New York Times digital 'NFT' article sells for $563,000

NEW YORK, United States - A New York Times columnist on Thursday sold one of his articles in digital form for $563,000, the latest example of the craze surrounding "non fungible tokens," which collectors are snapping up.

Keven Roose's article entitled "Buy This Column on the Blockchain" was itself aimed at trying to test the market as to what sort of items would sell in the form of an "NFT."

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a digital object, such as a drawing, piece of music, photo, or video, with a certificate of authenticity created by blockchain technology.

This authentication by a network of computers is considered inviolable. 

The virtual object, which is actually a computer file, can be exchanged or sold with its certificate.

NFTs have become popular in the past 6 months, as wealthy collectors turn to the digital market during the pandemic.

On Monday, the first message ever posted on Twitter sold for $2.9 million when its sender, Twitter co-founder and chief Jack Dorsey, accepted the winning bid at auction.

Earlier this month, a digital collage by American artist Beeple sold for $69.3 million at Christie's, setting a new record for an NFT.

"Why can't a journalist join the NFT party, too?" asked Roose in his column.

At the end of the 24-hour auction, a collector calling himself Farzin won the article with 350 Ethereum, a major cryptocurrency, worth $563,000. 

"Fully just staring at my monitor laughing uncontrollably," Roose, a tech columnist, wrote on Twitter after the sale.

Roose had indicated that the proceeds, after the 15 percent fee deducted by the Foundation platform on which the auction was organized, would go to charities supported by The New York Times. 

Agence France-Presse

Widower asks Dorsey to remove Trump’s false tweets. Twitter says no.

The widower of Lori Klausutis, whose death President Donald Trump has used to smear MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, is asking Twitter to remove the president’s tweets on the subject.

Twitter said Tuesday that it would not.

In a letter to Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, last week, Timothy Klausutis said Trump had violated Twitter’s terms of service by falsely suggesting that Scarborough killed Lori Klausutis in 2001 when he was a Florida congressman and she was an intern in his office. Lori Klausutis, then 28, actually died as a result of a heart condition that caused her to collapse at work and hit her head on her desk.

“An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet,” Timothy Klausutis wrote in the letter, which was published Tuesday by The New York Times opinion writer Kara Swisher, “but I am only asking that these tweets be removed.”

Trump has repeatedly promoted the conspiracy theory against Scarborough, who has criticized the president on his MSNBC show “Morning Joe.” In a series of tweets over the past several weeks, Trump has urged law enforcement authorities in Florida to “open a cold case” and suggested falsely that Scarborough “got away with murder.” He had tweeted about the same conspiracy as far back as 2017.

“I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the president of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain,” Klausutis wrote in his letter. “My wife deserves better.”

Twitter said Trump’s tweets did not violate the company’s terms of service, even though its policies say users “may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so.” The company has long been hesitant to remove posts from world leaders, even when they contain disinformation. It has said posts from leaders are newsworthy.

There have been exceptions, especially during the coronavirus pandemic: In March, Twitter deleted posts by Presidents Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil in which they promoted unproven cures for COVID-19. But it has not deleted any of Trump’s posts.

Twitter said, for example, that Trump’s assertion that hydroxychloroquine showed “tremendous promise” in treating COVID-19 did not violate its policies because it was not a clear call to action that would harm the public.

Dorsey has faced multiple calls over the years to remove Trump’s misleading or false statements from the platform, including the president’s suggestion during a White House briefing last month that injecting disinfectant or using ultraviolet light could combat the coronavirus. Although Trump did not write about those subjects on Twitter himself, his statements led to a flood of other posts, videos and comments about false virus cures, which Twitter and other social media companies largely left standing.

While Trump has been tweeting repeatedly about Klausutis and Scarborough — including a pair of tweets Tuesday morning, after Swisher published Timothy Klausutis’ letter — he has barely spoken about the death toll from the coronavirus, which will soon reach 100,000 in the United States.

Twitter clarified its policy this month, stating that it would label tweets containing misinformation about the virus, including those posted by world leaders, with three broad categories: “misleading information,” “disputed claim” and “unverified claim.”

But the company said it would not label Trump’s tweets about Lori Klausutis.

“We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family,” a Twitter spokesman, Nick Pacilio, said in a statement in response to Timothy Klausutis’ letter. “We’ve been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.”

Pacilio did not elaborate on what changes the company would make to its product or policies.

In his letter, Klausutis said the persistence of the conspiracy theory, nearly two decades after his wife’s death, was deeply painful.

“As her husband, I feel that one of my marital obligations is to protect her memory as I would have protected her in life,” he wrote. “There has been a constant barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo and conspiracy theories since the day she died. I realize that may sound like an exaggeration, unfortunately it is the verifiable truth. Because of this, I have struggled to move forward with my life.”

-Maggie Astor and Davey Alba, The New York Times-

Twitter to ban political ads

Twitter Inc. will ban political advertising on its platform next month, the company's chief executive said on Wednesday, as social media platforms face pressure to block attempts to steer elections with false information.

"We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally," said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a statement. "We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought."

