all in real time, Bajaj explained.

The app is available for free on Apple's app store and the Google play store for developers currently using Fabric.

The app also works with the Apple Watch and Android Wear.

Twitter's Fabric app to help developers monitor app crashes on smartphones

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New Delhi, Feb 23 (IANS) Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday asked senior officials of micro-blogging site Twitter to ensure that the site is not misused for any kind of extremism and terrorism activities.

Talking to media persons after meeting with Twitter's global head of public policy Colin Crowell, he said he had told him that "India is in the middle of terrorist hubs and faces this danger".

Twitter informed the minister that it has recently deleted 1 lakh entries from its platform.

Prasad also raised the recent issue when Jammu was represented as a part of Pakistan in Twitter.

"I have formally communicated our deep sense of dismay and disapproval on this. A greater sensitivity needs to be shown by these platforms as far as our geographical identity and integrity is concerned," he said.

Aiming to provide relief in case of natural disasters, Twitter will unveil 'Twitter for good' programme in India later this week.

Guard against platform's misuse, Prasad tells Twitter

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New York, Feb 21 (IANS) The reach of the Islamic State (IS) on micro blogging site Twitter has stopped growing and slowly rolling back, said a new report from George Washington University in the US.

J.M. Berger, a fellow with George Washington University's Programme on Extremism, and Heather Perez, a law enforcement analyst, tracked a curated list of pro-IS twitter accounts between August and October 2015.

"We found that Twitter’s increased willingness to suspend users and make other changes to its terms of service have measurably reduced the size and activity of ISIS (alternatively used for IS) support networks on the platform, including steady reductions in follower counts and tweets per day," lawfareblog.com quoted Berger as saying on Friday.

Although the terrorist group still maintains a significant online presence, there is at least a glimmer of hope that efforts to curtail them were bearing fruit, said the report released last week.

"Individual IS supporters who created multiple accounts and saw them repeatedly suspended suffered a disastrous loss of followers," Berger said.

One member of this important group of IS provocateurs and highly active cheerleaders saw his followers drop from more than 2,000 in August 2015 to just over 700 in September.

"The user had repeatedly changed his online handle in attempts to avoid further suspension, and as of this week, he had fewer than 40 followers before being suspended yet again. Even when he was still online, his Twitter friends couldn’t find him," Berger added.

The report finds out that the IS has lost significant broadcast capability since its Twitter peak in June 2014. Yet there erre still likely more than 20,000 Twitter accounts supporting the group across multiple languages.

"Its propaganda remains readily available on the platform, although in a more limited way than before," Berger said.

Islamic State's reach on Twitter dwindling: Report

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New York, Feb 21 (IANS) Micro-blogging website Twitter has more active users in Japan than Facebook, which is much larger globally, according to a media report.

The Wall Street Journal on Saturday cited an announcement by Twitter relating to its user-numbers for a country outside the US, and saying it had 35 million monthly active users in the world's third-largest economy as of the end of last year.

Facebook, on the other hand, had 25 million monthly active users in Japan as of the end of 2015, a company spokesperson said.

Twitter provided the number of its users in Japan after the company's quarterly earnings fuelled investors’ concerns that the micro-blogging site's user growth has stalled.

Twitter last week said 320 million users signed into the platform at least once a month in the fourth quarter, the same as in the previous three months.

Facebook, by comparison, had 1.59 billion monthly active users as of the end of last year, up 3 percent from the previous three months.

In Japan, “we’ve seen more than a five-fold growth in usage in a really short time,” said Shailesh Rao, Twitter’s vice president of Asia-Pacific, Latin America and emerging markets. He said the firm had fewer than 7 million users in Japan in 2011.

Rao said people have been joining the platform consistently after widespread adoption of the service as a means to receive news after a powerful earthquake and tsunami hit the country five years ago.

However, user growth has slowed globally since Twitter went public in 2013.

Rao declined to say whether Japan is the only country in the world where Twitter has more users than Facebook.

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New York, Feb 20 (IANS)

"The social network would roll out new tools to improve two-way conversations with companies who want to use Twitter for online customer service," The Verge reported on Friday.

"Starting today (Friday), businesses and brands on Twitter can attach a 'send a private message' link to their tweets so customers can jump right into a Direct Message thread with a representative," the report added.

Twitter is rolling out another initiative "Customer Feedback", to be available in the coming weeks, that will enable companies to collect opinions from the users on the micro-blogging site after customer service conversations.

Twitter is aiming to take itself to a new level amid an existential crisis. Recently, the micro-blogging website brought video support to Direct Messages to bring the service up to speed with competitors like Facebook Messenger.

Twitter rolled out this feature globally to iOS and Android smartphones.

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New York, Feb 19 (IANS) A day after Google's Indian-American chief executive Sundar Pichai supported arch rival Apple to fight a court order to help the FBI break into the iPhone 5c used by California shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, social media giant Facebook and micro-blogging website Twitter also came out in the company's support.

