The Twitter board has unanimously approves Elon Musk offer to buy the social media for a sum of $44 billion. The world’s richest person, Musk has said that he is going to keep it private and will release the source code.
This is the tweet Elon tweeted to announce the acquisition:
So far, Twitter’s price is the almost twice the price of any other social media acquisition. In the past, Salesforce had bought Slack for a sum of $28 billion. LinkedIn was paid $26 billion by Microsoft. Facebook had acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion and Instagram for $1 billion a while ago. Another Microsfot acquisition was Skype for 8.5 billion. Ages ago, Google had bought YouTube for a whooping $1.65 billion. And, Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr for $1.1 is also a notable high price acquisition in the tech industry.
I have prepared an experimental video abut a discussion in Twitter about Nepali movies. This is the first in the series – a very dull and completely uninteresting topic. Although, the topic wasn’t interesting at all, the response among Twitter friends was very good. So, I prepared a 3 minutes long video about the discussion.
In an interview with the Annapurna Post reporter actress Namrata Shrestha has told that she had been connecting to her fans through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. She told, her fans are of positive attitude and they are the only reason she is still active in the field. In the olden days, it wasn’t that easy. Celebrities meet their fans in person, took some photographs and offer autographs – that was all. They didn’t have a two way communication.
Namrata admitted, she gets a lot of proposals from her fans. Some even want to marry her and have kids. Others just want to be friends. But, she takes such proposals positively and says ‘thank you’ to them.
If a Kantipur journalist, Aashis Luitel, is to be believed – people buy newspapers to listen to their ranting.
If you buy newspapers for news, better stay away from Kantipur. Aashish Luitel thinks he is the only person in Kantipur and tells people not to buy the newspaper if you don’t like his views.
Another user has rightly told the journalist that newspaper is not a blog. I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t listen.
After all, Aashis Luitel is also human – has to play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to express te real feelings!
Twitter.com is a micro-blogging platform where people can share their 140 character long messages. Politicians, celebrities, and businesses use Twitter to update their followers about the latest happenings. Newspapers usually post the headlines and links to the articles. General users use it as a tool to keep themselves updated on the topics of their interest. In addition to following, they also use it as a chat and discussion forum.
What surprised me most of Kantipur is their "official" Twitter page. What was the need to lock it?
I can understand general peo
ple locking their Twitter account. They want to make a close circle and don’t want their posts to be shared out of their community. But, what is the secret within Kantipur community? I thought newspapers are transparent and they write for the mass. May be, Kantipur’s journalism is different.
Shall I send the "follow request" ?
It is worth noting that, in the last few weeks, Kantipur started to publish random and personal twitter posts in its Friday special section. They even tried to act as "moral police" and called one of the Twitter user’s boss to complain about the twits he was posting.
UPDATE: The threat materialized on the Friday’s edition of Kantipur. Although the photo of the Twitter user is not used, they have published the name and designation of another Twitter user. They even went ahead to complain the boss of the KETO (means – “little boy” in Nepali).
Original post:
Oh My God… this is unthinkable! And, it is happening in Nepal!
The journalists of one of the leading publication in Nepal, Kantipur were threatening one of the Twitter users – telling:
“We are going to publish your name/photo in story along w/ur death-threat..” (Let’s make a deal otherwise) “.. respond to our question…”.
And the “death threat” reads – “if *** were in front of me he would have been the second one to die.” (Attached below)
Does a death threat starts with an “IF” ?
Now, we need to understand the pretext before jumping into conclusion. Why Prabhat had to be so angry in the first place. He wrote an article in aakarpost saying (translation):
I had always asked them not to publish my Twitter post. They acted as if their 1 million readers won’t buy their newspaper if my Tweet are not published. Then, when I asked the reason for such an action, they ignored me. When I got angry they came back to threaten me.
The issue of people being unhappy of the publication of Twitter post was being debated for some time. It was everybody’s relief that, the week before they even told that – only Twitter posts mentioning @HelloShukrabar will be publish (see the unhonored announcement below).
In sharp contrast to their own announcement, the publication came as a surprise with purely personal and useless collection of twitter post (a copy at the end). The result:
@nepaldiary – got fired due to the publication of his post in Kantipur daily. Please refer his comment in this post.