Social media companies, including Twitter rival Facebook Inc face growing pressure to stop selling ads that spread inaccurate information.

Facebook has pledged efforts to deal with misinformation on its platform after Russian propaganda on that platform before the 2016 U.S. presidential election was seen to affect the outcome of that race, which was won by Donald Trump.

But Facebook made a decision to not fact-check ads run by politicians, drawing ire from Democratic candidates running in the 2020 presidential election such as former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Earlier this month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company's policy, saying it did not want to stifle political speech.

Twitter's ban takes effect starting Nov. 22. Dorsey wrote on Twitter that paying for ads forces "targeted political messages on people" with a power that "brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions." 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Twitter tumbles as 'bugs' hit revenue growth

WASHINGTON — Twitter shares plunged Thursday after reporting that "bugs" impacted its ad-targeting ability, pulling down revenue growth in the past quarter.

Profit for the third quarter was $37 million, a sharp drop from last year when the online messaging platform was helped by a large tax benefit.

Revenue rose 9 percent from a year earlier to $824 million, well below analyst forecasts, impacted by what the company called "revenue product issues."

Shares in Twitter skidded nearly 21 percent on the disappointing results to close at $30.75.

Twitter said revenue was hit by "bugs" on the platform which made it harder to deliver targeted advertising to mobile users.

"Unfortunately we had some missteps and bugs," chief executive Jack Dorsey told a conference call.

"These are issues we identified quickly and are working quick to fix."

Twitter said this glitch pulled down advertising growth, which makes up the bulk of revenues, by around three percentage points.

"In Q3, we discovered, and took steps to remediate, bugs that primarily affected our legacy Mobile Application Promotion product, impacting our ability to target ads and share data with measurement and ad partners," Twitter's investor relations team tweeted.

Chief financial officer Ned Segal said Twitter is working on a fix but that the glitch is expected to have a negative impact in the fourth quarter.

The bugs mainly affected Twitter operations outside the United States, where ad revenue was up just five percent compared with 11 percent for the US.

Overall, advertising revenue totaled $702 million, up 8 percent from last year.

CHALLENGES AHEAD

The results highlight challenges for Twitter, which has struggled to keep pace with rival social platforms as it seeks to remove fake accounts, abusive content and manipulation efforts.

Michael Levine of Pivotal Research Group said he remained upbeat on Twitter but for now the stock is "in the penalty box."

Levine said in a research note he is "inclined to think the issues are transitory but think the bias in the short term is to the downside and this very much just became a 'show me' story."

Mark Vickery at Zacks Investment Research said the results could be worrisome for Twitter looking ahead.

"It will be up to investors to gauge whether these issues are a temporary glitch on Twitter's road toward higher levels or whether they will provide a longer term albatross around the company's neck," Vickery said in a research note.

Goldman Sachs analysts meanwhile downgraded Twitter, citing "uncertainty around Twitter's ability to drive broader advertiser demand," among other factors.

Twitter boosted the number of "monetizable" daily active users, the new standard used by the platform, by 6 million from the past quarter to 145 million.

Twitter has stopped reporting "monthly active users," which was 330 million earlier this year, in favor of the new measure of daily users on the mobile app or website who see ads in their feeds.

While Twitter has a strong following among journalists, politicians and celebrities, it has struggled to build a broader user base in the manner of rival social platforms such as Facebook.

Dorsey said the growth in users represents a "steady refinement of Twitter" as it works to improve the platform and weed out inappropriate content.

"This is an incredibly strong foundation to build upon," he said.

Dorsey said Twitter has improved its automated systems to remove unwanted content, and now takes down more than 50 percent "proactively" and "without a bystander or first person report."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Twitter says CEO account hacked after series of erratic tweets

SAN FRANCISCO, United States—Twitter said Friday the account of chief executive Jack Dorsey had been "compromised" after a series of erratic and offensive messages were posted.

The tweets containing racial slurs and suggestions about a bomb showed up around 20:00 GMT on the @jack account of the founder of the short messaging service.

"We're aware that @jack was compromised and investigating what happened," a Twitter spokesperson said.

Some of the tweets contained the hashtag #ChucklingSquad, which was believed to indicate the identity of the hacker group.

The news comes with Dorsey and Twitter moving aggressively to clean up offensive and inappropriate content as part of a focus on "safety."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Twitter's Jack Dorsey is tech's foremost 'manfluencer

Young men are staggering around, hungry for days. They are throwing themselves into ice baths and cryotherapy pods. There are not enough beds at the silent vegan meditation centers to accommodate them. They need more near-infrared bulbs.

They are the followers of Jack Dorsey, Silicon Valley’s answer to the mega-influencer Gwyneth Paltrow. The lithe, 42-year-old tech founder has become a one-man Goop.

“In terms of influence, no one is at the scale of Jack,” said Geoffrey Woo, whose startup, HVMN, sells fasting tools (like a liquid ketone supplement). He also heads up WeFast, an online support network for intermittent fasters.

