An unnamed Johannesburg resident was robbed, kidnapped, and stuffed into the back of car on Sunday – but managed to send a text to his girlfriend, Lynn Peters who promptly posted a plea for help on Twitter. Frantic retweeting led to a Twitter-coordinated search by private security companies, who retrieved both the car and Peters’ boyfriend.
A youth activist based in Johannesburg has apparently laid a complaint with the SA Human Rights Commission (HRC) regarding Helen Zille’s tweet of almost two weeks ago, where she referred to scholars in the Eastern Cape that come to the Western Cape for schooling as “refugees”. Read his justification while Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” gently resonates in your head, after the jump!
A new once-click payment system focused on social media is currently being tested in Belgium. Paycento enables internet users to pay to read a single article or download a piece of music without having to fill out forms or enter their credit card details on the website. More details inside.
Fellow South Africans, the word is in! Don’t think that people being jailed for hate speech online is something that only happens overseas. According to a South African legal expert, we too can be prosecuted for “cyber smearing,” which can mean fines or even jail should you be caught. More on minding your netiquette, after the jump!
An blog post allegedly featuring the residential address of George Zimmerman – the man who killed Trayvon Martin – has gone viral. The post went viral after it was retweeted by Spike Lee to his 250 000 followers. Unfortunately, the address actually belongs to an innocent elderly couple, who now live in fear.
A Welsh university student has been jailed for 56 days for a “racially-aggravated public order offence” after making offensive tweets about Bolton Wanderers player Fabrice Muamba, who collapsed with heart failure during a FA cup tie with Tottenham Hotspur on March 17. See the full Twitter feed, after the jump.
Less than a week after Helen Zille’s latest Twitter-storm about comments she made about the state of education here in the Western Cape versus the same in our neighbours – she called students from the Eastern Cape who attend school here “refugees” – she has gotten all up in the ANC’s grille once more with fresh comments regarding the state of health here versus there.
An American teenager has managed to persuade an LA-based porn actress to go with him to his senior prom, but he needs to overcome a few obstacles first: one, his parents; two, his principal; and three, finding enough cash to fly the minx in for his big night!
We’ve told you a lot about the shenanigans of SA’s Big Four banks recently. Yesterday a Twitter storm erupted around Standard Bank and FNB, with the former accusing FNB of misleading advertising. The irony? The mud-slinging quite quickly turned in the direction of Standard Bank, with Tweeters taking FNB’s side. Here’s a snapshot of what happened.
This week, the Catholic Church begins its annual Lenten cycle, culminating in the holy days associated with Easter in just over a month, and given the flagging interest many young Catholics around the world are apparently showing in sticking to their Lenten vows, the Pope is taking his fight for their pledges to the Twittersphere.
Chris Brown’s success at the Grammys – he won an award for the Best R&B album, and performed to a standing ovation – has been mildly overshadowed by people getting upset over his beating up Rihanna. So, like all mature and repentant individuals, he turned to his Twitter account to set things right.
The Twittosphere went a little gaga earlier this week over pictures of a supposed line of Louis Vuitton condoms that the luxury French fashion house was planning to unleash on their highbrow clientele.
Yesterday’s 46th Superbowl in the States, which saw the New York Giants eke out a last minute 21-17 win over the New England Patriots, also saw an unprecedented surge in activity on social messaging phenomenon, Twitter. To the tune of 10 000 tweets per minute, that is.
Man, look, I know the successive restriction of online liberties is something we should be fighting tooth and nail, but I can’t be the only one who heard about last Saturday’s ‘Twitter Blackout,’ in protest of Twitter’s new censorship policy, and failed to care.
Over the past few years social media has transformed the proliferation of information, particularly mainstream news. It’s now almost more likely that you’ll first learn about breaking news on your Facebook feed or Twitter account than from a legitimate news source. That’s all about to change.
Google has joined Wikipedia, BoingBoing and a number of other popular websites in the SOPA protest – not just by ‘blacking out’ their logo, which is cute but largely ineffective, but by putting together a comprehensive and informative infographic on the SOPA bill and piracy, along with access lines for voters to contact members of Congress through.
On Sunday a second set of nude pictures of Khanyi Mbau appeared on Twitter. The Film and Publication Board said yesterday that the police would be asked to help with investigations. They also warned that people who post such pictures on social networks might be held criminally liable. OFFICE WARNING: Nudity may appear after you click.
Following his opening address for the International Knowledge Conference at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, former president, Thabo Mbeki voiced some concerns about Twitter as “a great conveyor of reliable knowledge,” pointing to Gaddafi’s overthrow as a consequence of “false knowledge,” rather than the social media. Mbeki immediately started trending on Twitter.
Pictures of what appears to be Rihanna smoking weed in Hawaii were taken yesterday. Whilst she was puffing the magic dragon, Rihanna also tweeted the lyrics to a Drake song that deals with the world’s most beloved green herb: “Kush rolled, glass full…I prefer the better things!”
2011 may be remembered as the year that news and social media tied the knot. Check out a great visual recap of the 2011, as seen on Twitter, after the jump.
An annual report from comScore on what happens online has shown that 1 in every 5 minutes of time online this year was spent on social networking sites – as compared to the 6% of internet time that went to social networking in 2007. By all accounts that sort of growth is expected to continue, and speed up, in 2012.
Facebook yesterday released a big ol’ lump of data about the most shared content of 2011, both globally and for specific countries. Osama Bin Laden’s death was far and away the most popular status update topic, followed distantly by the Super Bowl results and and the Casey Anthony trial for second and third most popular, respectively.
Twitter has revealed the 10 biggest stories to break on the micro-blogging site over the last year. These are moments in 2011 that happened first on Twitter, or “could only happen on Twitter”, according to the founders of the Twitter Stories project.
In a worrying move for people who like their internet uncensored, a federal judge in Nevada has ruled that Chanel has the right seize 700 domain names that have been peddling fake Chanel products – and that search engines and social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Bing, and Google, are to “de-index” the domains.
Yesterday DJ Fresh tweeted the following regarding a family member: “Attention seeking person i know says ‘i just tried to kill myself’… would it be ‘wrong’ to send them 5 ways that WILL work? #SOselfish [sic]”. He also called his cousin “a suicidal brat”. This has upset a lot of people, including the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG), yet Fresh remains defiant on the matter.
Not happy with their recent spate of public embarrassments, Qantas poured some more petrol on the PR fire to really get things going when they launched their recent Twitter campaign.
Whenever anybody talks about viral advertising, something deep inside me gets a little closer to breaking. So please understand that when I say that this campaign by Innocent Foods, which lowers its prices the more social media exposure it gets (“the more people that tweet, the cheaper you eat”) could go nicely viral, I mean it.
In another case of “Why didn’t I think of that?”, a Belgian record label that goes by the name of SonicAngel, identifies future stars by tracking trends on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Not only that, they also allow fans to invest in the artists’ success, with a six monthly return on their initial investment. Brilliant.
Wonderful. Leisha Hailey, former The L-Word castmember, was thrown off of a Southwest Airlines flight yesterday for kissing her girlfriend – the flight attendant citing the apparent fact that Southwest is a “family airline.” This is the same airline that booted Kevin Smith for being fat, and Green Day’s Billy Joel Armstrong for wearing baggy pants.
Look, it’s nice to know Apple isn’t the only company that knows how to create buzz by accidentally leaking information. Ji Lee, Facebook’s creative director, tweeted about Facebook Music, which is set to launch tomorrow. The post was quickly deleted, but not before the Internet had time to get all excited about it.