Washington, United States | AFP | Twitter filed suit Thursday against the US government, asking a court to back its refusal to hand over the identities of users claiming to be dissenting federal employees. The lawsuit revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and US Customs and Border Protection had sought …
Read More »Twitter drops egg icon in battle with internet ‘trolls’
San Francisco, United States | AFP | An egg icon that for years marked profiles of new Twitter users was gone Monday, a victim of “trolls” who often hid behind them to launch anonymous online attacks. For seven years, anyone who created a Twitter account automatically got an egg icon as …
Read More »Twitter makes room for more characters in tweets
San Francisco, United States | AFP | Twitter on Thursday began rolling out changes to let people pack more into tweets, subtracting from the character count names of those being replied to in posts. The latest software modification at the one-to-many messaging service comes about a year after Twitter set out …
Read More »Spanish woman sentenced for Twitter jokes about Franco-era assassination
Madrid, Spain | AFP | A Spanish court on Wednesday sentenced a young woman to jail for posting jokes on Twitter about the 1973 assassination of a senior figure in the Franco dictatorship. The National Audience, Spain’s top criminal court, found Cassandra Vera, 21, guilty of glorifying terrorism and humiliating victims …
Read More »Twitter adds ‘explore’ to make finding tweets easier
San Francisco, United States | AFP | Twitter on Thursday added an “explore” tab aimed at making it easier to find interesting content, the latest move to boost engagement at the one-to-many messaging service. The feature, which was being added first to Twitter on Apple mobile devices and was promised …
Read More »Trump takes control… of @POTUS Twitter handle
Washington, United States | AFP | Donald Trump took over Friday as the 45th US president and in doing so inherited the White House Twitter account from outgoing leader Barack Obama. In the first “social media transition” at the White House, Trump became the owner of the Twitter handle @POTUS, …
Read More »Google grabs Twitter app platform Fabric
San Francisco, United States | AFP | Google is acquiring Twitter’s mobile application developer platform Fabric, a move which could give some breathing room for the social network after charting an independent path without a suitor. Terms of the deal were not announced. Twitter last year was in talks to …
Read More »Twitter chief for China quits, hails its performance
Beijing, China | AFP | Twitter’s manager for China, whose appointment just eight months ago sparked controversy, has announced her resignation but welcomed the growing number of Chinese advertisers even though the service is blocked by Beijing. Kathy Chen, appointed in April as general manager for the China region comprising …
Read More »Mocked for his tweets, Trump fires back – on Twitter
Washington, United States | AFP | President-elect Donald Trump sent a dismissive tweet in response to a comedy sketch that mocked his penchant for sending tweets. Trump again lambasted the show “Saturday Night Live,” on which he is played by actor Alec Baldwin. But whereas on other occasions Trump has …
Read More »Rule by tweet: Trump cultivates new ‘bully pulpit’
Washington, United States | AFP | US presidents are normally wary that their words alone can move armies and markets, but for President-elect Donald Trump, incendiary early morning tweet-bombs are a style of governance. Since his shock win on November 8, the septuagenarian mogul has used Twitter to wade neck-deep …
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