It’s unlikely that Dorsey can embrace his wellness guru role as fully as Paltrow. He is already the chief executive of both the payments platform Square (valued at $30 billion) and Twitter (valued at $26 billion). As Twitter’s head, he spends his days navigating issues around free speech for white supremacists, online abuse and the spread of terrorist propaganda, all while facing a deluge of criticism from everyone (including the American president).

Still, Dorsey finds time for himself. For 10 days a year, he sits in silence at a meditation retreat. Before getting dressed each morning, he experiments with using his home infrared sauna and then an ice bath, sometimes cycling through both several times before he leaves home. He walks 5 miles to work. He eats one meal a day and has said that on the weekends when he fasts from Friday to Saturday, “time slows down.”

He talks about starting each morning with salt juice — water mixed with Himalayan salt and lemon. It is dispensed in Twitter offices around the world.

The tech world has two main personalities with cults: Dorsey and his foil, Elon Musk. Followers of Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, are drawn to his brash hypermasculinity and angry tweets — his memes, rockets and flamethrowers.

Musk’s fans see him as a model of aggressive optimism. They swarm critics on Twitter and form Tesla Motor clubs. Some call themselves Musketeers, and there are quite a few Musk-themed tattoos posted to message boards.

He is the billionaire doing the things a billionaire in movies does. His hair has gotten thicker and his arms buffer. He dated a pop star and smoked pot on a podcast.

Dorsey, in comparison, seems to be having less fun.

He is very thin. He looks paler than usual. His beard is longer. The lines on his face have deepened, and he can seem to disappear in one of those high-end, overly long T-shirts. But to his followers, this monastic, pensive leader is a better direction for Silicon Valley. And while Musk’s acolytes seek to mirror an attitude, Dorsey’s have an 11-point lifestyle plan.

Just as an endorsement from Paltrow can make even the most spurious self-help objects instantly covetable, an endorsement from Dorsey can put products out of stock for weeks.

“We’re just really glad he’s spreading the message,” said Harpreet Rai, the chief executive of Oura Ring, which makes a sleep tracking device Dorsey endorsed.

Brian Richards, the founder of SaunaSpace, also owes something to the Twitter founder’s words. His company makes “Personal Near-Infrared Sauna” equipment. (A near-infrared sauna heats by pointing incandescent lights at you.) Its latest product is a Faraday tent, of sorts, that purports to block electromagnetic transmissions — creating “your very own EMF-free ancestral space.” Richards said his company had never been mentioned in the national press until Dorsey started talking about his personal SaunaSpace sauna on a fitness podcast, and now his products are back-ordered by a month.

“The demand’s been insane,” Richards said. “He legitimizes it. He’s a true believer. And now people are like, ‘Hey, if this guy’s doing it, maybe there’s something to it.’”

To Richards, who is based in Columbia, Missouri, it makes sense that Dorsey’s tech followers would find these saunas and become one of his biggest consumer bases.

“An EMF-blocking Faraday sauna is really the only escape these people have from electromagnetic stress,” Richards said. (Though a study of middle-aged and older Finnish men indicates that their health benefited from saunas, there have been no major studies conducted of “Faraday saunas.”)

Those who run meditation centers, especially those running the specific type Dorsey endorses, Vipassana, are seeing booming wait-lists. A recent silent meditation retreat at Spirit Rock near San Francisco was completely full, with about 100 attendees — plus 603 people on the wait-list.

And the new meditators are very young. Since 2013, the number of retreatants between ages 18 and 29 has tripled.

Rachel Uris, the center’s director of development, said she is now getting startup employees who want to come as a group.

“It’s not just one person going on retreats anymore,” she said. “We are in this moment where CEOs are saying, ‘I’m seeing this as a really important tool that can enrich the work experience.’”

Spirit Rock is now expanding.

Many of the activities Dorsey endorses are not inherently fun, and so his personal seal of approval makes a big difference.

“It’s such a strange service — who wants to be in the cold? You need to hear about it from someone you trust,” said Michael Garrett, the head of Reboot, a spa that offers cryotherapy around the Bay Area. (Cryotherapy is when you make yourself get cold.) “And now people are getting their information from CEOs. That’s where the culture is going. Dorsey’s a successful guy. So you listen.”

He said the cold therapy gives him a high, as blood rushes to his head and chest, and he believes practitioners are addicted. “I’m addicted straight up, it’s a high and I love it,” Garrett said.

No community has embraced Dorsey as their guru more than the fasters, who spend days on end just not eating. Dorsey’s very public endorsements of this movement have led to criticism that he is endorsing eating disorders.

The WeFast community, started in 2015, now has around 25,000 members across its closed Slack and Facebook groups. They share about fasting and their blood ketone levels. There is also a private WhatsApp group for Silicon Valley power players who fast.

“We just grew up expecting three meals a day plus snacks. But why? Why does that exist?” Woo asked on a recent day at the HVMN office. Various ketone supplements were scattered around the tables.

While health trends have historically been set by Los Angeles, with people obsessing over an actor’s workout or skin routine, Woo argues that in the current economy, following the habits of a tech CEO like Dorsey makes more sense.

“In LA, there’s an economic value in appearing good, being physically strong, but we’re not physical laborers anymore. I’m not a farmer,” Woo said. “Now we need to optimize for cognitive performance and intellectual labor.”