"We will continue to fight aggressively against requirements for companies to weaken the security of their systems," Facebook posted on Friday.

"We condemn terrorism and have total solidarity with victims of terror. Those who seek to praise, promote, or plan terrorist acts have no place on our services. We also appreciate the difficult and essential work of law enforcement to keep people safe," the Facebook statement added.

Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted: "We stand with @tim_cook and Apple (and thank him for his leadership)!".

Farook and his Pakistani-origin wife, Tashfeen Malik, gunned down 14 people at a social services agency in December last year in San Bernardino, California, before being killed in a shootout with police.

Pichai on Wedenesday directed followers to read Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook's open letter, arguing that helping the FBI try to get into the phone used by Farook would sabotage the security of "tens of millions of American citizens."

WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum and technology giant Microsoft also voiced their support for Apple CEO Tim Cook on Facebook on Thursday.

"Technology companies should not be required to build in backdoors to the technologies that keep their users' information secure," a statement from Microsoft said.

Some of the US lawmakers and Republican front-runner Donald Trump consider Apple's staunch refusal as a serious roadblock in the fight against domestic terrorism.

According to tech website The Verge, "The case, which Apple may fight all the way up to the Supreme Court, is the most significant battle yet in the ongoing encryption debate."

With support from New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said that "Apple and Google are acting like teenagers saying 'nobody can tell me what to do and the situation has become, ladies and gentlemen, the wild west of technology. And Apple and Google are their own sheriffs," the report added.

Apple's CEO Tim Cook said the court order sought and obtained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is investigating the December 2015 attack, would pose a serious threat to data security.

"The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers," Cook said in a message on the company's website.

FBI Director James Comey said last week that investigators still have not been able to get at the information on Farook's iPhone 5c.

The post Facebook, Twitter back Apple over cracking shooter’s iPhone appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New Delhi, Feb 18 (IANS)

When users logged into the microblogging site using location services, it showed Jammu city as part of Pakistan. Users received automatic suggestions to click on the location putting the winter capital of the north Indian state in Pakistan.

When users typed Jammu and Kashmir at a stretch or only 'Kashmir' it showed the state as part of the People's Republic of China too.

The ministry of external affairs (MEA) on Thursday said the goof-up by Twitter will be taken up with the website.

"“I am sure it will be taken up with Twitter. We ourselves do not do this, another division does this. But I am sure it will be taken up" , ” MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup told reporters here.

Meanwhile, a number of users criticised the microblogging site for the goof-up, with some dubbing it as biased against India.

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New York, Feb 11 (IANS)

"You follow hundreds of people on Twitter, maybe thousands, and when you open Twitter, it can feel like you've missed some of their most important Tweets. Today, we're excited to share a new timeline feature that helps you catch up on the best Tweets from people you follow," a Twitter blog said.

To make it work, the user needs to flip on the feature in settings. This will enable the users to see the tweets they are most likely to care about at the top of the timeline when they open Twitter after a while.

The rest of the tweets will be displayed right underneath.

"We have already seen that people who use this new feature tend to Retweet and Tweet more, creating more live commentary and conversations, which is great for everyone. To check it out now, just go into the timeline section of your settings and choose "show me the best Tweets first", the blog further read.

The company also sought feedback from the users.

"We will be listening to your feedback and making it even better over time. Then we will be turning on the feature for you in the coming weeks so look out for a notification in your timeline," the blog read.

"We think this is a great way to get even more out of Twitter and we're excited for you to experience it. Let us know what you think, the blog added.

The post See the Best Tweets First with Twitter’s New Timeline Feature appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Feb 11 (IANS)

The micro-blogging site reported 305 million monthly active users for the fourth quarter, compared to 307 million in the third quarter that excluded SMS-only followers.

The almost-flat user growth led to its shares falling as much as 13 percent in extended trading, Tech Crunch reported, hitting another new low of around $13.75 before flattening out to 3 percent in extended trading.

"We saw a decline in monthly active usage in Q4, but we've already seen January monthly actives bounce back to Q3 levels. We're confident that, with disciplined execution, this growth trend will continue over time," the company said in its earning statement.

It reported earnings of 16 cents per share and revenue of $710 million. Twitter said it expects between $595 million and $610 million in revenue for the first quarter, compared to the estimates of $629 million.

Still, revenue was up 48 percent year-over-year despite stalled user growth, the report added.

"Positive impacts from our marketing initiatives which contributed meaningfully to MAU growth. However, these were more than offset by organic declines, partially due to fourth quarter seasonal trends."

In the past year, the stock has fallen nearly 70 percent and investors are looking for long-term growth from Twitter.

"Not being able to add any new active users in the last quarter will disappoint some, particularly investors. Yet it did see active advertisers go up by almost 90 percent year-on-year," said Sotirios Paroutis, associate professor with the Warwick Business School.

