An upgrade to Twitter’s Moments feature, originally designed to offer users a curated “best of Twitter” experience, now turns Moments into a source for tweetable playlists. Through an ongoing partnership with music streaming service SoundCloud, Twitter Moments will now allow curators to create and share Moments containing SoundCloud’s audio cards – that is, music tracks embedded […]
Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, and Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, recently posted calls to arms (of sorts) in defense of the “open web.” I, too, am a believer in the open web — a platform that anyone can hack on powered by standards (http) and great technology (servers, devices, browsers). It delivers on the […]
In a flurry of news this morning, it would appear that Twitter has won a deal with the NFL that gives the social network the right to stream Thursday Night Football live on the platform. Beyond the live stream of the game, the partnership will also include pre-game Periscope broadcasts from players and teams, as […]
While nowhere near as big as this morning’s news that Twitter will live stream the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, the company is announcing another change to its service today aimed at increasing the functionality and usage of its Direct Message (private messaging) feature. Starting today, the company is adding a new “Message” button to tweets […]
I’ve spent the past month in a daze, trying to make sense of my own tasks and responsibilities while forcing myself to adhere to a system I came up with that simply doesn’t work. You can never anticipate how your “perfectly designed” task-management system can fail. It’s our own nature — we’re so sure of ourselves — […]
In news that is not April 1-related, North Korea has this week begun to block access to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other websites in the country. The AP, which has a bureau in North Korean capital Pyongyang, reports that the government named YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Voice of America, a number of South Korean websites, porn and gambling […]
Near a week after being silenced because the internet taught her to be racist, Microsoft’s artificial intelligence bot “Tay” briefly returned to Twitter today, whereon she went on a spam tirade and then quickly fell silent again. Tay was created by the Microsoft Technology and Research and Bing teams in an effort to conduct research on conversational understanding, […]
Twitter this morning announced an effort to make its service more accessible to those who are visually impaired. Specifically, the company is now allowing users to add descriptions to images known as “alternative text,” or “alt text.” This lets people who are taking advantage of assistive technology, including screen readers and braille displays, the chance to hear […]
A study of ISIS supporter activity on Twitter suggests the tactic of repeat account suspensions can take a toll on the spread of extremist propaganda on the platform. Tackling terrorist appropriation of mainstream social media platforms has become a growing problem for the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Google’s YouTube in recent years as extremist groups have adopted […]
Twitter, which turned 10 this week, has apparently made Live its entire organizing principle. At an all-hands meeting last month, Mark Zuckerberg declared live video a top priority for Facebook. Clearly, Zuck’s directing his fight toward Twitter’s Periscope, a mobile live streaming app which itself competed fiercely with Meerkat. Amazon is expanding its recently acquired […]