The movement has grown so fast now, Woo has had to begin warning people not to obsess on Dorsey too much. Just as Paltrow’s Goop was fined $145,000 for claims about jade eggs, Woo cautions that even Silicon Valley’s guru can let his eccentricities go beyond science.

“People should slow down and understand what they’re trying to optimize for before just following Jack,” Woo said. “You don’t want to be in a cargo cult type thing.”


2019 New York Times News Service

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Twitter shares lift off as profits soar; Trump weighs in

WASHINGTON -- Twitter shares flew higher Tuesday after a surprisingly robust quarterly report, which sparked a fresh tirade from President Donald Trump over his claims of unfair treatment by social media.

The first-quarter report showed a profit of $191 million, compared with $61 million a year earlier, while revenues increased 18 percent to $787 million for the short messaging platform.

Twitter shares soared 15.6 percent to close at a nine-month high of $39.76 after the update from the short messaging platform, showing gains in advertising revenue and some signs that its user base is growing.

Trump, arguably the platform's most prominent user, sought to claim credit for the strong Twitter results while renewing his allegations of bias.

On his Twitter feed, Trump said the results were good but could be better "if Twitter wasn't playing their political games" and argued for "more, and fairer, companies."

Twitter's global user base appeared to show modest growth even as the company transitions to a different way of measuring it.

The longstanding metric of monthly active users was 330 million in the January-March period, an increase of nine million from the past quarter but down slightly from a year ago.

But Twitter no longer will use that measure, switching instead to "monetizable" daily active users -- 134 million in the past quarter, up from 120 million last year.

Chief executive Jack Dorsey said Twitter is benefiting from its moves to root out abusive and inauthentic content that had hurt Twitter's reputation.

"We are taking a more proactive approach to reducing abuse and its effects on Twitter," said Dorsey.

"We are reducing the burden on victims and, where possible, taking action before abuse is reported."

Twitter has also faced intense pressure from governments around the world to remove "hate speech" and incitements to violence.

Dorsey said much of the effort to deal with inappropriate content is based on machine learning and other technical tools, enabling Twitter to "proactively" remove tweets that violate its terms of service.

"Our number one priority as a company continues to be health," Dorsey told a conference call.

He added that Twitter aims to become "more conversational" and has launched a prototype for a new app called "twttr," with the goal of "making conversation on Twitter feel faster, more fluid and more fun."

Dorsey said the experimental app enables users "to see the entire conversation on one surface" without needing to click through various tweets.

TRUMP TAKES CREDIT 

The messaging platform has become an important tool for celebrities, politicians and journalists, but has failed to grow as quickly as Facebook and other social media among mainstream internet users.

Its troubles had sparked speculation that it might need to sell itself to survive.

Trump, who uses the platform for policy and political commentary, appeared to take credit for Twitter's turnaround, even as he renewed his claims of bias.

"The best thing ever to happen to Twitter is Donald Trump," the president tweeted after the quarterly update, borrowing a quote from a television journalist.

"So true, but they don't treat me well as a Republican. Very discriminatory, hard for people to sign on. Constantly taking people off list. Big complaints from many people."

Shortly after, but away from TV cameras, Trump received Dorsey at the White House, the president's spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told AFP, without detailing their discussions.

Trump then tweeted again, confirming the meeting.

"Lots of subjects discussed regarding their platform, and the world of social media in general. Look forward to keeping an open dialogue!" Trump said alongside a photo of Dorsey and others in the Oval Office.

Twitter told AFP that Dorsey "had a constructive meeting" with Trump at the president's invitation.

"They discussed Twitter's commitment to protecting the health of the public conversation ahead of the 2020 US elections and efforts underway to respond to the opioid crisis," Twitter said.

Trump has over several months maintained that Twitter and other Silicon Valley platforms have discriminated against conservatives, a claim roundly rejected by tech firms.

The quarterly results appear to show Twitter on a positive track, according to Jasmine Enberg of the research firm eMarketer.

Enberg said the move to use monetizable daily active users -- those seeing ads on the platform -- leads to a "value proposition to advertisers" to reach "a committed, though not very large user base when compared with other social platforms."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Twitter CEO admits 'huge fail' in preventing online abuse

Twitter Inc Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said on Tuesday that Silicon Valley companies, including his own, have not done enough to protect victims of online abuse, calling it a "huge fail."

Interviewed via Twitter by Kara Swisher, co-founder of the tech news site Recode, Dorsey tweeted that he would give himself a 'C' grade for what Swisher termed "tech responsibility."

"We've made progress, but it has been scattered and not felt enough," he tweeted in response to Swisher's questions. "Changing the experience hasn't been meaningful enough. And we've put most of the burden on the victims of abuse (that's a huge fail)."

Twitter, along with online social media network Facebook Inc, has faced criticism for abusive posts, fake users and inaccurate news stories on its service. The company has been investing heavily to improve what Dorsey has described as the "collective health" of Twitter.

Dorsey said on Tuesday he does not like how Twitter tends to incentivize outrage, short-term thinking, echo chambers, and fragmented conversations, and that the lack of diversity in the company has not helped in combating such problems.

