Enrile story goes viral: ‘The audacity,’ that’s our money!

“Write to the senators. Tweet them. Ask them if they returned the Enrile bonus. DEMAND ANSWERS. MAKE THEM ACCOUNTABLE. PERA NATIN YUN!” exhorted user @yogon.   By Lawrence de GuzmanPhilippine Daily InquirerSenate President Juan Ponce-Enrile
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s Christmas cash gift of almost P30 million to his fellow senators rubbed Filipino netizens the wrong way, with some critics describing it as “suspicious” and “unethical.” The report on Enrile’s cash gift, which the Philippine Daily Inquirer broke Wednesday, immediately made the rounds of social networking sites as flustered readers shared it on their Twitter and Facebook accounts. The story easily became the most read article on INQUIRER.net, the broadsheet’s official website, with hundreds of users swarming to the comments section. On Facebook, the article had been recommended by users over 6,000 times by Wednesday evening. “Enrile has no power whatsoever to disburse public money indiscriminately!!! Regardless of the type of funds these are allocated to, these still belong to the government of the Filipinos and therefore cannot be spent arbitrarily,” user Bansot commented on the Inquirer website. “While the rest of the Filipinos are working hard, these senators are living luxurious lives,” user Jeff Castillo commented on the story. “What a way to end his political career, being true to form as a self-serving and corrupt politician,” user kulittwit chimed in. The Inquirer reported that Enrile gave 18 senators P1.6 million each, while four senators got P250,000 each—Antonio “Sonny” Trillanes IV, Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Alan Peter and sister Pia Cayetano who were known to have differences with Enrile. The cash gift, billed as “additional MOOE” or maintenance and other operating expenses, allegedly came from the funds allotted for the Senate post vacated by President Aquino when he won the presidential election in 2010. A senator described the gift as “unconscionable and unconstitutional” and that it could be interpreted as a bribe to prevent his ouster as Senate President, an observation shared by many in cyberspace. In response to these allegations, Enrile took to his official Twitter account, @SPJPE, and tweeted, “Those Senators who think that I am bribing anyone with additional budgets in order to keep my post as Senate President must have a very low opinion about their own colleagues.” “I was elected as Senate President twice and I can look at anyone straight in the eye in saying that I did not buy this position. Not one single centavo of the people’s money was spent just to enable me to cling to this office,” he continued. He issued the same statement to Senate reporters. Still, not many were pleased with Enrile’s distribution of the Senate funds as Christmas gift to his colleagues. “I find Enrile’s generosity suspicious and unethical,” tweeted user @i Jakebustos. ‘The audacity’ “This is a matter that @noynoyaquino should really look into … it stinks of unethical practices using public funds,” said user @kazekhan. “The audacity! Can only come from someone who thinks he’s above the law,” user @retromaldita tweeted. “Imagine if you actually gave that back to the people,” tweeted user @rdacalos. “Those senators had the conscience to accept those gifts amid the catastrophe in Mindanao?” tweeted user @beareyno. “What would folks from Davao feel? Common practice, but was it ethical?” asked user @LiberatingJepoy. This is where taxes go “Kaya lang galante mga trapong yan kasi d nila pera tinatapon nila (They are generous because it’s not their money),” user @IvesNisceII tweeted. “KAPAL! This is where our taxes go!,” said user @jed_pv.

 

Tags: Christmas , Facebook , Government , INQUIRER.net , Internet , Juan Ponce Enrile , politics , Senate , Social Media , State Budget , technology , Twitter

 

via technology.inquirer.net

 

What happened to Posterous & the lessons for journalists

by Jeff Sonderman Published Mar. 13, 2012 3:24 pm Updated Mar. 13, 2012 3:29 pm

Posterous now belongs to Twitter.

For Posterous Inc. and its venture-capital backers, this is considered a successful “exit” — cashing out on an investment. For the users who blogged, shared photos or even did journalism there, it’s a jolt.

Posterous launched in 2008 as a lite-blogging service that would make posting and distribution easy. Users could create posts just by sending an email. Each entry could be automatically shared or cross-posted to other social networks.

New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen started a Posterous blog in 2009. “I just wanted a place to post things that were not fully worked out PressThink posts. More like notebook items,” Rosen told me.

