Showing all posts tagged: Twitter
Anonymous PRGuy17 Twitter account owner reveals identity
25 June 2022
Jeremy Maluta, speaking to Australian political commentator and You Tube host Jordan Shanks-Markovina, has identified himself as the owner of the PRGuy17 Twitter account.
The moves comes as a result of legal action by Avi Yemini, a conservative journalist, and a recent application to the Australian Federal Court, asking Twitter to reveal details of who was operating the previously anonymous account.
Yemini believed PRGuy17 was in the employ of Dan Andrews, the premier of Victoria, on account of tweets supporting Andrews, and his handling of the COVID-19 enforced lockdowns, but Maluta has denied the claim:
“I’m just a normal everyday person. I don’t want to be a celebrity,” he said. “This has meant being really careful about what I put online.” “I’m OK with putting my name out there, but I just … want to have a bit of privacy too.” “I can confirm I don’t work for [Premier] Dan Andrews or any political thing whatsoever. Those theories are completely cooked.”
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politics, social media, Twitter
Legal bid to name owner of anonymous PRGuy17 Twitter account
7 June 2022
The Australian Federal Court has given social networking service Twitter fourteen days to hand over subscription information for the PRGuy17 account, that may reveal the identity of the anonymous operator. The order is in response to a defamation case being bought against PRGuy17 by conservative media journalist Avi Yemini.
PRGuy17, whose avatar displays Simpsons character Troy McClure, built a following during the pandemic, often in vociferous defence of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and critical of various conservative political leaders and mainstream news media. Yemini filed proceedings in the Federal Court in February promising to unmask the identity of the Twitter account. Yemini, a journalist at far-right media outlet Rebel News, was critical of the Andrews government’s management of the pandemic and clashed with the account on Twitter.
Subscription data includes any name and email address details used to create the PRGuy17 account, along with internet protocol (IP) addresses used by the account’s operator. It remains to be seen how useful any of this data may be in uncovering the identity of the person operating the page.
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politics, social media, Twitter
SparkToro: almost 20% of active Twitter accounts are fake or spam
18 May 2022
No wonder Elon Musk, who has made an offer to buy Twitter, is questioning the number of fake and spam accounts on the platform. The social networking service had put the figure at five percent, but American software company SparkToro believes the number may be more like twenty percent:
SparkToro and Followerwonk conducted a rigorous, joint analysis of 44,058 public Twitter accounts active in the last 90 days. These accounts were randomly selected, by machine, from a set of 130+ million public, active profiles. Our analysis found that 19.42%, nearly four times Twitter’s Q4 2021 estimate, fit a conservative definition of fake or spam accounts (i.e. our analysis likely undercounts).
That equates to one in five in accounts which seems staggeringly high, but then again, unfortunately, no, maybe not. Musk may rightly be concerned about the actual levels of fake and spam accounts on Twitter, but as a seasoned and reasonably prolific user it seems odd someone so keenly interested in the platform would be unaware of the extent of the problem.
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Elon Musk, social media, Twitter
Fake accounts temporarily delay Musk’s Twitter takeover
14 May 2022
Elon Musk has temporarily delayed his purchase of social networking service Twitter, citing concerns over the apparent number of fake and spam accounts on the platform. How far are we into the acquisition process, before Musk decides this is an issue? Some speculate he is looking for a way to back out of the deal completely, while others think something else may be at play:
“Generally speaking, people don’t sign merger agreements so they can walk away from them. They sign merger agreements so they can do deals,” said Donna Hitscherich, a professor at Columbia Business School. Zino said Musk could be using the question over fake accounts as an excuse to cut his offer price of $54.20 a share. “He is giving himself more options and giving himself more leverage,” he said. “It appears like he’s paying more than he needs to pay for this deal.”
Perhaps he could run one of his Twitter polls? Do you operate a fake Twitter account? Yes or no? If five percent of respondents answer in the affirmative, all will be sweet…
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Elon Musk, social media, Twitter
Elon Musk offers to buy all Twitter shares
16 April 2022
Not content with a nine-percent stockholding in Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made an offer to buy all shares in the social networking service. His intention is to take the company private so he can enact many of the changes he says are necessary for Twitter’s future.
His offer of US$54.20 per share values Twitter at some US$43 billion, meaning Musk would either need to borrow the money, or sell some of his Tesla shares, to complete the purchase. Musk is the largest shareholder in Tesla, owning about seventeen percent of the stock.
But CEOs selling down shares in their own company can make other investors nervous, as it sometimes signals difficult times ahead. Watch this space. I’m waiting to see what happens.
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Elon Musk, social media, Twitter
Elon Musk pushes for Twitter free speech and edit button
6 April 2022
Space X, and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk recently bought a nine percent stock holding in social networking service Twitter, and has been given a seat on their board of directors. Concerns about free speech on the platform may have been behind the move:
On March 25, Musk posted a Twitter poll, writing, “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”
Musk is also keen to for users to have the ability to edit tweets, a feature many people have been repeatedly asking for. Twitter say they are currently testing an edit button, which will soon be available for all members.
