AFP
Interesting commentary from around the Web on a tech story that made headlines last week.
Users of Instagram and Twitter were caught in the middle of a photo turf war this week. Instagram’s announcement that it would no longer allow its photos to appear in Twitter feeds raised concerns over whether web companies are holding user content hostage as they try to monetise their platforms. Read more
Twitter apologises for mass password reset error
Many Twitter users were confused and alarmed this morning by an email from the service saying that their accounts had been “compromised” and forcing them to change their passwords. Read more
Flooding in New York
A monumental presidential election in 2008, social revolutions in the Middle East last year, and now Hurricane Sandy.
Photos of water lapping at the base of the Brooklyn carousel and spindly trees crashed upon car roofs have, er, flooded social media channels.
Just as Facebook burst into the mainstream during Barack Obama’s first presidential election campaign, today Instagram, the photo-sharing app now owned by Facebook, is finding widespread use as the preferred storytelling medium of the biggest storm in decades to hit the east coast. Read more
Twitter’s first local block silences neo-Nazis in Germany
In January, Twitter sparked an outcry when it announced a modification to its famous maxim that the “tweets must flow”.
The Californian company, often hailed as a defender of free speech, said that it would block users in specific countries from seeing tweets or accounts that broke local law, while maintaining the ability of people beyond the border to see the offending messages. Activists such as Ai Wei Wei and other free-speech campaigners were quick to voice concerns about potential censorship.
However, it may salve the concerns of those who suggested that Twitter would readily kowtow to the daily whims of undesirable regimes to know that almost 10 months later, it has only now put those tools into action. Read more
GM may not be back on Facebook yet – but it does like Twitter ads
General Motors’ pullback from Facebook ads in May became a touchstone moment for doubts about the social network’s business model, just before it went public.
But as we report in today’s FT analysis of the growing turf war in the social networking market, GM has been spending money on Twitter for two years – and is now “beyond experimenting” with ads there. Read more
Common wisdom has it that when it comes to the web, China goes its own way. For big western sites there are China equivalents: for Google, there’s Baidu. For Facebook there’s Renren. For eBay, there’s Alibaba. And for Twitter, there’s Sina Weibo. Isn’t there?
In terms of numbers, yes. China has over 300m users on the Sina Weibo service – Twitter is banned in China. But hang on. According to a recent report, the most active users of Twitter worldwide are in… China. Not the US. How come?
Instagram is overtaking Twitter on mobile
Twitter has been touting its success as a “mobile first” social network, capitalising on the biggest perceived weakness of its main rival Facebook.
One recent estimate from eMarketer has even suggested that Twitter will generate more revenues from mobile ads than Facebook this year.
But new data show the scale of the threat that Twitter faces from explosive growth at Instagram, the photo-sharing app acquired by Facebook. Read more
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon
Rating: 4/5
The first ThinkPad laptops were introduced by IBM 20 years ago and Lenovo, which took over the brand in 2005, has maintained the tradition for durable, business-friendly machines that are much loved by “road warriors”.
Interesting commentary from around the Web on the tech story that made headlines this week.
How Twitter handled the suspension of a user who criticised NBC’s coverage of the Olympics drew plenty of attention from online commentators this week. For many, it offered a fresh reminder that when it comes to online services, just because users don’t pay a fee doesn’t mean it’s completely free. Read more
Twitter became the latest internet company to reveal attempts by governments to access user data and remove content, as the micro-blogging service followed in the footsteps of Google and released its first transparency report on Monday.
The report revealed that Twitter received government requests for user details from 1,181 accounts in the first half of 2012. Twitter complied with just under two-thirds of all government requests for user data. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
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