Actress Rose McGowan, who has been using her Twitter account to speak out against Hollywood production studio The Weinstein Company, has had her account temporarily disabled. TWITTER HAS SUSPENDED ME. THERE ARE POWERFUL FORCES AT WORK. BE MY VOICE. #ROSEARMY A post shared by Rose McGowan (@rosemcgowan) on Oct 11, 2017 at 9:19pm PDT Last week, The New York Times revealed that powerful producer Harvey Weinstein had been paying off sexual harassment accusers for decades. Rose McGowan was one of the first women to disclose that she had signed a settlement with Weinstein after an "episode in a hotel room" in 1997, and has been using...
Rapper Eminem unleashed a four-minute-long freestyle criticising US President Donald Trump at Tuesday's BET Hip Hop Awards, and the South African responses have been split. In the freestyle, the rapper says that, among other issues, "racism's the only thing fantastic for". He also bashes his "distraction" tactics of focussing on the recent NFL protests rather than disaster-relief for Hurricane-hit Puerto Rico. Eminem goes so far as to tell any of his Trump-supporting fans that he's "drawing a line in the sand; you're either for or against". The FULL verse that EVERYBODY is talking about! @eminem BODIED THIS! #HipHopAwardspic.twitter.com/zoS0wEwjQF — BET (@BET) October 11, 2017 Former-NFL...
We may not be getting that edit tool we all desperately crave, but Twitter is reportedly working on another feature that could be massively useful. According to Twitter's product head Keith Coleman, the company is working on a bookmarking feature that will allow users to pocket tweets. "Fresh out of HackWeek and coming soon -- a new way to save tweets to read later. Been a top request," he tweeted. This addition will be independent of the "like" function, which many users previously used to keep track of tweets. However, liking a tweet about the rising death count after the Las Vegas...
Twitter has finally broken its silence on the role its platform played in enabling Russian interference in the 2016 US election, but it's staying tight-lipped on the nitty-gritty. In a blog post that mostly addresses bots in general, the company announced that yesterday its VP for public policy Colin Crowell had met up with staff from Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss the way Russian-owned accounts advertised on its platform. Twitter revealed that of the roughly 450 accounts Facebook removed earlier this year in relation to the debacle, 22 had related Twitter accounts -- all of which had "already been or immediately were...
We get it: 280 characters are a lot. Some would argue too many. And while Twitter argues that more room to tweet is beneficial for English speakers, users can't seem to find ways to use all 280 characters. After all, the above two paragraphs only feature 206 characters. If Twitter chose you as one of its guinea pigs, but you have no idea what to do with all the newly bestowed power, look no further than these users and brands for inspiration. They somehow found a solution to the existential crisis that is the longer tweet length, and have overcome. Well, even if...
While a swathe of Twitter users aren't best pleased that Jack Dorsey and company believe longer tweets are of utmost importance, they probably can't wait to give it a try. Even if it is to express their disdain for the feature itself. Uh, like this: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA — Christien Rioux ⚛ (@dildog) September 27, 2017 While Twitter hasn't yet rolled out its 280-character tweets to all users, thanks to a few smart people on the internet you can experience double the tweet length right now. Notably, the same user as above and co-founder of Veracode Christien Rioux explained how he was able to shove 280...
Twitter's 140-character limit may soon be a thing of the past. The microblogging network announced plans to extend its arbitrary but now-familiar 140-character limit to 280 characters. "This is a small change, but a big move for us," Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey tweeted. "140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence!" And yes, that was all one tweet. This is a small change, but a big move...
According to Twitter's Public Policy account, the social network will not be removing US President Donald Trump's threatening tweets towards North Korea. In a thread published late last night, Twitter revealed that part of the reason is due to Trump's "newsworthiness." THREAD: Some of you have been asking why we haven't taken down the Tweet mentioned here: https://t.co/CecwG0qHmq 1/6 — Twitter PublicPolicy (@Policy) September 25, 2017 The argument centres on a particular tweet by Donald Trump published on 24 September. "Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!"...