But in 2011, Rosen’s use of Posterous waned to only three posts, and this year only one so far, in January. He explained that he “just wanted to try it, as part of keeping up with the digital world.” Meanwhile, rival Tumblr has been much more successful at holding Rosen’s attention, where he has posted 14 times this year alone.

That seems to be a pretty common experience. Tumblr became vastly more popular than Posterous in the field of short-form publishing or “microblogging.”

 

So in September 2011 the site rebranded itself as Posterous Spaces and pivoted to “group sharing,” where discreet groups of users could share information privately through a blog Space.

It was a fine idea, except that Facebook already had thought of it in 2010. As is often the case when a company is both the biggest and the first to enter a market, Facebook won.

The fragile lives of online platforms

Speculation is that Posterous will eventually go away.

It’s not clear exactly what Twitter wants to do with its new purchase, but it is clear they were interested in its talent, not the product. Posterous gave an ominous assurance that users will have “ample notice before any changes or disruptions to the service.” (If you’re concerned, LifeHacker has published good tips on how to export your Posterous content to a Tumblr, Blogger or WordPress site.)

I asked Rosen about the significance of Twitter potentially closing a platform in which he and others had invested time and creativity. “It’s definitely a problem,” he said. “But nothing new.”

The fact is that all the social media or publishing platforms that journalists and others use can be sold, shifted or shuttered at any time. Just last weekend Facebook closed one-time Foursquare rival Gowalla, after acquiring its team three months earlier. Someday Twitter or even Facebook may be gobbled up by a next-generation tech giant.

The lesson is to experiment, to invest resources wisely, but don’t become overly dependent on a platform you don’t own — you never know who will own it tomorrow.

Tags: Posterous, Social media, Twitter

via poynter.org

 

Obama Has 13 Million Fake Twitter Followers

 

 

President Obama has nearly 19 million Twitter followers, but 70%, or approximately 13 million of them, are fake, according to a new analysis.

Mitt Romney’s Twitter account, meanwhile, has less than 900,000 followers, but only 15% of them, or about 135,000, are fakes.

The numbers come from Fake Follower Check, a tool from social media firm StatusPeople that analyzes any Twitter account’s followers and checks for telltale signs of fake followers.

“Fake accounts tend to follow a lot of people but have few followers,” Rob Waller, founder of StatusPeople, told the New York Times in a story about buying and selling Twitter followers. “We then combine that with a few other metrics to confirm the account is fake.”

Analysis of other popular Twitter accounts done using StatusPeople’s tools seems to indicate that the more popular a Twitter account is, the more likely it is that the account will have fake followers — possibly thanks to the work of Internet spammers.

 

SEE ALSO: Facebook Has 44% Fake Followers; Twitter Has 33%

 

Fake Twitter followers can be purchased on dozens of websites offering the service for as little as $0.01 per follower. They are sometimes bought by Twitter account managers to give the illusion that a particular brand has more social reach than it actually does.

A sudden spike in Romney’s follower count last month caused speculation that someone was buying fake followers for the account. Both the Romney campaign and the Obama campaign have denied buying Twitter followers. Twitter could not be reached for comment on the matter.

Are you surprised that Obama might have so many fake followers?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, EdStock

via mashable.com

 

Why Twitter Wanting to Kill All Third Party Twitter Apps Is Ridiculous

In a classic case of forgetting where you came from, Twitter is suffocating third party Twitter apps until they die so the only Twitter people know is from Twitter, Inc. itself. This sucks for many reasons—mostly because Twitter apps suck compared to third party apps—but also because of this: the Twitter we know today wouldn't exist without the help of the third party apps Twitter is trying to kill. For example, did you know tweet wasn't a word created by Twitter but by third parties?

Craig Hockenberry of Twitterific listed the reasons of why third parties are important to Twitter a year ago and it's truer than ever today:

• First use of "tweet" to describe an update (see page 86 of Dom Sagolla's book.)
• First use of a bird icon.
• First native client on Macintosh.
• First character counter as you type.
• First to support replies and conversations (in collaboration with Twitter engineering.)
• First native client on iPhone.

