Tag: Twitter

  • Turkey Twitter ban is ‘a losing battle’, expert claims

    Turkey Twitter ban is ‘a losing battle’, expert claims

    Protesters against the Twitter ban in Turkey hand write slogans in the style of the network
    Protesters against the Twitter ban in Turkey hand write slogans in the style of the network

    The Turkish government is “fighting a losing battle” in banning social media network Twitter, experts have said.

    Locals continue to tweet via virtual private networks (VPN), anonymous web browser Tor and text messages, said security expert Rik Ferguson.

    VPN Hotspot Shield reported a rise in iPhone and Android downloads of over 33,000% in the 24 hours after the ban.

    The ban was enforced after allegations of government corruption were shared on the site and not removed by Twitter.

    Twitter itself has not commented on the situation but it did post instructions in both English and Turkish explaining how to tweet via text message, which requires no internet access at all.

    Ryan Holmes, chief executive of social media manager platform Hootsuite blogged that the firm had experienced three times more traffic than usual from Turkey following the ban.

    ‘Book burning’

    The US Department of State has described the act of internet censorship as “21st Century book burning”.

    “Turkey has nothing to fear in the free-flow of ideas and even criticism represented by Twitter,” wrote Doug Frantz, Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs, in a post on the department’s official blog.

    “Its attempt to block its citizens’ access to social media tools should be reversed.”

    Initially the ban took the form of domain name settings (DNS) redirection, in which users typing in a particular website address are instead redirected to a holding page.

    Twitter users were able to circumnavigate the ban simply by using Google’s DNS service, typing in Twitter’s IP address, a number, rather than spelling out the website address “Twitter.com”, and changing some of the basic settings of their internet service provider, said Rik Ferguson, vice-president of security research at Trend Micro.

    “It’s a bit like choosing which phone book you’re going to use,” he told the BBC.

    “Trying to block communications via the internet is nigh on impossible unless you pull the plug entirely.”

    Hidden surfers

    However now the relevant IP addresses are also being blocked, and so is Google DNS, people in Turkey are increasingly turning to VPNs and anonymous web browser Tor to get online without revealing their location.

    It is less complicated than it sounds, Mr Ferguson added.

    “VPN requires knowledge and financial investment in the form of a subscription,” he said.

    “Tor has a reputation of being this complex beast, but that’s not strictly true – all you need to do is download the browser bundle.”

    Ultimately Twitter must abide by the laws of the countries in which it operates, said Mr Ferguson.

    “The [Turkish] government is now hopeful about talks with Twitter but the nature of social media is that it’s very fluid,” he said.

    “Who’s to say that something is removed and then something else pops up in its place?”

    Twitter also faced a dilemma over what to do with the offending content if it did decide to act, he added.

    “Do you remove the content entirely or make it inaccessible in the country where it is illegal? If you are deleting content entirely that falls more into the realms of censorship than legal compliance.”

    via BBC News – Turkey Twitter ban is ‘a losing battle’, expert claims.

  • Istanbul sets off Twitter storm after jailing Internet ‘troll’

    Istanbul sets off Twitter storm after jailing Internet ‘troll’

    Cihat Akbel convicted after he launched a hashtag campaign against singer Aylin Aslim.

    Middle East Online

    Outspoken critic of the government

    _62906_aslimbISTANBUL – An Istanbul court set off a Twitter storm Thursday after it handed a five-month suspended jail term to an Internet “troll” for threatening a popular Turkish rock singer.

    Cihat Akbel, known for his provocative tweets, was convicted after he launched a hashtag campaign against singer Aylin Aslim, saying: “We must go to her concert and throw a sickle at her head.”

    The court said Wednesday that Akbel had committed an “Internet crime”, in the latest judicial ruling in Turkey over social media posts.

    But Akbel denounced the sentence, which he said followed an 18-month trial, declaring on Twitter Thursday: “I didn’t mean to threaten anyone.”

    The court decision also caused an outcry on Twitter, with hundreds tweeting in support for Akbel.

    “Some people just go over the top. The decision is too harsh,” wrote one user, Burak Uslu.

    German-born Aslim, 35, is an alternative rock singer and an outspoken critic of the government.

    In September an Istanbul court issued a 10-month suspended jail term to world-renowned pianist Fazil Say over Twitter posts deemed religiously offensive.

    Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has often launched attacks on social media and used the courts to silence his opponents, adding to concerns about rights in a country which has long sought to join the European Union.

  • Retweeting literature: How The London Book Fair was a Twitter success

    Retweeting literature: How The London Book Fair was a Twitter success

    by British Council Turkey

    As The London Book Fair, one of the biggest annual global publishing events, came to a close last week, Twitter turned out to be the greatest force taking the event to a new level of engagement and intimacy, to an audience that was far above its reach.

     

    “The internet brought freedom from authority of the literary establishment. More importantly it brought new forms of writing.” These words by accomplished writer Murat Gülsoy were uttered in a panel on the Future of Writing in last week’s global publishing event, theLondon Book Fair. They were also instantly shared with the world through a new form of writing, the 140-character tweet. One of the tweets from @BCLiterature, the Twitter account of British Council’s Literature team, included Gülsoy’s words minutes after they were said in the panel. The tweet ended with the writer’s name in a now familiar format,@MuratGulsoy. A new form of writing, indeed.

    The London Book Fair is a highly anticipated annual event for publishers, writers, and those who have an interest in the future of books. The fair, attracting around 25 thousand visitors each year, selects a country to become the market focus for that year. This year, it wasTurkey who took centre stage in last week’s London Book Fair, with a collaboration with the British Council for the sixth time. Some of the best names in contemporary Turkish writing and publishing were in the UK, giving UK audiences a rare opportunity to meet and interact with Turkish writers. While 20 writers from Turkey took part in discussions with UK writers, publishers, academics, cultural commentators and readers between 15 – 17 April, the official dates for the fair, the cultural programme for market focus will continue throughout this month.

    This year’s London Book Fair was one that made effective use of social media, especially the micro-blogging platform Twitter, that is popular both in Turkey and in the UK. Announcements were made, events were covered live, pictures were shared minutes after they were taken. Writers, publishers and aficionados of literature sent excited tweets throughout the course of The London Book Fair. It was an event that brought global a brand new meaning with the help of Twitter enthusiasts.

     

    Reaching millions through tweets and retweets

    Hashtags like #LBF13 and #LBFTurkey were used to draw Twitter followers interested in this global publishing event. “Müge Iplikci talks about feeling in the moment as a writer, in the present, but also a belatedness, writing out of Istanbul #LBFturkey,” wrote one tweet, while the Turkish writer continued her speech in the One Night in Istanbul panel.

    It was a thorough coverage of The London Book Fair on Twitter, one that could hardly have been done with traditional media. Social media savvy bookworms followed the event basically through four Twitter accounts, as they tweeted, retweeted and reached millions as they themselves were retweeted. @LondonBookFair was the official account of the fair, sending around 100 tweets each day to more than 21 thousand followers. Three accounts affiliated with the British Council shared tweets to different sets of audience.@BritishCouncil, @BCLiterature and @trBritish made sure that all the details of the events throughout the London Book Fair were shared.

    British Council Turkey’s Twitter account @trBritish worked busily as a hub both in Turkish and English, sending original tweets, and making sure that tweets from the other three accounts, as well those from the writers, publishers and commentators , were retweeted to the mostly Turkish followers. @trBritish was the Twitter account that was taken as a solid source for The London Book Fair, with major literary accounts like Vatan Kitap and Kitap Dünyası retweeting its tweets.

     

     

    Turkish writers as avid tweeters

    Turkish writers were also busy sending their own tweets throughout The London Book Fair, some about the events they were participating in, others more leisurely tweets on their UK visit. While the bestselling crime novelist Ahmet Ümit retweeted British Council Turkey’s tweets capturing his speech (“Writing a bestselling novel doesn’t show that you’re a successful writer. There’s only one criteria, and it’s time!”), he also made sure that he sent tweets about his trips to the Natural History Museumthe Royal Albert Hall, as well as his excitement about talking about detective novels in Edinburgh later in the week, “where Sherlock Holmes scribe Arthur Conan Doyle was born.”