He said Twitter's work against "automations and coordinated campaigns," along with its collaboration with various government agencies, has left it in a better position to combat the threat of misinformation for the 2020 US presidential elections.

US intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia used social media during the 2016 US elections to sway voters. Moscow denies that charge. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Twitter urges all users to change passwords after glitch

Twitter Inc urged its more than 330 million users to change their passwords after a glitch caused some to be stored in readable text on its internal computer system rather than disguised by a process known as "hashing."

The social network disclosed the issue in a blog post and series of Tweets on Thursday afternoon, saying it had resolved the problem and an internal investigation had found no indication passwords were stolen or misused by insiders. Still, it urged all users to consider changing their passwords.

"We fixed the bug and have no indication of a breach or misuse by anyone," Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said in a Tweet. "As a precaution, consider changing your password on all services where you’ve used this password."

The blog did not say how many passwords were affected. A person familiar with the company's response said the number was "substantial" and that they were exposed for "several months."

The disclosure comes as lawmakers and regulators around the world scrutinize the way that companies store and secure consumer data, after a string of security incidents at Equifax Inc, Facebook Inc and Uber Technologies Inc.

The European Union is due later this month to start enforcing a strict new privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, that includes steep fees for violators.

Twitter discovered the bug a few weeks ago and has reported it to some regulators, said the person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The US Federal Trade Commission, which investigates companies accused of deceptive practices related to data security, declined comment on the password glitch.

The agency settled with Twitter in 2010 over accusations the site had “serious lapses” in data security that let hackers access private user data on two occasions. The settlement called for audits of Twitter's data security program every other year for 10 years.

The glitch was related to Twitter's use of "hashing" and caused passwords to be written on an internal computer log before the scrambling process was completed, the blog said.

"We are very sorry this happened," the Twitter blog said.

Twitter's share price was down 1 percent in extended trade at $30.35, after gaining 0.4 percent during the session.

The company advised users to take precautions to ensure that their accounts are safe, including changing passwords and enabling Twitter's two-factor authentication service to help prevent accounts from being hijacked.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Twitter to conclude sale deliberations this month: sources

Twitter Inc. has told potential acquirers it is seeking to conclude negotiations about selling itself by the time it reports third-quarter earnings on Oct. 27, according to people familiar with the matter.

The timeline is hugely ambitious in the context of most mergers and acquisitions, given that Twitter began mulling a sale only last month. It is the clearest sign yet that Chief Executive Jack Dorsey is pushing to provide clarity to shareholders and employees over the company's future as quickly as possible.

Binding acquisition offers are due in the next two weeks, and Twitter has already whittled down the field of potential acquirers, the people said this week. Salesforce.com Inc. is in the running, while Google parent Alphabet Inc., and Walt Disney Co. have also been contemplating bids, the people added.

Recode reported on Wednesday, citing sources it did not identify, that Google would not move forward with a bid to acquire Twitter.

It is not certain the process will result in a sale, the Reuters sources cautioned. The sources asked not to be identified because the matter is confidential.

Twitter and Salesforce declined to comment. Disney and Google did not return requests for comment.

With Salesforce.com, Twitter might turn its focus to customer service communications and mining its database of tweets for business intelligence. Google would likely be most interested in the social and news dimensions of Twitter. Disney, by contrast, might see it as a way to expand the reach of its sports and entertainment programming.

Twitter has struggled to generate revenue growth and profit, despite having some 313 million average monthly active users and a growing presence as a source of news.

The company missed Wall Street's sales expectations in both the first and second quarters of 2016, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine, and has yet to produce a net profit in 11 quarters as a public company.

It has also failed to keep pace with rivals, notably Facebook Inc.'s Instagram and Snapchat. Both now boast more users than Twitter by most measures, even though they are much newer, and advertisers have begun to migrate their ad dollars accordingly.

Dorsey, who returned to Twitter as chief executive more than a year ago, has been part of Disney's board since 2013.

Twitter went public in November 2013 at $26 a share. The shares peaked above $74 just over a month after its IPO, but have been on a steady downward trajectory since.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Twitter invests $70 million in SoundCloud: Re/code

Twitter Inc. has invested about $70 million in Berlin-based music service SoundCloud, technology website Re/code reported citing people familiar with the deal.

Twitter confirmed the investment, but did not provide any financial details.

"Earlier this year we made an investment in SoundCloud through Twitter Ventures to help support some of our efforts with creators," Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey said.

Soundcloud, a platform that enables people to upload and share music and other audio files, also confirmed that Twitter had made the investment.

Twitter's investment was part of a funding round expected to be in the range of $100 million, which would value SoundCloud at about $700 million, the Re/code report said.

The microblogging site has previously attempted to make a foray into music with the launch of Twitter Music in 2013, which was closed a year later. At the time, the company said that it would look for new ways to bring music based content to the service.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Twitter brings new blood to board of directors

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Twitter on Friday added a PepsiCo Inc. executive and a British entrepreneur to its board as chief Jack Dorsey continued an effort to shake-up the stagnating one-to-many messaging service.

