August 2012

The so-called cybersecurity bill is being thrashed out on the United States Senate floor this week, a debate that is turning into a pitched battle over how easily the government can go through private data online. The bill has already raised the ire of civil liberties groups. The bill’s original goal was to let the government enforce minimum security standards for the computer systems that run power plants, air traffic control systems, dams and other critical infrastructure. The business lobby pushed back. The legislation now makes government oversight entirely voluntary. Some of the most important parts of the bill now center on the sharing of information between private companies and government agencies — and therein lies the rub. There is a flurry of amendments to the bill, and a great many of them would either expand or limit the government’s powers of surveillance.

On June 29, Twitter VP of Product Michael Sippey posted a foreboding 439-word letter to the company blog, broadly sketching the direction Twitter’s platform is headed. Upon its reception, most of the public attention focused on a single passage, which stated that Twitter will soon introduce stricter guidelines to its developer partners in the coming weeks, limiting the ways in which outsiders will be able to use Twitter’s rich, ceaseless stream of data. But amid the confusion of the past month, nearly all have overlooked the section of Sippey’s post which holds the key to Twitter’s future: Cards.

Twitter’s new Cards technology allows third-party developers to create richer, more compelling — and, above all, visually consistent — content inside of Twitter itself. Therein lies Twitter’s goal: A rich, consistent Twitter experience for every user. When the hammer drops and Twitter changes its guidelines, those apps that can’t deliver this consistency will no longer be able to integrate with Twitter. The most likely candidates to go first, according to multiple sources, fall into two camps: Third-party-client apps which essentially reduplicate the Twitter stream — such as Tweetbot, Echofon and Osfoora — and news reader apps like Flipboard, which re-renders Twitter data to create a different visual experience of a tweet entirely. The answer lies in the cards.

NBC could yet earn a gold medal for its controversial decision to delay televising marquee events from the London Olympics until prime time in the US. The company approached the London Olympics expecting to lose about $200 million on its coverage. But ratings for the Summer Games have been much higher than expected, which should allow the company to escape a huge financial loss.

NBCUniversal is paying $1.18 billion to the International Olympics Committee for the exclusive television rights in the U.S., and is broadcasting the events on a multitude of channels including NBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, the NBC Sports Network and on the Internet. The company is incurring more than $100 million in production costs. Despite a chorus of complaints about the network's decision to delay broadcast of high-profile sports events until prime time, hours after the events are over, the television ratings have been dramatically higher than expected. Ratings are up about 9% compared with the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Burke said. The NBC network has been drawing more than 30 million viewers in prime time, a spectacular feat in an age of fragmented media and dwindling audiences.

Most lawmakers do not disclose whether they write their own tweets, according to a review of lawmaker Twitter bios by The Hill, which also finds that most members likely use a ghostwriter.

While 84 percent of House lawmakers and 93 percent of senators are on Twitter, few follow President Obama’s example in personally signing or tagging their tweets, an indication that would highlight the tweet’s authenticity. Only 14 members of the House and 12 senators include a line in their bios that indicate whether a tweet is written by the lawmaker or a member of his or her staff. Those numbers include two accounts that put “press” in their Twitter account name and five that credit the account to “the office of” the lawmaker.