A community helps Twitter grow and succeed and once Twitter becomes big and successful it turns its back on the community. Stay classy Twitter. [Furbo via Daring Fireball]

via gizmodo.com

 

Twitter Vs Twittering

 

Last spring an announcement from the platform team at Twitter not-at-all-subtly suggested developers of third party clients should find something else to do, and today a list of changes to its API turns that whisper into a firm nudge. The limit that most directly affects any of the unofficial clients you may be interested in using is that existing apps currently servicing more than 100,000 individual user tokens will be allowed to double their current count, but cannot add any users past that without Twitter's permission. Going forward, any app that needs more than 100,000 tokens to do things like access the timeline, show DMs or anything else a client app might do will also need Twitter's permission to operate. Other changes include that any pre-installed client app on something like a phone, computer, or TV will need Twitter's permission before it ships (sensing a trend here?), or potentially face revocation of its application key. Moving on, the Display Guidelines about the information any app that displays tweets must provide are shifting to Display Requirements, with violators potentially losing that application key. Those Twitter Cards that started rolling out over the last few months are also getting a big push, with plans to include other ways for developers to bring their rich content to Twitter, and embed real-time Twitter content on existing websites.

In a section of the blog post that specifically calls out popular third party clients like Tweetbot and Echofon, it puts them in a zone of Twitter apps that it believes developers "should not build" since they mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter client experience. Other services focused on aggregation like Storify and Favstar.fm are also called out as not having much of a future in Twitter's view of its universe. It's pretty clear where we're headed, as Twitter seeks to monetize a growing and talkative user base, it wants to make sure users are all seeing things in the format it wants them to. With a six month migration period ahead, developers and users may have hard choices to make. Tweetbot developer Paul Haddad has already tweeted that "the sky is not falling...the cap is pretty huge and we aren't going anywhere", and we'll undoubtedly hear from others soon. The rest of the details reside beyond the source link, but let us know first -- are you learning to love the official Twitter clients, or are you thinking paying $50 a year for an entirely unproven alternative with no users doesn't sound so ridiculous after all?

 

via engadget.com

 

Mistakes 'Girls' Make

The Girls Facebook page shared a photo with the caption “Share your own #mistakesGIRLSmake”. The photo is of our favorite leading lady, Hannah Horvath, on the subway napping, as remembered in one of the closing scenes in the season finale.

Personally (and very fortunately), I have yet to fall asleep on the subway. Been tempted to on many occasions, especially on my way to work, but the smarter half of me (the paranoid half of me really) cautiously keeps an eye out for the nearest fire exists. Though, I do know a handful of ladies who have fallen asleep on the subway, so I understand these things happen.

Other mistakes that I have had the pleasure (but mostly not) of encountering are the following:

1.) Admitting to love/hate reading a self help book. I did and immediately regretted it because I got shit from all my girlfriends. #saveyourselffromselfhelpbooks

2.)Facebook stalking my ex-boyfriend’s (and crush’s, let’s be honest) girlfriend and insulting each picture like it was my job. #admittedlyfacebookstalking  

3.) Relying on someone else to watch my girlfriend at a party. She threw up in a McDonalds bathroom by the end of the night…. #worstfriendawardgoesto

4.) Lying on a bathroom floor that wasn’t my own. Thinking about it still makes me cringe. #idisgustmyselfsometimes

5.) Attempting to seductively eat… anything (Let’s face it, Marnie can eat liver attractively whereas I can’t.) #whydoievenbother

6.) Having a relationship seemly through text. #21stcenturykindofgal

7.) Neglecting to keep track of my monthly friend… I’ll leave it at that. #awkwardunderwearstains

Any I have neglected to mention? Leave a comment with your own #mistakesGIRLSmake

By Amanda Gomez

via socialitelife.com

 

G+, Twitter and Tumblr are Biggest Losers

 

Like a lot of my peers I have been immersed in Google Plus for the last week and I have to give credit to Google for really getting this one right. The sharing mechanism is very accessible, Circles offer welcome segmentation of your social graph, and most importantly, it’s fun to use.

Much of the commentary has centered on what a successful Google + means for Facebook but I disagree that this is represents a severe near or medium term threat to Facebook. What it does harken is a form of arms race between the two companies that is ultimately good for users.

There are two major losers worth highlighting, Twitter and Tumblr. We won’t see the effects of G+ on either service for some time but I forecast that as G+ mainstreams that Twitter and Tumblr activity will plummet.