"Plus, historically, Q4 has been a slow quarter for Twitter. While in 2016 the US elections and the Olympics will be two big events that are expected to help push their active users up," said Paroutis, who specialises in strategic management and specifically researches Twitter.

"Twitter has delivered a number of product innovations, but these need to be less confusing for core users and attractive enough for new users. The focus on 'live' and experiencing live events is a clear effort to explain Twitter to a wider audience."

Now, in an attempt to bring tweets to more people across the globe, Twitter is planning to introduce an algorithmic timeline like Facebook. The timeline will reorder tweets based on what Twitter's algorithm thinks people most want to see.

The home timeline will be rolled out to people in 23 countries, including India, who visit Twitter homepage on their mobile devices. The micro-blogging site has been looking for ways to elevate popular content for quite some time.

An algorithmic feed would be, to date, the boldest change so far under Jack Dorsey, who took the reins of Twitter as new CEO in October last year, analysts maintain.

Dorsey has made several moves, including cutting jobs and naming Google's former chief business officer, Omid Kordestani, as Twitter's executive chairman.

Under Dorsey, Twitter has released a news curation feature "Moments" and the company is reportedly working to extend Twitter's identifying 140-character limit to 10,000.

Twitter is also set for a major overhaul under Dorsey to revive the company's fortune with some of the high-profile executives putting in their papers.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the company's head of engineering Alex Roetter and product chief Kevin Weil are departing, along with Katie Stanton, the company's high-profile head of media who had informed the company of her intention to quit some time back.

The post Shrinking User Base Triggers Sharp Fall in Twitter Shares appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Feb 6 (IANS)

The timeline will reorder tweets based on what Twitter's algorithm thinks people most want to see, BuzzFeed reported on Saturday.

"Before today, you could see individual Tweets but it was hard to discover stories and conversations happening on Twitter without signing in. Now, you can check out a news story as it unfolds," Paul Lambert, product manager of Twitter, wrote on the microblogging website's blog on February 2.

The home timeline will be rolled out to people in 23 countries, including India, who visit the twitter.com homepage on their mobile devices.

However, it is unclear whether Twitter will force users to use the algorithmic feed, or it will merely be an option.

Twitter is also planning to expand a refreshed twitter.com homepage, which is already available in the US and Japan, to 23 other countries.

The microblogging site has been looking for ways to elevate popular content for quite some time.

In November, the company killed off the traditional term favourites and replaced it with likes. An algorithmic feed would be, to date, the boldest change so far under Jack Dorsey, who took the reins of Twitter as permanent CEO in October last year.

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San Francisco, Feb 6 (IANS)

The social media network that has more than 500 million users worldwide, said in a tweet that its policy does not permit the use of Twitter to promote terrorism, Xinhua reported.

Twitter, compared with other US-based networks of its kind, has been considered to be more reluctant to intervene against contents posted by users.

In its history of nearly 10 years, it has had a system in place against child pornography.

According to a report released in 2015 by Brookings Institution, a Washington DC-based think tank, the IS had at least 46,000 active Twitter accounts over a three-month period in 2014.

The pressure for Twitter to curb propaganda by the IS and other extremist groups comes from the US government as well as non-government groups and individuals. Last month, it was sued by the widow of a US national killed in an attack on a Jordanian police training centre.

The plaintiff alleged that Twitter makes it easy for the IS to promote violence.

However, Twitter said on Friday it has "always sought to strike a balance between the enforcement of our own Twitter Rules covering prohibited behaviours, the legitimate needs of law enforcement, and the ability of users to share their views freely - including views that some people may disagree with or find offensive."

Meanwhile, the network said it has increased the size of the teams that review terrorism-related reports, so as to reduce its response time.

The post Twitter Suspends 125,000 Terrorism-Related Accounts appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Jan 31 (IANS)

The fatal shooting of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014, set off a national wave of dialogue and protests, from the streets to social media, as people nationwide grappled with myriad complex issues, including police use of force, race relations in the US, and criminal justice reform.

Sarah Jackson and Brooke Foucault Welles, both assistant professors of communication studies at the Northeastern University, examined 535,794 tweets from August 9 to August 15, 2014, that included the word or hashtag "Ferguson".

They identified the top 10 tweets each day that were most retweeted or mentioned and then analysed how these Twitter users -- who they described "early initiators" and "crowdsourced elites" -- drove the discussion in the days following Brown's killing.

Twitter, they argued, catalysed the national response. The first week of "Ferguson" tweets, from the time of Brown's death up till the national media coverage and President Barack Obama's public address -- illustrated the power of social media to allow everyday citizens, particularly those in marginalised groups, to influence larger public debates, they said in a paper published in the journal Information, Communication & Society.

"From my perspective, what's significant is that Twitter can allow everyday people who otherwise have little social or political power to shape a narrative about their experiences and what matters about those experiences," Jackson noted.