@PR4BH4T – was threatened and forced to quit Twitter (link posted above)
@webg0ru – got fed up and left Twitter based on the behavior of the journalists
@nepaleeidiot – left Twitter feeling awkward
@schwafnil – left Twitter, saying “I don’t hold the responsibility of clarifying anyone of my thoughts or motives behind publishing a certain tweet.”
In response to the job loss of @nepaldiary, because of the Twitter post published in Kantipur, the journalists have quoted a proverb sounding like “you got what you deserve.”
@nepaleeidiot’s response before leaving Twitter:
After all these events, our journalists are feeling the proudness of winning the debate – teaching the “incompetents” the lesson.
#tweetdebate is also to be blamed
I think, it was a mistake to choose the title of the debate – “Sneaking Journalism”. That title itself gave negative message to the journalist and they started taking the “defensive stance”. The logic couldn’t penetrate the defensive shield and hence the debate turned out to be one-sided.
Background
The Twitter section in Friday edition of Kantipur daily when Bryan Adams performed the concert in Kathmandu. The Twitter post was really nice and to the point. It was nice to read and feel good about it. But, what followed was the disaster. Here is the recent publication that was the cause of all this out roar:
This is the third post I have written about publication of Twitter in a National Daily (hoping this to be the last). Previous posts were:
The disclaimer: This is my personal view and I don’t necessarily endorse all the views of the linked articles. I don’t know anybody involved, in person, and I don’t have anything against the journalist or the Twitter posters.
The #tweetdebate of last Friday was interesting and it involved the gray area between the legal and ethical boundaries ! The main issue of the debate was that Kantipur, in it’s Friday special (Hello Shukrabar), was publishing unauthorized twitter posts, that were not meant for wider circulation.
I appreciate the journalists of Kantipur who took their time to answer few of the questions. It was in stark contrast to my previous experience of getting a third-grade-citizen-like treatments. Although they never answered the main questions raised in the debate it was a step in the positive direction.
One of the Twitter user sent me this cut of the Kantipur’s publication to explain why he is against them publishing tweets of a general public.
Are you a Twitter user? The micro-blogging platform in which you can’t type more than 140 characters (yes, it is character, not words).
In the recent time, Twitter has become very popular in the world. Some Nepali have also started using it. Encouraged by its popularity in Nepali users, Kantipur Daily has started publishing a section called "Sataka Twits". In the section one of the reporters copies twitter posts of his/her friends and publishes. When I saw the section last week, I felt a bit uneasy. The section this week is really awkward. One guy, in the published post is telling that he has borrowed his friend’s password to check-out the lady friends there (I thought his name deserves to be removed in the following cutting of the newspaper).
Wikileaks has created a huge impact in the global scale. Recently it’s editor-in-chief Julian Assange was arrested in the UK in ‘rape’ charges.
Wikileaks is banned in every aspect of it’s online presence, except for its twitter page. With 438,016 followers (I am not one of them and there are lot like me) and only one following, it has grown to be extremely popular destination to know the latest about the whistle-blowing website.
The domain name provider of WikiLeaks, EveryDNS.net, has said that it has terminated the wikileaks.org domain as the domain has come under massive cyber attacks. As the website started releasing more than 250,000 diplomatic cables, the pressure against the whistle-blowing organization has been increasing from all over the world. The website is renamed wikileaks.ch (a Swiss domain).
The website now features a message "Keep us strong help wikileaks keep governments open," beside a photo of its founder Julian Assange.
Yesterday, the US server, Amazon.com had pulled the plug of the website and it had to move to European servers.
WikiLeaks Twitter response accuses the Amazon’s blog post response a ‘lie’ :
Amazon’s press release does not accord with the facts on public record. It is one thing to be cowardly. Another to lie about it.
The bold Bollywood actress/model, Sherlyn Chopra, is usually surrounded by controversies. In a recent news, Sherlyn was banned from the micro blogging site Twitter. It is told that Sherlyn Chopra has been banned from posting her images on Twitter.
It was in May that Sherlyn made news when she posted black-and-white photos of hers, sans clothes, in Twitter (@SherlynChopra). The media portrayed her as the first Bollywood babe to bare it all in front of camera, and the first to make it public too.
The photo was taken by her friend Vishal Saxena in which Sherlyn wrote the description: “My best friend shot this pic last week. Itz a raw file. I personally feel it needs no air-brushing.â€