    Acclaimed Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran was another avid tweeter, making sure that she thanked everyone for “the marvellous Book Fair” through mentioning their Twitter accounts:@LondonBookFair, @BritishCouncil, @trBritish, @englishpen, @Foyles, and@arcolatheatre. The internationally acclaimed Turkish writer Elif Shafak also sent out tweets and retweets to her followers, with the occasional picture added to her tweets. The picture of the London Book Fair in its last day was shared with the words, “As the fair comes to an end. @LondonBookFair Here’s Turkey with filled panels, important subjects, its writers, poets and academics…”

    “Last event of #LBF13 before handing over to S Korea: Mario Levi in conversation with Amanda Hopkinson @englishpen Literary Cafe #LBFTurkey” announced one tweet the end of The London Book Fair. Turkish writer Mario Levi’s words later, as tweeted by @BCLiterature, were a welcome contradiction to the new form of communication that is social media. “I still write by hand, with fountain pen and ink – it is important to feel the words.”

     

    Tags: ahmet ümit, british council, british council turkey, ece temelkuran, elif şafak, LBF, literature, mario levi, market focus, murat gülsoy, social media, The London Book Fair, twitter

    Category: Arts

    Posted on April 22, 2013 by British Council Turkey

    LBF13_

  • Twitter’s $1 Billion Target Helped by Turkey as IPO Nears

    Twitter’s $1 Billion Target Helped by Turkey as IPO Nears

    By Douglas MacMillan – Jan 14, 2013 6:01 AM GMT+0100

    Turkish pop sensation Murat Boz is closing in on 2 million followers on Twitter Inc., a sign that the U.S.-based microblogging service is gaining popularity overseas as growth slows in its home market.

    Boz — and Twitter — began getting added attention in Turkey after the San Francisco-based company reached a deal with wireless carrier Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS (TCELL) that lets users send short Twitter messages, or tweets, from their handsets at no charge.

    The pact represents a central ingredient of Twitter’s push for new users while preparing for an initial public offering. The company is targeting expansion in areas such as Asia, South America and the Middle East, where many people access the Web over inexpensive devices known as feature phones, rather than high-priced smartphones. By developing simpler versions of its application and landing deals with mobile carriers and device makers, Twitter is making its service cheaper and easier to use.

    “We need to deliver a more compelling product for low-end devices,” Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive officer, said in an e-mail.

    It’s harder to get applications onto feature phones than it is to deliver them to smartphones, whose users can easily download new software onto Apple Inc. iPhones and Google Inc. Android devices through an online store. Putting Twitter on less-advanced phones requires tweaks to the software and navigating a thicket of regional players, Costolo said in an interview in November.

    250 Carriers

    By promoting Twitter, operators such as Turkcell are getting customers to spend more time on the Web and paying more for mobile data. In return, Twitter is adding new users, helping it sell advertising to marketers around the world.

    “Our number of mobile Twitter users has increased threefold” since the partnership, said Emre Sayin, chief consumer business unit officer at Tepebasi, Turkey-based Turkcell. “These users have also generated revenue by clicking on photos and visiting other links that were shared in tweets.”

    Twitter has partnered with about 250 operators in more than 100 countries, including India, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines. In some cases, customers can freely read and post tweets without incurring data charges. In other deals, operators just waive text-messaging charges.

    Jana Messerschmidt, the Twitter vice president of business development and platform relations who’s leading the global effort, said Twitter’s international popularity is a selling point in negotiations.

    ‘Sticky Services’

    “They are looking for compelling, sticky services that are going to drive users to use either Internet on their phone for the first time or use more data services than they used before,” Messerschmidt, a veteran of Netflix Inc. and DivX LLC, said in an interview. She declined to discuss any deal terms.

    Messerschmidt arranged in July with Espoo, Finland-based Nokia Oyj to get a Twitter app pre-installed on the handset maker’s Asha line of phones, which are designed with stripped- down features to make them more affordable for buyers in India and other emerging markets. The companies worked together on the app’s look and functionality, Seppo Aaltonen, Nokia’s head of mobile-phone strategy, said in an e-mail.

    “As a result of this close collaboration, we’ve delivered something perfectly tailored for consumers in fast-growth markets who are often cost-constrained but still want to have fun, new mobile experiences,” Aaltonen said.

    Nokia is the largest maker of feature phones, which make up just more than half, or 3.2 billion, of the world’s mobile phones, according to research firm Gartner Inc. That share is set to decline as competing Android-based smartphones become cheaper and more prevalent.

    Advantages Limited

    That may limit the benefits of courting feature-phone makers and operators, said John Jackson, an analyst at Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDC.