The post Ferguson Shooting: US Citizens’ Twitter Use Shaped National Debate appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Jan 27 (IANS)

Playing around with the idea since September, the micro-blogging company has made Twitter an ad-free, or nearly ad-free, experience to a small group of some of its most prominent and active users, Re/Code reported on Tuesday.

Twitter selects the no-ad or low-ad group by a variety of criteria, including the volume and reach of the tweets they generate.

Twitter representative Will Stickney said: "We are constantly looking at constraints and adjustments to optimise which ads are shown and how often."

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New York, Jan 25 (IANS)

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the company's head of engineering Alex Roetter and product chief Kevin Weil are departing, along with Katie Stanton, the company's high-profile head of media who had informed the company of her intention to quit some time back.

With this, Dorsey is planning to bring in two board members this week in a bid to revive the company and earn the trust of investors.

Stanton's team might be reorganised under chief operating officer Adam Bain and a new incoming chief marketing officer.

Dorsey, 39, who had also served as the chairman of Twitter in past, had told the company that he would return as the CEO on a condition that the entire eight-member board must be replaced.

Dorsey, who featured on 11th spot on Forbes list of America's Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 in 2015", is trying to revamp the company that had fallen into disarray under his predecessor, CEO Dick Costolo.

Frequent management changes, strategy shifts and a sinking stock price paralysed the company. Twitter failed to evolve its product in a way to appeal to the mainstream mass, resulting in a growth stunt and investor concern, the report said.

Dorsey, who officially took over as CEO on October 5 last year, has made several roster moves, including cutting jobs and naming Googles former chief business officer, Omid Kordestani, as Twitters executive chairman.

Under Dorsey, Twitter has released a news curation feature Moments and reportedly the company is working to extend Twitters identifying 140-character limit to 10,000.

Twitters eight-person board includes venture capitalist Peter Fenton, Hollywood executive Peter Chernin and Silicon Valley business executive Peter Currie.

The board also includes Evan Williams, who co-founded Twitter along with Dorsey and is one of the largest individual owners of Twitter stock.

Investors will be looking forward to Twitter as the company is expected to announce its fourth-quarter earnings on February 10, the reports added.

The post High-Profile Executives Quit Twitter, Major Overhaul Expected appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Jan 21 (IANS)

By analysing the September 2013 floods in Colorado, US, the researchers showed that a combination of remote sensing, Twitter and Flickr data could be used to identify flooded areas.

"FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), the Red Cross and other response agencies use social media now to disseminate relevant information to the general public," said Guido Cervone, associate professor of geography at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State).

"We have seen here that there is potential to use social media data from community members to help identify hotspots in need of aid, especially when it is paired with remote sensing imagery of the area," Cervone noted.

After a disaster, response teams typically prioritise rescue and aid efforts with help from imagery and other data that show what regions are affected the most.

Responders commonly use satellite imagery, but this on its own has drawbacks.

"Publicly available satellite imagery for a location isn't always available in a timely manner -- sometimes it can take days before it becomes available," Elena Sava from Penn State explained.

The 2013 Colorado flooding was an unprecedented event. In nine days in September, the region received nearly the same amount of rainfall it normally receives in a year. Officials evacuated more than 10,000 people and had to rescue several thousand people and pets.

Because the flooding occurred in an urban setting, the researchers were able to access more than 150,000 tweets from people affected by the flooding.

The findings, published in the International Journal of Remote Sensing, confirmed that Twitter data could serve to identify hotspots for which satellite imagery should be acquired.

The post Tweets Can Quicken Disaster Response appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Jan 20 (IANS)

Twitter experienced an issue "related to an internal code change" that caused its web and mobile apps to go down for almost eight hours. In other words, someone wrote some bad code that crashed things for a while, recode.net reported on Tuesday.

The incident is yet another tough pill to swallow for Twitter investors.

Twitter is already fighting to prove that its struggling stock price and user growth issues are not long-term concerns.

Recently, a Florida-based woman filed a lawsuit against Twitter, accusing the firm of supporting the global spread of Islamic State (IS) by enabling its followers to recruit on its social media platform.

The post Twitter Crashed Due to ‘Bad Coding’ appeared first on Social News XYZ.

San Francisco, Jan 19 (IANS)

Some mobile users were also unable to read or post tweets to the network, which has over 300 million active members, BBC reported.

Twitter chose to communicate the problem via a tweet emailed to the Guardian daily in London, in which the firm said it was aware of the problem.

The tweet from the company's @support account read: "Some users are currently experiencing problems accessing Twitter. We are aware of the issue and are working towards a resolution."

The post Twitter Goes Offline on Tuesday appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Jan 17 (IANS)

Wisconsin-based photographer Jennifer Rondinelli Reilly filed her complaint at a federal court in California, petapixel.com reported on Saturday.

