Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’
Sometimes Twittering Sh*t Your Dad Says Gets You A TV Deal
MG Siegler writes on TechCrunch:
Back in August, we wrote about Shit My Dad Says, the Twitter account of a 28-year-old guy named Justin who literally just tweeted out things his dad said. At the time, he already had over 100,000 followers on Twitter, now he has over 700,000. And now he just landed a TV deal.
Yes, you read that right. A 20-something just landed a TV deal thanks to his Twitter account. Again, not a website, not a book (though there is a book in the works too), just a Twitter account.
The TV industry blog The Live Feed reports that CBS is working with Justin (whose last name is Halpern) to create the show along with Will & Grace creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick. Halpern will write it along with…
Feds’ Search of Twittering Anarchist Upheld
Ryan Singel writes on WIRED’s Threat Level:
Federal authorities can resume combing through the notebooks, memory cards and computers of a twittering anarchist being investigated for violating an anti-rioting law, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled Monday.
U.S. district court judge Dora L. Irizzary found no reason to throw out the government’s search of the home of a 41-year old social worker who used the micro-publishing service Twitter to help anti-globalization protestors at the recent G-20 convention, clearing the way for the feds to look through the evidence they collected. Madison and his attorney sought to have his possessions returned unexamined, on the grounds the search violated his constitutional rights to free speech.
The Joint Terrorism Task Force raided Elliott Madison’s house in a dawn raid on October 1, seizing myriad computers, unpublished…
A Tweet Unleashes Vitriol on a User in Britain
Sarah Lyall writes in the New York Times about @brumplum, the Twitter user that has made Twitter (even more of) a household name in Britain:
LONDON — In the realm of Twitter insults, it was at the far end of mild. “Much as I admire and adore the chap, they are a bit … boring,” a Twitter user called brumplum wrote Saturday, speaking of the tweets of Stephen Fry, the British writer, actor and television personality.
But that little tweet set off a frenzy of vitriolic attacks and counterattacks on Twitter, drawing an untold number of people into an increasingly charged debate and thrusting brumplum — in reality a man from Birmingham, England, named Richard — unhappily into the public’s angry glare. It was an example once again of the extraordinary power of Twitter…
Twitter and a Newspaper Untie a Gag Order
Noam Cohen reports for the New York Times:
Twitter has been credited with helping to organize political protests and shine a light on abuses around the world. At the same time, the ubiquitous service has been criticized for disrespecting the sanctity of once-private halls of deliberation — whether a criminal jury’s chambers or an N.B.A. locker room.
In the rarest of cases, apparently, Twitter can do both. That is the view of the editor of The Guardian in London, Alan Rusbridger, who, after prevailing in a legal fight over the publication of secret documents, wrote that “the Twittersphere blew away conventional efforts to buy silence,” as a headline on his column put it.
Last month, a British judge ruled that material obtained by Guardian journalists about a multinational corporation had to be kept…
Tweet Your Way To An FBI Raid
Once again, the government is finding a way to use Twitter and other social networking platforms as tools to curtail civil liberties. Elliot Madison and Michael Wallschlaeger of Queens, New York were arrested on charges of hindering apprehension, criminal use of communication facility and possessing instruments of crime. The charges stem from Madison and Wallschlaeger setting up shop in a hotel room with some police scanners and sending texts and tweets to demonstrators about police movements during the G20 demonstrations in Pittsburgh.
The FBI raided the home of Madison, spending 16 hours snatching everything from computers and cell phones to gas masks, books and apparently a picture of Lenin.