    “It’s not obvious to me that getting distributed across the fragmented landscape of feature phones is a worthwhile exercise at this point,” Jackson said. Forging such partnerships are a “lot of work” and Twitter’s efforts would be “better served chasing Google” to get apps featured on Android phones, he said.

    Another challenge: Twitter is competing with Facebook Inc. to add users globally. Facebook expanded feature-phone offerings with its 2011 acquisition of Israeli startup Snaptu Ltd., which develops a stripped-down version of the site’s application for more basic handsets.

    Smarter Chips

    For now, signing users in developing markets will give Twitter a more attractive platform to sell advertising and reach its target of $1 billion in revenue in 2014. A widespread global audience may also attract more potential investors in the company’s anticipated initial public offering.

    In addition to carriers and phone manufacturers, Twitter is also working with chipmakers to get its app bundled onto more handsets. Last July, it announced a deal with Hsinchu, Taiwan- based MediaTek Inc., which produces processors that go into about 500 million phones each year in emerging markets, including India and Southeast Asia.

    MediaTek has begun including Twitter in software installed with its mobile chips. The handsets using these chips have the option of “enabling” the app right out of the box, said Sharon Lo, a spokeswoman for MediaTek.

    “We strive to add more value to the phone,” Lo said. “If the end users are a group of Twitter users, then the handset maker can preload Twitter,” said Lo, who added that the company has similar deals with Yahoo! Inc., Facebook, and Gameloft SE.

    U.S. Slowdown

    Gaining users abroad is increasingly crucial as growth in the U.S. slows. Twitter will expand its U.S. audience 14 percent this year, to 36.3 million users, from 31.8 million in 2012, according to EMarketer Inc. That’s a slowdown from 2012, when the service grew 27 percent.

    As Twitter pushes into more markets, Messerschmidt said she enjoyed seeing the many new ways the site is being used, from people checking cricket scores in India to farmers checking agricultural product prices in Africa.

    “The Twitter service is so simple it should be able to reach anybody on the planet,” she said. “There’s lots of room for growth for us.”

  • Couple wed via Twitter in Turkey

    Couple wed via Twitter in Turkey

    ISTANBUL, Turkey, Sept. 3 (UPI) — An official in Istanbul, Turkey, Monday officiated an Internet-based wedding believed to be the first ceremony conducted via Twitter.

    Mustafa Kara, mayor of Istanbul’s Uskudar district, conducted the wedding between Cengizhan Celik, social media editor of news portal ensonhaber.com, and Candan Canik by asking the couple to respond to the ceremony’s questions on Twitter, Today’s Zaman reported Monday.

    Hurriyet Daily News reported the couple’s witnesses also conducted their roles via Twitter.

    The online ceremony culminated in Kara handing the couple a marriage certificate in person.

    via Couple wed via Twitter in Turkey – UPI.com.

  • When Twitter Sleeps: Comparing NYC, Tokyo, Istanbul, and São Paulo

    When Twitter Sleeps: Comparing NYC, Tokyo, Istanbul, and São Paulo

    A visualization of Twitter activity shows cultural differences in when people go to bed, when they rise, and whether they tweet at work.

    sleeping grid miguel 615

    New York may claim to be the city that never sleeps, and while that may be a bit of an exaggeration, new data from Twitter shows that it has a pretty good claim to the mantle The City That Sleeps the Least.

    The graphic above shows tweet volume a five-minute increments throughout 2011 for New York City, Tokyo, Istanbul, and Sao Paulo, painting a picture of when people around the world are tweeting, sleeping, and waking up. A few noticeable trends:

    People in New York, Istanbul, and Sao Paulo all stay up later in the summer. New Yorkers seem to also stay up later in the winter. Those in Tokyo are the most consistent regardless of season.

    Japanese twitter users don’t tweet during the work day.

    New Yorkers have the least variation between tweet volume during work and at night.

    Paulistas sleep later. It also appears they go to bed earlier, in contravention of their reputation as night-life lovers. Also possible: They don’t tweet as much when they’re out having a good time. (Editor’s note: This is clearly implausible?)

    The image comes from a paper by Twitter analysts Jimmy Lin and Miguel Rios, and was presented earlier today at a workshop on social-media visualization in Dublin.

    via Technology – Rebecca J. Rosen – When Twitter Sleeps: Comparing NYC, Tokyo, Istanbul, and São Paulo – The Atlantic.