Twitter’s defining feature is both it’s strength and it’s limiting factor, 140 characters. Tumblr use over time has grown as Twitter itself grew, and I think a major factor in their growth is the mainstream acceptance of short form sharing. Like a lot of people I started to use my Tumblr blog to share links with short text snippets that provided context, and I enjoyed the photo and video sharing which embeds the media blob rather than link to it.

I wrote about my shift to Tumblr here, saying last year that:

Twitter and Facebook will continue to be important channels to push content through but rather than creating content in those networks I will, whenever possible, post through Tumblr. I will continue to “talk” with people through social networks and Facebook has some unique capabilities that I will take advantage of.

G+ is essentially a better Twitter+Tumblr for me than combining the two services could ever be. I get the realtime effects of an activity stream on top of easy content sharing tools, and I get the ability to provide a high degree of context in both what is shared and in the interaction because there is a threading model for replies.

Lastly a word about Circles. Google is providing a good starting point with Circles but it’s not the end game because being successful with Circles is entirely a function of your discipline in maintaining Circles, it’s like email folders in this respect.

We really need to get to a point where dynamic Circles can respond to a person’s interest graph as well as their social graph. In this model content would be shared not on the sole basis of who I targeted with it but as a response to what people are actually interested in.

I am making an effort to maintain my Circles but I don’t enjoy it nor do I believe that it is a model that the mass market will adopt, even though the notion of segmenting a person’s social graph is entirely reasonable and highly practical.

G+, Twitter and Tumblr are Biggest Losers

G+, Twitter and Tumblr are Biggest Losers

Posted on July 7, 2011
Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments (3)

Like a lot of my peers I have been immersed in Google Plus for the last week and I have to give credit to Google for really getting this one right. The sharing mechanism is very accessible, Circles offer welcome segmentation of your social graph, and most importantly, it’s fun to use.

Much of the commentary has centered on what a successful Google + means for Facebook but I disagree that this is represents a severe near or medium term threat to Facebook. What it does harken is a form of arms race between the two companies that is ultimately good for users.

There are two major losers worth highlighting, Twitter and Tumblr. We won’t see the effects of G+ on either service for some time but I forecast that as G+ mainstreams that Twitter and Tumblr activity will plummet.

Twitter’s defining feature is both it’s strength and it’s limiting factor, 140 characters. Tumblr use over time has grown as Twitter itself grew, and I think a major factor in their growth is the mainstream acceptance of short form sharing. Like a lot of people I started to use my Tumblr blog to share links with short text snippets that provided context, and I enjoyed the photo and video sharing which embeds the media blob rather than link to it.

I wrote about my shift to Tumblr here, saying last year that:

Twitter and Facebook will continue to be important channels to push content through but rather than creating content in those networks I will, whenever possible, post through Tumblr. I will continue to “talk” with people through social networks and Facebook has some unique capabilities that I will take advantage of.

G+ is essentially a better Twitter+Tumblr for me than combining the two services could ever be. I get the realtime effects of an activity stream on top of easy content sharing tools, and I get the ability to provide a high degree of context in both what is shared and in the interaction because there is a threading model for replies.

Lastly a word about Circles. Google is providing a good starting point with Circles but it’s not the end game because being successful with Circles is entirely a function of your discipline in maintaining Circles, it’s like email folders in this respect.

We really need to get to a point where dynamic Circles can respond to a person’s interest graph as well as their social graph. In this model content would be shared not on the sole basis of who I targeted with it but as a response to what people are actually interested in.

I am making an effort to maintain my Circles but I don’t enjoy it nor do I believe that it is a model that the mass market will adopt, even though the notion of segmenting a person’s social graph is entirely reasonable and highly practical.

More on this topic (What's this?)

Is Google Search Plus Your World Really That Bad of An Idea? (Investment U, 1/18/12)

Google’s (GOOG) Futuristic Driving Technology: No Drivers Required (Wall Street Daily, 12/19/11)

Google Takes on Amazon With Same-Day Shipping Service (Investment U, 12/5/11)

Apple, Google – Both Undervalued Stocks by the Numbers (Investment Underground » Page n..., 12/24/11)

Read more on Google at Wikinvest

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Jon · 27 weeks ago

As a musician who markets through the web, circles offer a great way to market to my key demographic, without annoying family and friends in the process. It also lets my key demographic be in contact with me, without annoying me with pictures of their food, and rants about their bff and their cats. I do not think that G+ will be a twitter killer, because Twitter is not used for the same things standard social networks are used for. Tumblr is retarded, and needs to be put down. G+ will likely acomplish that. It will not kill FB.