In a tweet from his @jack account, Dorsey welcomed to the board PepsiCo chief financial officer Hugh Johnston and Martha Lane Fox, founder of travel website Lastminute.com and member of the House of Lords.

While Lane appeared to be a seasoned Twitter user with 193,000 followers, Johnston fired off his first tweet on Friday.

In his first tweet, Johnston said he was looking forward to being on the Twitter board.

A second tweet from @hughjohnston, sent just a few hours later, was a photo from a season-opening home game of the Mets baseball team in New York.

Fox thanked Twitter chief Dorsey and board executive chairman Omid Kordestani in a Twitter message from account @Marthalanefox, adding "I can't wait. Best. Job. Ever. Watch out silicon valley."

Dorsey and Kordestani followed up with tweets promising that Twitter was intent on making the board more diverse and that more news was on the horizon.

Twitter marked its 10th birthday last month, having become a powerful communication tool but still struggling to win users and reach profitability.

Since making a star-quality entrance a decade ago, Twitter has become a must-have tool for journalists, activists and celebrities but has struggled to show it can expand beyond its devoted "twitterati" to become a mainstream hit.

Twitter's woes include a slump in its stock price to all-time lows this year -- down nearly half from its 2013 stock market debut -- and ongoing losses, even as its revenue grows.

Twitter's base of monthly active users remained stuck at 320 million at the end of 2015. While that is a big accomplishment, Twitter has failed to keep pace with fast-growing rivals and to expand beyond its base.

The troubles forced Twitter to bring back co-founder Jack Dorsey as chief executive, but that has not stemmed rumors about a possible buyout or merger.

Twitter bears the weight of being measured against Internet titans such as Facebook, which is only a few years older but has eclipsed the billion-user mark.

Dorsey said Twitter priorities for this year include making it more intuitive to use; live-streaming video, and making it safer for people to freely express themselves on the platform.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Twitter results need to wow to reassure investors

When Twitter Inc. reports results on Wednesday, a less than stellar showing could hammer the stock further as a broad selloff in the technology sector has made investors jittery.

Twitter's shares have lost more than two-thirds of their value in the past 12 months.

Several tech stocks with lofty valuations have plunged in the past few days after dismal sales outlook from LinkedIn Corp and business-analytics company Tableau Software fueled growth fears for the entire sector.

"I think the problem is that in the current market any sign of a weak outlook will be quite harshly punished," Atlantic Equities analyst James Cordwell said.

Investors want to see Chief Executive Jack Dorsey's strategy to reignite growth in user numbers.

Twitter reported an 11 percent growth in active monthly users in the third quarter to 320 million, the slowest growth since the company went public in 2013.

But one effort, Moments, which showcases Twitter's best tweets and content, has failed to take off as expected, analysts have said.

Twitter is also planning to reorder tweets to prioritize those it believes more users will want to see, BuzzFeed reported on Friday.

Many users decried the reported plan, with the hashtag #RIPTwitter becoming the top trending U.S. item on Twitter on Saturday.

Twitter has been criticized for trying to become more like Facebook Inc, which has been growing at a much faster rate and reported 1.59 billion active monthly users in January.

"We expect only modest sequential user growth (for Twitter) in 2016, likely 1 percent per quarter," Wedbush Securities analysts wrote in a preview note on Friday.

Analysts expect Twitter to report earnings of 12 cents per share on revenue of $709.9 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

JACK OF TWO TRADES

Another lingering concern has been Dorsey's dual role of running Twitter as well as mobile payments company Square Inc.

Dorsey, who became interim CEO in July and then CEO in October, has called for "bold rethinking" about the company but has not yet clarified what that means.

Dorsey has also moved to restructure the company by laying off more than 300 employees and making marquee hires, notably that of former Google executive Omid Kordestani as executive chairman.

But four senior executives have quit the company in the past few months, adding another concern about the company's ability to restart growth.

"We believe that had Moments been an early success, the executives would not have left so soon, voluntarily or otherwise," Wedbush analysts wrote.

As of Monday, Twitter shares were trading at 25.7 times forward earnings, shy of Facebook's 30.4.

"Why would you invest in something like a Twitter when Facebook is on a similar valuation with a stronger trajectory - that's the kind of questions investors are asking," Cordwell said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Twitter may expand character limit: reports

One of Twitter's core features could soon be a thing of the past.

Multiple reports said the social media giant is working on a feature allowing users to send tweets that are 10,000 characters long.

Currently, Twitter users are limited to 140 characters similar to the SMS cap of 160 characters.

Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey neither confirmed nor denied the news. He described the service's 140-character limit as a beautiful constraint that inspires creativity and brevity.

But Dorsey also believes that certain Twitter practices such as posting screenshots of texts and unleashing a series of posts or "tweetstorms" could be improved or strengthened further.

While expanding Twitter's character limit has been reported in last September, this is the first time Dorsey spoke about the issue at length.

- ANC, News Now, January 06, 2016

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Twitter experiments reordering tweets by relevance

Twitter Inc. confirmed on Tuesday it is testing a timeline format for its tweets, calling it an experiment.