According to Reilly, after discovering her photo being shared on Twitter, she sent 28 notices to Twitter about a large number of infringements. Although the company apparently acted on some of them, 50 of the 56 infringements were not taken down.

The photo at the centre of the lawsuit is titled "Red Lips And Microphone".

The photo was apparently taken and modified to promote an annual "Poetic Justice" event at the University of North Texas. It was retweeted a number of times by those helping promote the event.

Reilly has urged the court to force Twitter to remove all infringing photos as well as pay her compensation for both actual and statutory damages.

The post US Photographer Jennifer Rondinelli Reilly Sues Twitter for Not Removing Pictures appeared first on Social News XYZ.

San Francisco, Jan 14 (AFP)

A suit filed in federal court in the Northern California city of Oakland yesterday accuses Twitter of providing "material support" for terrorists by allowing the group "unfettered" use of the service to spread its message, recruit members, and raise money.

"This material support has been instrumental to the rise of ISIS and has enabled it to carry out numerous terrorist attacks," the lawsuit argued.

Included in those attacks, the lawsuit maintained, was one in Jordan in November of last year that resulted in the plaintiff's husband, Lloyd Fields, being shot dead.

Fields was a government contractor working at a police training facility.

Twitter told AFP today that it believed the lawsuit to be "without merit."

"Like people around the world, we are horrified by the atrocities perpetrated by extremist groups and their ripple effects on the Internet," a Twitter spokesman said in response to an AFP inquiry.

"Violent threats and the promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear."

Twitter has teams devoted to investigating reports of accounts or posts that violate its rules and works with counter-extremist groups or law enforcement agencies when warranted, according to the spokesman.

The lawsuit calls for unspecified cash damages and a jury trial.

"Without Twitter, the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible," contended the complaint filed on behalf of the Florida widow.

Twitter has instituted a ban on content that promotes terrorism and deleted thousands of accounts associated with ISIS.

Some Twitter employees have been targeted with death threats from ISIS for suspending accounts.

The free and open nature of the San Francisco-based one-to-many messaging service, however, makes it easy for people whose accounts have been shut down to create new accounts with different Twitter "handles.

The post Widow Sues Twitter for Spreading Isis Message appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Jan 12 (IANS)

According to a Monday report from Digiday, participating advertisers would be able to cut through the online noise and with the help of Twitter they can find positive conversations about their products.

Once the advertisers find these "happy" tweets, they can then directly message the authors to request permission to share them in a campaign known as a "brand enthusiast gallery".

After a nod by the authors, the tweets would appear below a standard brand ad on the internet.

Twitter reportedly detailed this option at the four-day International Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas but did not elaborate on how positive tweets would be identified.

It is also unclear how Twitter would differentiate real tweets from sarcastic ones.

The post Twitter May Help Brands Through Users’ Tweets appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Jan 6 (IANS)

According to media reports, Twitter is building a new feature that will allow users to tweet longer than its traditional 140-character limit.

The company is currently considering a 10,000-character limit, recode.net reported, adding that Twitter may launch this feature toward the end of the first quarter.

This is the character limit the company uses for its Direct Messages product.

According to the report, it is also possible that the 10,000-character feature may change before it is finally rolled out.

There is, however, no official launch date set so far.

"Twitter is currently testing a version of the product in which tweets appear the same way they do now, displaying just 140 characters, with some kind of call to action that there is more content you can't see," recode.net said, quoting sources.

Clicking on the tweets will then expand them to reveal more content.

The 140-character limit has been around as long as Twitter has and has become part of the product's personality.

Twitter is also working on the idea of changing its reverse chronological timeline.

The micro-blogging site is experimenting with a Facebook-type way of sorting your timeline where tweets are sorted by relevance and not in reverse chronological order as it happens now.

According to motherboard.vice.com, Twitter is working with algorithms similar to the ones Facebook uses to order items on your news feed.

"This is an experiment. We're continuing to explore ways to surface the best content for people using Twitter," a company spokeswoman was quoted as saying.

Twitter has been hinting towards an algorithmic-driven news feed for more than a year.

The test is part of CEO Jack Dorsey's promise for bold changes to Twitter to help get it out of its slow growth, Wall Street Journal reported.

"You will see us continue to question our reverse chronological timeline, and all the work it takes to build one by finding and following accounts," Dorsey said earlier this year.

"We continue to show a questioning of our fundamentals in order to make the product easier and more accessible to more people," he added.

The reverse chronological timeline has been fundamental to Twitter since it began nine years ago and has made sense for a real-time service.

The post Twitter Planning 10,000-Character Limit for Tweets appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Jan 2 (IANS) An Arab Spring activist has accused the Twitter micro-blogging site of suspending his account after administrators mistook him for the leader of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.

Iyad El-Baghdadi, who has more than 70,000 Twitter followers and frequently mocks the IS, said his account was suspended for about half-an-hour after he was misidentified as IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Indonesian newspaper Republika and the New York Post, BBC reported on Friday.