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Elon Musk, social media, Twitter
To all the people who’ve blocked me on Twitter
11 December 2021
“For everyone who blocked me on Twitter”… I can’t tell you much about the book itself, but there’s a book dedication you don’t see every day, as seen in The End of Gender, by Canadian sex neuroscientist Dr Debra Soh.
Via Paul Dalgarno, on Bookstagram.
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Twitter novels: when will they be the next big thing?
9 February 2009
Would you read a novel that was served in 140-character instalments? Text message novels are already proving popular, especially in Japan, and with the ever increasing reach of Twitter, it’s only a matter of time before the 140-character novelists put aside their phones and try the idea online.
In fact, there are already several people tapping together Twitter novels, though at the moment their efforts are generally being greeted with the response: “what’s the point in that?”
Then again, there are still plenty of people questioning the point of Twitter itself, so while Twitter novelist superstars are yet to emerge, writing-off the potential of the idea is definitely premature.
After all, people have built celebrity around themselves in the past by way of all sorts of seemingly unfathomable means, including webcams, YouTube, and even blogging, so it’s only a matter of time before someone comes along with an idea for a Twitter novel that has mass appeal.
“The confessions of a lovelorn sex kitten” anyone?
Among some of the 140-character novelists currently exploring Twitter as a literary medium though, thoughts of fame — or notoriety — seem to be far from their minds.
For example Nick Belardes who writes “Small Places”, which he describes as “a very compartmentalized love story”, thinks Twitter is a great environment for developing a novel, but little else:
Don’t write a novel using Twitter, but mold a novel, transform a novel using Twitter. In my opinion, Twitter isn’t a scratch pad. Any good writer should have a plan, and so should either use a completed manuscript, or a portion, as is my case. The line-by-line rebuilding of the manuscript should be challenge enough. There should be lots of note-taking, forethought, and not just random phrases thrown at readers.
Mike Diccicco, author of The Secret Life of Hamel, sees composing a novel using Twitter as a way of improving his writing skills more than anything:
No — this is about the creative challenge of trying to be interesting and engaging and telling a story under a significant constraint. Plus, after years of preaching “compression” to copywriters in my ad agency, it’s time to see if I can practice what I preach.
For many Twitter novelists the challenge lies in building up a following, and maintaining an on-going interest in the story, something however that is all too familiar to many people already pedalling their wares online.
It’s just a matter of finding the right mix of the usual ingredients, a sticky idea, some deft execution, and a little bit of the WOW factor.
Originally published Monday 9 February 2009.
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legacy, novels, Twitter, writing
Twit Face route your Facebook status updates to Twitter
18 August 2008
Dylan Davis published a method of routing the Facebook update statuses of both you and your friends to Twitter a few days ago as a Facebook note. I thought this was something people might be interested in trying out, and Dylan was happy to let me republish his update status routing recipe. Enjoy!
Here’s a recipe for routing all your and your friend’s Status updates from Facebook to Twitter. See also my post about doing the same with Ecademy and other services.
Things you’ll need:-
- An Open ID
- An RSS feed for just your Facebook status updates. Go to your profile, click on minifeed, see All. Click on Status Stories. There’s a Subscription link bottom right.
- An RSS feed for your friends’ Facebook status updates. Friends – Status updates from the drop down at the top of the page. There’s a Subscription link bottom right.
- A dummy Twitter account. Create a new Twitter account and follow it from your main account.
Route your Facebook updates so when you post it also posts to Twitter.
- Login with your OpenID into Twitterfeed.
- Create a new entry. Put in your main Twitter account ID and Password and the RSS for your status updates.
- Update 30 minutes, Include title only, Include Item link, Prefix each Tweet with FB.
Now each time you post a status update on Facebook, within 30 minutes it will create a Tweet from you on Twitter with a link back to your profile on Facebook.
Route your Friends’ Facebook updates so when they set their status on Facebook, you can read it in Twitter.
- Login with your OpenID into Twitterfeed.
- Create a new entry. Put in your dummy Twitter account ID and Password and the RSS for your friends’ status updates.
- Update 30 minutes, Include title only, Include Item link, Prefix each Tweet with FB.
Now each time any of your friend’s post a status update on Facebook, within 30 minutes it will appear in your Twitter Friend’s timeline with a link back to their profile on Facebook.
You can use the same basic technique for any service that has one or both RSS feeds. It works better with services that include the name of the poster in the title. So Facebook, Plazes, Jaiku but not Pownce. AFAIK, Twitter is the only service with an API for updating a status externally and a 3rd party RSS to post service. Which means Twitter ends up as the best aggregator for all your services.
So the next question is which service you should use as your main update. I’m finding myself doing most of my updates on Twitter with occasional updates on Facebook and Ecademy to keep my profile on those services fresh.
Thanks again, Dylan.
Originally published Monday 18 August 2008.
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