Twitter's latest transparency report reveals that the platform's effort to cut down on pro-terror content is working. According to the report, the first half of the year saw just under 300 000 accounts removed for promoting internationally recognized terror movements or the violence associated with them. This is a 20% drop from the previous reporting period. The company recently joined forces with the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Microsoft to share information on how to combat pro-terror content, including AI that can swiftly detect dangerous content. The report says that 95% of the removed terror accounts were the result of internal efforts...
Texas Senator Ted Cruz might've been the joke of Twitter yesterday when his account liked a pornographic video, but he has been a boon for business for one particular Twitter account. Call it the Barbra Streisand effect, or call it inadvertent social marketing, but after Cruz's account slapped @SexuallPosts' like button, an influx of followers followed. Analytics firm SocialBlade noted this rise on the 12 September as 11 770 users. That's around 9000 more followers per day than the porn account's general daily follow count. This wasn't a once off either. Today (13 September), SocialBlade saw an additional boom of 7400 users...
Republican senator Ted Cruz was the laughing stock of Twitter on Tuesday, after the politician's Twitter account liked a pornographic video from another account. The account in question, the aptly-named @SexuallPosts, posted a video to the social network featuring two women and a man engaging in sexual activities. While over 520 people liked the post, Cruz was among the most influential with over three-million followers. "Thanks for watching ted," @SexuallPosts tweeted, taking full advantage of the blunder. It also changed its bio to this gem: "Follow for the Same Porn @TedCruz Watches." Twitter users soon noticed the unashamed like, which remained on Cruz's...
As Twitter evolves from a social network reliant on short sentences to one that privileges video, content has never been more important for individuals and companies. Because the company's as curious as we are, senior director of Twitter's EMEA division Barry Collins took a closer look into the shift, and in particular, what type of video content works on the network. "New research has revealed what works best in newsfeeds and how effective brand video can be on Twitter, both for organic content and promoted," he writes, in a piece sent to Memeburn. While he naturally punted Twitter's video ads' effectiveness for...
If you've ever used "THREAD" to headline a tweet and number the subsequent posts in your rant, congratulations, you've created a tweetstorm. Regrettably, constructing one is a pain in the ass, and it seems that Twitter agrees. That's why this particular discovery by an eagle-eyed Twitter user has caught many an eye. WOAH! Twitter has a hidden tweet storm feature! h/t Devesh Logendran pic.twitter.com/QpDLhKnAZZ — Matt Navarra ⭐️ (@MattNavarra) September 10, 2017 Two screenshots sent to The Next Web's Matt Navarra depict a graphical feature within the Twitter Android app that allows users to compose tweetstorms in their entirety and then smash the send...
Don't look now, but the Swedish YouTube star known as PewDiePie has done something stupid on camera yet again. 27-year-old Felix Kjellberg was this weekend livestreaming a playthrough of sandbox-shooter PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, when he blurted a racial slur at another player in his line of fire. "What a f**king n****r," he scoffed. "Sorry but what the f**k? What a f**king a*****e," he continued. @pewdiepie RACIST?? @KEEMSTAR @JohnScarce pic.twitter.com/ulAz45ZN28 — Felipe Diaz (@ThatFelipeDiaz) September 10, 2017 A snippet of the stream was republished on Saturday to Twitter, where users flamed the Swedish YouTuber for his choice words. He didn't mean to tho so it's ok 👌🏾💀 pic.twitter.com/dShFZ9QBbO —...
Three cars were torched in Sandton Thursday evening in a suspected protest between metered taxi drivers and Uber. According to provincial spokesperson Captain Mavela Masondo, preliminary investigations showed two of the cars belonged to Uber, and the third was a metered taxi. No one was harmed. Images and videos of the incident poured onto Twitter as #Uber hit top trending spot nationally. .@TimesLIVE richest square km in Africa (Sandton) is burning as metered and uber drivers set each others vehicles alight pic.twitter.com/GtpJw9FKSV — Graeme Hosken (@GraemeHosken) September 7, 2017 Sitting in Sandton watching the chaos.Getting ugly. #uber drivers fighting back.chased away all metre taxi drivers from...
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