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0 replies · active less than 1 minute ago

0 Vote up Vote down

Tom Blur · 9 weeks ago

http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/09/tumblr-10-billio...

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1 reply · active 7 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Jeff 27p · 7 weeks ago

If you break down Tumblr traffic and isolate porn and copyright violators, the numbers are not as impressive as they would appear.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42750038/w...

The same thing happened to Ning and when their advertiser driven business model forced them to kill porn from their network (advertisers don't like having their ads show up on porn) the company backslid into oblivion.

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via jeffnolan.com

Twitter Secures "Tweet" Trademark

Twitter has settled a lawsuit that will give the company control over the “tweet” trademark, according to a new report.

Twitter doesn’t currently own the trademark to the term. Instead, Des Moines-based Twittad controls the trademark. Twittad, a provider of sponsored advertising on Twitter, has trademarked its tagline, “Let your ad meet tweets.” It also has trademarked various variations of the word “tweet.”

Twitter and Twittad have been in a legal struggle for years over the trademark. Twitter has argued that the term “tweet” was famous as a Twitter term before Twittad secured the trademark. The courts have thus far disagreed.

The two companies have settled their differences though, according to The Wall Street Journal. As part of the settlement, Twittad will transfer the “tweet” trademark to Twitter, though Twittad will continue to use its current trademark.

“Twitter and Twittad have arrived at a resolution recognizing a consistent use of Tweet while supporting the continued success of Twitter ecosystem partners like Twittad,” a Twitter spokesperson told Mashable.

Neither company revealed whether money exchanged hands as part of the settlement, though we’d be surprised if Twitter didn’t have to part with a good amount of cash to secure the trademark.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Blueberry4Park

via mashable.com

Muting Hashtags

I’m a big proponent of Twitter events as a way to make connections with others, but there are a lot of them and more all the time.

Sometimes, you’re not going to be interested in the subject matter, which is no one’s fault.

Instead of tolerating a slew of incongruous tweets from your friends or, even worse, unfollowing them just because they are interacting with others, here are some options for how to mute hashtags.

TweetDeck

Within TweetDeck, you can use the Global Filter for three options:

People (by name or user name), Words (specific words or hashtags) or Sources (their examples are “API, facebook”)

If you’re using the desktop version, just click the little wrench in the middle of the top right icons, then go to the last menu option that pops up.

HootSuite

I can’t find anything that suggests you can filter things you don’t want, just filter for keyword and Klout score. This is one of the many reasons I don’t like HootSuite.

Their answer is that you can do it in search or keyword columns, but not in your main feed, which seems pretty useless to me.

Maybe they’ll get it. If they do, let me know.

Web Browser

Tweetfilter

Tweetfilter works on Firefox, Chrome, Opera and IE 8+

The instructions differ based on your browser, so just click the above link.

The Proxlet extension is an easier option for Google Chrome.

Proxlet also works with Twitter clients on desktop or mobile. As of this writing, Proxlet supports:

• TweetDeck Desktop
• Twitter for iPhone
• Twidroyd
• Seesmic for Android
• Spaz

via roniweiss.com

 

Formulists Organizes Your Twitter Lists and Expands Your Twitter Network

Melanie Pinola — Twitter lists are a great way to organize who you follow, but manually curating the lists can be time consuming. Formulists is a robust tool for auto-creating and managing Twitter lists and finding more people to add to your Twitter network.

Link your Twitter account to Formulists to group "tweeps" into a great many categories. Formulists offers stock lists like top people who mentioned you most and people you mention the most. You can filter people by how often they tweet (e.g., create a list for people who tweet too much), their location or bio, or other criteria. Other lists can help you discover people that share Twitter lists with you, track your new Twitter followers, and a whole lot more.

In short, it's basically a way to turn Twitter into a more powerful networking tool via easier list creation.

Formulists | via Leading Hands

You can follow or contact Melanie Pinola, the author of this post, on Twitter.

via lifehacker.com