The microblogging website's new format will result in tweets being sorted by relevance instead of in reverse chronological order.

"Yes, this is an experiment. We're continuing to explore ways to surface the best content for people using Twitter," spokeswoman Liina Potter said in an emailed statement.

The company, facing slowing user growth, has been experimenting under newly appointed Chief Executive Jack Dorsey to make its website more engaging.

"You'll see us continue to question our reverse chronological timeline and all the work it takes to build one by finding and following accounts," Dorsey said during the company's second-quarter earnings conference call in July.

However, users of the 320-million-strong social media website seemed to disagree with the move and took to Twitter to express discontent with the new format.

"I use @Twitter to see what happens and when. Showing posts out of order is one of the things I hate the most about Facebook. Please don't," a user going by the name Owen Pike tweeted.

In 2012, Facebook changed its format to the Timeline, a stream that shows you events, posts and images by relevance.

Last month, Twitter replaced its star-shaped "favorite" icon with a heart-shaped icon called "like."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Former Microsoft CEO Ballmer discloses Twitter stake

NEW YORK, United States - Former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer disclosed Friday that he has taken a four percent stake in Twitter, expressing confidence in the messaging platform's new management team.

Ballmer, who last year left the US software giant and then became owner of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team, announced the stake in a tweet as he offered praise for newly returned Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

"Good job @twitter, @twittermoments innovation, @jack Ceo, leaner, more focused. Glad I bought 4% past few months," Ballmer said in his tweet.

The stake in Twitter by Ballmer, whose Microsoft investments make him among the world's wealthiest individuals with a fortune estimated by Forbes at $22.8 billion, would be worth some $800 million at current share prices.

Twitter shares have risen some 25 percent this month as Dorsey was named CEO on a permanent basis. Twitter also announced a reorganization that cut eight percent of its staff and introduced a new Moments features that offers real-time news.

Last week, Ballmer lauded Twitter and Dorsey shortly after the co-founder's appointment was announced.

"I think @twitter is remarkable," Ballmer said at the time. "There is amazing chance to innovate and grow. Excited to see progress with @jack as CEO Impressive dude!"

Ballmer becomes one of the largest stakeholders in Twitter, ahead of Dorsey's three percent but behind Saudi billionaire Al-Waleed bin Talal's five percent and co-founder Evan Williams' seven percent.

Dorsey's return comes as he also directs mobile payments startup Square, which filed for a stock offering this week.

One of the Twitter co-founders, Dorsey ran the company in 2007-2008 and served as interim chief executive after Dick Costolo resigned in June.

Ballmer took over as CEO of Microsoft in 2000 from co-founder Bill Gates, a classmate and friend from their days at Harvard University in the 1970s.

While Microsoft was one of the world's most valuable companies, it has slipped in recent years as rivals Google and Apple grabbed leadership of the tech sector.

In 2013, Ballmer said his biggest regret was missing the boat on smartphones.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Twitter appoints Jack Dorsey CEO, seeks new chairman

Twitter Inc. named Jack Dorsey as its permanent CEO but said it would look elsewhere for a chairman, seeking to allay concerns about its co-founder's dual role as head of the mobile payments company Square.

Twitter's shares rose as much as 6 percent on Monday after the announcement, which ended months of speculation about who would take the top job at the microblogging service.

Dorsey has been running Twitter as interim CEO to much acclaim since his predecessor, Dick Costolo, stepped down on July 1.

"To further simplify the demands on his time as well as to make sure we bring a fresh voice and new leadership to the board, the board has decided to separate the chair and CEO roles," Peter Currie, Twitter's lead independent director, said on a call.

Twitter is working to rekindle growth after its latest quarterly results revealed the slowest rise in monthly average users since the company went public in 2013 - a performance that Dorsey at the time called "unacceptable."

Some investors had expressed concerns about whether Dorsey could run both Twitter and Square, which he also co-founded. Square is expected to go public this year and Dorsey may have to devote substantial time courting investors for the IPO.

But others say Dorsey, 38, is a more effective leader now than in 2008, when he was fired from his first stint as Twitter CEO.

Investors and analysts have lauded faster product rollouts since Dorsey took the helm in July, including a widely available "buy now" button that allows users to make purchases directly through Twitter.

Kevin Landis, portfolio manager at the Firsthand Technology Value fund, said Dorsey should focus on innovation and on finding ways to make Twitter as much as part of its user's daily lives as Facebook is to its users.

"The worst thing you can say about Twitter today is that it looks a lot like the Twitter of two years ago," said Landis, whose fund has owned shares of Twitter since before the company went public.

IN GOOD COMPANY

Dorsey is not the first person to run two major companies. Steve Jobs led Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and animated movie studio Pixar for several years. Elon Musk runs electric car pioneer Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA.O) and rocket maker SpaceX.

Dorsey sent Twitter's first tweet - "just setting up my twttr" - in March 2006. He had more than 3 million followers as of Monday, more than either Musk or the current Apple CEO, Tim Cook.