"To confuse an Arab man for the IS leader because of his very Arabic common surname is overt racism, @twitter," he wrote on his account.

"My account gave you nearly 100 million twitter views this year, but you suspend me and keep the trolls running around, @twitter," he wrote in another tweet.

El-Baghdadi said he received a message from Twitter saying he had "violated" its rules but did not specify the offence.

The activist, who also researches radicalisation, said the company needed to be "more transparent" about why and how people are suspended.

"I don't think a single Arab country exists that doesn't have a family with the surname El-Baghdadi," his another tweet read.

Arab Spring refers to the democratic uprisings that arose independently and spread across the Arab world in 2011.

Meanwhile, Twitter has not commented on the issue yet.

In a fresh bid to combat abusive behaviour, micro-blogging site Twitter is also revising its rules to tackle hateful conduct including spreading of terror messages online.

"We believe that protection from abuse and harassment is a vital part of empowering people to freely express themselves on Twitter," Megan Cristina, director, trust and safety at Twitter, posted in a blog recently.

"The updated language emphasises that Twitter will not tolerate behaviour intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user's voice. As always, we embrace and encourage diverse opinions and beliefs but we will continue to take action on accounts that cross the line into abuse," she posted.

Over the past year, Twitter has taken several steps to fight abuse in order to protect freedom of expression.

It has empowered users with tools for blocking, muting and reporting abusive behaviour.

The post Twitter ‘Confuses’ Famous Activist with IS, Suspends Account appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Jan 1 (IANS) The micro-blogging site Twitter has reversed its controversial decision to ban popular tool Politwoops that archived politicians' deleted social media updates to bring more transparency to public dialogue.

Politwoops is the only comprehensive collection of deleted tweets by politicians that offers a window into what they hoped you did not see.

New CEO Jack Dorsey in October last year spoke about Twitter's responsibilities to developers and users in the areas of government transparency.

"We have a responsibility to continue to empower organisations that bring more transparency to public dialogue, such as Politwoops," he reiterated.

In a latest post on Thursday, Colin Crowell, vice president for global public policy at Twitter, wrote that the company is pleased to announce an agreement with the Sunlight Foundation and the Open State Foundation around Politwoops.

Politwoops is supposed to be accessible in the "coming days and weeks", according to the watchdog group the Sunlight Foundation.

"Politwoops is an important tool for holding our public officials, including candidates and elected or appointed public officials, accountable for the statements they make. We are glad that we have been able to reach an agreement with Twitter to bring it back online both in the US and internationally," said Jenn Topper, communications director for the Sunlight Foundation.

This agreement is great news for those who believe that the world needs more transparency.

"Our next step is now to continue and expand our work to enable the public to hold public officials accountable for their public statements," added Arjan El Fassed, director of watchdog group Open State Foundation that launched Politwoops in more than 30 countries since 2010.

Brett Solomon, executive director of the global digital rights organisation Access Now, said that in many parts of the world, Twitter is a central component of the public record.

"Re-establishing a mechanism to record, store and publish deleted tweets of politicians and public officials further demonstrates Twitter's commitment to transparency and political accountability," he wrote.

As Twitter becomes a more important platform for political discourse, it is essential that politicians and public official's tweets remain online and accessible to the general public.

"We look forward to continuing our work with these important organisations and using Twitter to bring more transparency to public dialogue," Crowell noted.

The post Twitter Gives Access to Politicians’ Deleted Tweets Again appeared first on Social News XYZ.

San Francisco, Dec 30 (IANS)

"We believe that protection from abuse and harassment is a vital part of empowering people to freely express themselves on Twitter, Megan Cristina, director, trust and safety at Twitter, posted in a blog.

"The updated language emphasises that Twitter will not tolerate behaviour intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user's voice. As always, we embrace and encourage diverse opinions and beliefs but we will continue to take action on accounts that cross the line into abuse, she posted.

Over the past year, Twitter has taken several steps to fight abuse in order to protect freedom of expression.

It has empowered users with tools for blocking, muting and reporting abusive behaviour.

"We evolved our policy to capture more types of abusive behaviour. We've also increased our investment in policy enforcement so that we can handle more reports with greater efficiency, and bolstered educational resources through a new Twitter Safety Centre, Cristina wrote.

One of the areas Twitter found to be effective in this multi-layered strategy of fighting abuse is creating mandatory actions for suspected abusive behaviour such as email and phone verification and user deletion of Tweets for violations.

"These measures curb abusive behaviour by helping the community understand what is acceptable on our platform, the post read.

The change comes when terrorist groups like Islamic State (IS) are using social media platforms like Twitter to spread its agenda and communicate with its followers.

The post Twitter Updates Rules to Stop Abusive Behaviour Online appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New Delhi, Dec 28 (IANS) Micro-blogging site Twitter will help Delhittes know the best mode of transportation and route to take during the 15-day odd-even car scheme.

