You’re not all on Twitter. I get that; I know people who don’t drink alcohol, either, and I don’t judge them for that. To all you cool social media cats, though, this is troubling: Twitter is readying a new ad product that will serve up ads to users from company accounts they don’t already follow.
Wikileaks is parceling out another bunch of diplomatic cables today, in case we’d forgotten about Julian Assange amidst all the other hubbub. Expect people to largely ignore the allegations of internal corruption and the details of John McCain’s conversations with that Gadaffi chap, and focus on the whole rape trial thing.
Around 2 000 people participated in the Cape Town leg of the international anti-rape SlutWalk campaign on Saturday. Unfortunately, Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba speculated on Twitter whether he “might get lucky” at the march, in which many women wore deliberately revealing clothing to make their point. Way to go, Malusi.
There is something encouraging coming out of the past three days of rioting and looting, even if it is a remote silver lining: the online mobilization of volunteer clean-up operations, mostly organized via Twitter and Facebook. By this time yesterday, #riotcleanup, was the second-highest trending topic worldwide.
When he’s not letting us know that he’ll be on holiday, President Jacob Zuma harnesses the power of the presidential twitter feed to promote the dramatic accomplishments of his progeny. Sweet, man. Check out the tweet after the jump.
Moments after John Smit announced he would be leaving the Sharks and joining English club side Saracens for two seasons after the 2011 World Cup, well-known author and rugby pundit, Dan Retief weighed in with his opinion on Twitter. Smit replied, with a perfectly weighted volley of wit. Check out the tweets after the jump.
“Taliban: ‘On each floor of the hotel, our fighters have broken down the door to each room, taking out guests and killing them.'” This was one of the traumatic tweets circulating on Twitter last night, as Taliban militants stormed the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, killing 21 people.
So Nonhle Thema – from Vuzu reality show Nonhle Goes to Hollywood, and the former face of the Dark and Lovely brand – seems to be having a bit of a freak-out on Twitter. She’s eager to tell everybody that she is “young and RICH……….LOL…..DEAL WITH IT PLEASE…” Over and over again.
Hot damn but I love the future. Iceland is drawing up a new constitution, in the wake of the country’s commercial banks collapsing. Which is news, but not news-news; the interesting part is how the former vikings are going about the process – they’re crowdsourcing the draft online, with links to Facebook, Twitter and Youtube accounts.
I know this isn’t the worst thing to happen to French civil liberties by a long shot, but still; the interpretation of a law prohibiting ‘commercial advertising’ – which, in effect, will mean that newsreaders may no longer mention Facebook or Twitter, unless the story is about Facebook or Twitter – makes total social media sense. Total.
Social networks were all yesterday with rumours that Will Smith had died on the set of his latest movie, currently being shot in New Zealand.
The always charming Wayne Rooney has offered to fight a “fan” who insulted him on Twitter. Wayne told the user that he’d “put him asleep in 10 seconds”.
Ha! Well done. Exactly nine days after setting up a Twitter account, the Secret Service was seen to post the following: “Had to monitor FOX for a story. Can’t. Deal. With. The. Blathering.” The tweet wasn’t deleted in time for all of the giggling, left-wing internet to leap at it. An “internal follow-up” is in progress.
It’s sort of hard to be on the internet right now without hearing about protests from whichever North African/Middle Eastern country is falling under the ‘freedom’ bandwagon, but this Google Maps/Twitter mashup contextualizes the online protest movement nicely – and in real time.
Ha. Last night, someone in control of the Red Cross Twitter feed accidentally posted “Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer…when we drink we do it right #gettngslizzerd. ” Then the internet found out & made a meme of it, resulting in a flood of Red Cross blood donations.
Poor , Ezperanza Spalding- I don’t know who she is either, but apparently she’s won “Best New Artist” at Sunday’s Grammys, despite Justin Bieber being the overwhelming favourite. This has sparked outrage amongst Bieber’s fans or “Beliebers” as they are known, and they have called for her head.
Sort of. HP recently released a study looking under the hood of Twitter’s ‘Trending Topics’ function – revealing (gasp) that most of the time, popular topics get broadcast by major media twitter accounts, then amplified by their followers, rather than some wanky cloud-based news system.
Ha. But no, seriously, they’re talking about this – the dudes and ladies who run Twitter are being courted by a couple of companies, Facebook and Google among them, who want to shell out the $10bn that the company is apparently worth. Predictably, a bunch of people are whining about this being the end of Twitter, etc.
World Wide Worx, the research company with their fingers on the pulse of SA’s cell phone data usage habits has ascertained, with careful research and tireless data sifting that, yes, Twitter is the next big thing. They estimate that at least 1 million South Africans are “using the service”.
Speak2Tweet was launched over the weekend, a joint venture by Twitter and Google that allows anybody to post to Twitter using just a phone connection, in the hopes of getting more word out about the situation in Egypt as it unfolds. Google bought the company that engineered the technology last week because hey, it’s Google.
Katy Perry is widely regarded as one of the world’s most beautiful women. Russell Brand has shattered that perception. There really is something to be said for the argument that social media should not breach the boundaries of a man and wife’s marriage bed. Click the link to see what I’m talking about.
An American woman has unwittingly become the talk of the town on Twitter. Or should I say, the talk of thousands of Ashes followers. Of course we all know that the Ashes pits Australia against England in a 5-test match series; unfortunately this poor woman doesn’t even know what a wicket is. Tweedicament.
Paul Chambers, a 27-year-old UK accountant has been charged with and convicted of making “menacing” Teets. He had hoped that the case would be dismissed as the stupid prank that it was – and angled for a knocked down £1,000 fine. Instead, Judge Jacqueline Davies had his appeal dismissed on every count. Sorry, what?
While it’s certainly no secret that we try to steer well clear of the pessimistic soap opera that is South African politics, once in a while a story comes along that is so face-meltingly radical that it is literally impossible to ignore.
Television personality and social media philanthropist, Alyssa Milano, is breaking new ground with social media and money. Stay with me now. She’s auctioning a follow from her on Twitter. That’s right. The highest bidder on her Twitchange Ebay page will win a following from Milano’s twitter handle, @Alyssa_Milano.
A Johannesburg saint tweeter, @PigSpotter, has come in for a lot of stick lately. PigSpotter debuted on Twitter at the end of July this year, and in the space of less than two months, they’ve racked up over 11 000 followers, and that figure is growing at a rate of a few hundred per day. […]
The legendary fail-whale When you happen to be an Australian Olympic gold medalist swimmer sponsored by an elite care brand, it’s probably not a good idea to talk trash on Twitter. If you’re a naturalised English sportsman that’s suffered a run of poor form in recent times and have since been cut from the national […]
The greatest Canadian scourge since Brandon Huntley Celine Dion, Justin Bieber stirs grown men to panic. The vapid, androgynous, lesbo-chic music has taken the pubescent world by storm, and the boy girl with the pudding bowl kop chop seems to wield genuine power. As demonstrated by his latest foray into social networking, where he tweeted […]