Shebly Seyrafi, analyst at FBN Securities, said Twitter might be seeking to limit Dorsey's already heavy workload. But that is only part of the rationale, he said: an outsider as chairman is also a way to keep "a check" on the chief executive.

It might also offer protection against any potential conflict of interest. Among other recent innovations driven by Dorsey is a partnership with Square that lets users make political donations through Twitter.

"You could potentially see conflicts of interest with Square," said James Cakmak, analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. "It hasn't happened yet, but at that time it would help him recuse himself from conversations that do involve Square."

Initially, Dorsey appeared to have been excluded from running Twitter after the company said its CEO job would be full-time.

"We assumed we would only consider a candidate who could make an undivided commitment to be our CEO," Currie said. "But over time it became apparent to us that Jack was not just meeting but surpassing the expectations we had of him as interim CEO, while also running Square."

Tech news website Re/code first reported Dorsey's permanent appointment last week. Dorsey will remain on Twitter's board. Costolo resigned from the board on Sept. 30.

Adam Bain, previously Twitter's president and head of revenue and once considered a favorite for the top job, was named chief operating officer.

Twitter's shares rose 5.8 percent to $27.84 on the New York Stock Exchange.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Twitter buys artificial intelligence group Whetlab

WASHINGTON -- Twitter on Wednesday acquired the artificial intelligence startup Whetlab, bolstering the analytics capacity which is becoming increasingly important for social networks.

Terms were not announced for the deal, which was disclosed in a tweet by the Twitter engineering team and on the website of the Massachusetts-based Whetlab.

Twitter did not comment on its plan for the service, but artificial intelligence can be used to determine the most relevant tweets and advertising messages for each user, or to better filter spam.

"Over the past year, we have created a technology to make machine learning better and faster for companies, automatically," a statement on the Whetlab website said.

"Twitter is the platform for open communication on the Internet and we believe that Whetlab's technology can have a great impact by accelerating Twitter's internal machine learning efforts."

The move comes with Twitter searching for a new chief executive following Dick Costolo's announcement he is stepping down. Co-founder Jack Dorsey will be the interim CEO.

Whetlab, which was founded by computer scientists and neuroscientists from Harvard and Canadian universities, aims to help companies make better use of artificial intelligence, or machine learning.

With some 300 million active users, Twitter has been growing at a slower pace than some rival social networks and has yet to show a profit, despite creating new advertising products for the one-to-many messaging service.

Facebook has been investing heavily in artificial intelligence to show more relevant items in user news feeds.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Twitter's Dick Costolo to step down as CEO

SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter Inc Chief Executive Officer Dick Costolo abruptly announced he was stepping down on Thursday amid increasing scrutiny of the company's slow user growth and inability to attract advertisers at the same rate as its competitors.

Costolo will be replaced by co-founder Jack Dorsey on an interim basis.

According to a source familiar with the matter, it was Costolo's decision to leave, and Costolo said he brought it up with the board last year as it began talking about succession planning.

Twitter has had a number of shake-ups in its management. Co-founders Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams both served as CEOs of the company before Costolo, and Costolo has overhauled much of his management team over the past year.

"Unfortunately this news isn't surprising," said Nate Elliott of management consultant Forrester Research. "The bottom line is that Twitter isn't very good right now at serving either its users or its marketers."

Costolo said on a conference call that Twitter will consider both internal and external candidates for its next CEO and that it has the "strongest management team (it's) ever had," which influenced his decision to step down. In a statement earlier he said he was "tremendously proud" of his six years at Twitter.

In an interview with Reuters, Dorsey said he was not thinking "at all" about remaining CEO permanently because the search has just begun but did not rule out the job. He also said he did not anticipate any change in Twitter's strategy or direction. Although he was ousted by management in 2008, Dorsey said that he is now surrounded by a strong executive team and had learned from his experience running Square Inc.

Dorsey said the CEO search has not begun, but he noted the company was looking for a CEO who uses Twitter every day and "loves" the product.

Dorsey continues as CEO of Square. He had served as Twitter's president and CEO from May 2007 to October 2008.

Wall Street reacted positively to the news, as Twitter shares rose to $37.17, up 3.6 percent, after the announcement, meaning investors thought Twitter was worth $900 million more without Costolo than with him.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Twitter boss launches global cash register service

Twitter's co-founder outlined plans to make cash registers a thing of the past on Thursday as he held a global launch for new software that he said would help small businesses grow.

Jack Dorsey, who is chairman of Twitter and chief executive of the mobile payments company Square, said the software would allow shopkeepers to track sales and provide digital receipts.

"We think it's a great replacement to any cash register," Dorsey said at a Financial Times conference in London.

"It means we're now a global company," he said.

The software, Square Register, was only available in Canada, Japan and the United States, where it tracked around four million sales a day.

It can now be downloaded for free everywhere else and supports 130 currencies, although it will not allow actual payments for the moment.

The company offered testimonials from businesses in Australia, Hungary, Mexico, Philippines and Vietnam and Dorsey said many had already begun using the software by getting around national controls.

Square teamed up with the smartphone app Snapchat earlier this week for a service that allows users in the United States to send money to friends by simply typing dollar amounts into new "Snapcash" messages.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com