Twitter India has partnered with the Delhi government to make its ambitious scheme to reduce pollution in the city a success.

By using the hashtag #pollutionfreeDelhi and entering the origin and destination, users will get information about the nearest bus and metro stations, said a Twitter official at a press conference.

Transport Minister Gopal Rai outlined the details of the traffic rationing scheme.

He said the government would run 3,000 additional buses starting January 1.

Special hologram stickers have been issued in Delhi NCR to some five lakh CNG vehicles, which have been exempted from the rule.

The scheme, mooted by the city government, will be implemented on a trial basis between January 1 and 15.

Rai said the registration of 2,700 buses has been completed and the remaining 300 buses would be registered by Monday or Tuesday. "It will benefit 15-16 lakh people."

The government had earlier vowed to add 6,000 buses but it was changed after two-wheelers were exempted from the odd-even scheme.

Private vehicles with odd and even registration numbers will ply on odd and even dates, respectively, from January 1. According to the city government, the restrictions will apply between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. There would be no restrictions on Sunday.

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New York, Dec 27 (IANS)

The company has announced a partnership with India-based start-up Lookup to enable users to send a direct message to @lookuplite in order to book appointments, inquire about services and make transactions with businesses, Techcrunch reported.

Lookup lets retailers and consumers chat with each other through direct messaging. It boasts of 1.2 million registered users despite listing merchants from Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Currently, users can buy directly within the social network through Twitter's 'Buy' button.

In the new arrangement, orders and payments would be fulfilled separately and offline with Twitter simply facilitating the conversation.

Lookup will use Twitter's API, as well as its monitoring capabilities, to handle connecting the customer to the prospective merchant.

Instead of connecting users through phone numbers, Lookup instead uses Google Maps to give users a view of all the retailers in their area.

The post Soon, Pay Bills Through Twitter! appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Dec 23 (IANS)

"In an e-mail, Bank of America told Edwards that his tweets violated the bank's copyright and that if he kept it up, they'd see to it that his Twitter account was deleted," arstechnica.com news website reported on Tuesday.

In his tweets that raised the controversy, Edwards had quoted a research document produced by analysts.

"BAML's Teo Lasarte is developing a pun-based method for analysing auto stocks," one of his tweet read.

"BAML" acronym refers to Bank of America, Merrill Lynch. The tweet included a screenshot that has been deleted.

Edwards said, "the tweets were 'probably trivial', but cannot really be more specific in part because the frequent Twitter user can't even remember exactly what they were about."

"I have no idea what Twitter agreed to censor for BAML, and no way of guessing what BAML's objection was really about, or if it was even BAML who made the complaint," Edwards added.

According to the report, the DMCA claim came from the "Attributor Corporation," part of digital-rights company Digimarc, working on behalf of Bank of America.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a US copyright law that implements 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) -- a special agreement that deals with the protection of works and the rights of their authors in the digital environment.

Twitter did not comment on the matter referring to their copyright policy.

"Investment banks apparently have the power to censor journalists on Twitter, simply by asking. That is depressing," Edwards wrote in a short post on Business Insider news website after the situation.

The post Bank Of America Gets Twitter to Delete Journalist’s Joke appeared first on Social News XYZ.

London, Dec 22 (IANS) Drones capable of taking photos and videos controlled by tweets and sharing them through users' accounts may soon change the way people use social media, according to media reports.

The tech giant was last week granted a patent for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which can be guided by likes, retweets and replies, and may also have telepresence and live video interview capabilities, American technology news and media network the verge reported on Monday.

Although Twitter did not provide any information on the rollout plans for the device, a company spokesman would only say "Two words: Drone selfies" while describing the new technology, according to CNBC.

Earlier this year, Twitter launched its live-streaming app Periscope. It is now seen as a possibility that the company may use the app in tandem with drones to capture and broadcast events with Periscope users controlling the process.

The drone patent comes at a time when Twitter shares have recorded a sharp decline amid concerns about user growth and monetization.

Some of the other big companies who have looked into using drones for their businesses include Google and e-commerce giants like Amazon and Snapdeal, but the idea is still an ambitious concept, cosidering the technical and safety issues.

The post Twitter-controlled Drone to Send Photos in Your Tweet Soon appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Dec 21 (IANS)

"This study is the first to establish an empirical link between Twitter content and illicit online pharmacies which promote the illegal sale of drugs that have significant abuse potential," said study co-author Timothy Mackey from the University of California-San Diego.

"Our results are concerning, as the study found over 45,000 tweets that promoted drug abuse even though we only looked at a two-week period of tweets," Mackey added.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), young adults are the biggest abusers of prescription opioid pain relievers, ADHD stimulants, and anti-anxiety drugs.

The study conducted surveillance and content analysis of over two million tweets using the Twitter public streaming application programming interface and used assisted machine learning.

