Twitter: Selling and Banning Its Way to Its Future

January 23, 2017

Twitter is making news again. The company sold some tools to the Google. Google, wisely Beyond Search thinks, has not yet built up the gumption to buy the whole Twitter enchilada. And Twitter continues to annoy some professionals who use Twitter data to figure out the who, what, and why of certain illegal activities.

“Twitter Bans Award-Winning London, Ont., Company for Helping Police Track Protesters” explains:

A London, Ont., data mining company has been banned from Twitter and is being reviewed by Facebook for selling surveillance software to North American police services to monitor people at Black Lives Matter events and other public protests.

The company in question is Media Sonar, one of a number of firms which developed tools to make sense of messages and metadata generated by the folks who send information via Twitter “tweets”. (You can watch a video explaining some of the firm’s methods at this link.) Another example of a social media analysis outfit is Geofeedia which has been given a bloody nose by spasmodic Silicon Valley wizards.

The write up reports:

Media Sonar did not return calls to CBC News but its website states that it works to help clients analyze the sentiment of social media posts and can use location-based data to monitor threats.

Beyond Search believes that some high flying Silicon Valley companies develop systems and do not think about how these systems will be used. Then when the high flying Silicon Valley executives realize that their whizzy new creation has some interesting applications, the Twitter-type outfits take action. The approach is fascinating to watch.

On one hand, Twitter is struggling to develop its user base and get some sizzle back. On the other hand, the company is selling off grandma’s furniture and turning off revenue from licensees of the Twitter content stream.

Interesting stuff. Chaos monkeys in real life? Seems like it.

Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2017

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under News, Social Media

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.