Tweets were analysed to determine if they discussed drug abuse issues, whether they favourably promoted drug abuse behaviour, and were also examined to see if they directly enabled the illegal access to controlled substances by online pharmacies.

Mackey said the study findings are extremely troubling.

"When we examined links included in a subset of the tweets that discussed drug abuse, we discovered that 76 percent of these tweets included a link to an online marketing affiliate advertising the sale of the controlled substance valium, a tranquillizer that is commonly abused," he said.

Buying prescription drugs from illegal online pharmacies also endangers consumers' financial information, putting them at risk of identity theft, according to experts.

The study was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR).

The post Illegal Online Pharmacies Using Twitter to Pedal Drugs appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Dec 17 (IANS) Baljeet Singh, Twitter's product lead in charge of video, will quit the company early next month, a media report said quoting a Twitter spokesperson.

Singh, who works as a senior product director, joined Twitter two years ago after working with video sharing platform YouTube for more than five years, Re/code tech website reported on Wednesday.

Singh will be the latest product leader to leave Twitter after Glenn Brown, an ad executive who was handling Twitter's video ad push and left the company in October.

Twitter has recently been jolted by the departure of several top executives over the past six months, highlighted by the departure of three key product executives in June.

Video has been an important tool in the social media realm. Facebook and Snapchat are building their businesses around video.

Many content creators go to YouTube and Facebook to share their work.

The post Indian-Origin Baljeet Singh Senior Executive at Twitter to Quit appeared first on Social News XYZ.

New York, Nov 20 (IANS)

Twitter analyzed the top 10 emoji used for TV-related tweets between April 2014 and July 2015.

This emoji was used in 24 percent of tweets that included emojis. The laughing face was followed by the heart eyes (12 percent), crying face (eight percent) and prayer hands (six percent), the study found.

"Since emoji characters began displaying on Twitter in April 2014, they have become a practical and fun way to convey extra meaning and emotion in the space of 140 characters," Twitter's senior data specialist Joe Cruse wrote in a blog post.

"In particular, we have seen emojis used regularly in Tweets about TV, where fans can discuss what's happening, how they feel about what they're watching, or add context to their live-Tweeting," the blog read.

About 86 percent of emoji users are aged 24 or younger, with about 50 percent in the 18-24 age group. Also, a greater number of female users used emoji (57 percent) in their TV-related tweets as compared to males (43 percent).

But emoji are not just for fun. As brands increasingly start using emoji in their ad campaigns, Twitter has also started monetising them through paid ad emoji, ibtimes.com reported.

For instance, in September, Twitter created an emoji of two glass bottles clinking for Coca-Cola that appeared with the tweet #ShareACoke.

Also, Mountain Dew's digital brand manager Christine Ngo was reported as saying in July that including emojis in one-to-one messaging drew more engagement.

The post Emoji worth thousand words: Twitter study appeared first on Social News XYZ.

"This Diwali, Twitter is the go-to platform where people from across the world can engage in conversations about their celebrations, experiences and moments in real time. The #HappyDiwali emoji is a delightful, colourful way to unite Indians all over the world and celebrate the festival of lights together on Twitter," said Rishi Jaitly, Twitter vice president of media, Asia Pacific and the Middle East and North Africa.

Salman Khan and Sonam Kapoor launched the first emoji.

The new emoji comes after the 'Make in India' emoji launched by Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman from the Twitter headquarters in San Jose.

Twitter said users can combine the hashtag #HappyDiwali when composing a tweet and a special emoji of a 'diya' (lamp) will appear next to the hashtag in the sent tweet.

The 'diya' symbolises victory of good over evil, brightness over darkness, and truth over falsity, it said.

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"As a key highlight of this government campaign, an emoji of a black lion on an orange background, a version of the national programme's official logo, will now appear next to the #MakeInIndia hashtag in any Tweet worldwide," Twitter said in a release following Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's visit to its headquarters in San Francisco.

"The #MakeInIndia emoji symbolises success of the brand campaign on Twitter with nearly 500 million impressions this year to promote India as a great place for foreign direct investment to transform the country into a global manufacturing hub," it added.

Sitharaman met Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey to discuss India's importance as a strategic growth market and how the platform can be used to promote the country's brand to rest of the world.

"The 'Make In India' story is increasingly resonating with business leaders around the world and Twitter has proven to be a valuable and effective channel to tell the highly-engaging story to an influential global audience," Sitharaman said.

"We've seen tangible results with the 'Make in India' and 'ease of doing business' programmes that have made India the top investment destination worldwide and Twitter is one of the best ways we can shine a bright light on the country's vibrant potential as a global manufacturing hub," she added.

While the #MakeInIndia brand campaign on Twitter had over 300 million impressions and nearly 24 million engagements in August and September this year, the @MakeInIndia official Twitter account has over 700,000 followers since its inception a little over a year ago.

Twitter Launches Make in India Emoji

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