The news that Twitter will be censoring tweets has reinforced for many the fact that our freedoms exist at the mercy of the companies whose networks we are using — and being used by. How much trust should we have in these new information gatekeepers? Read More »
Bio:Mathew is a senior writer with GigaOM, where he covers media in all its forms — social and otherwise — as well as web culture and related issues. He is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past 15 years writing about business, technology and new media as a reporter, columnist and blogger. Prior to joining GigaOM, he was a blogger and technology writer for the Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto, and was also the paper’s first online Communities Editor. Mathew is also one of the founders of mesh, Canada’s leading web conference. You can find more about him here.
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- reposting in case you missed it: “Of funerals, digital photos and impermanence" http://t.co/S5qsdcsV
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Recent Posts
Twitter says it has implemented a new system that will allow it to remove tweets from specific countries if required to do so by law, but that it will try hard not to do this, and will be as transparent as possible if it does. Read More »
Too many media giants are happy to have a little disruption, provided it doesn’t change the supply-demand equation they have always relied on. But the reality is that this equation has already been blown to smithereens, and they had better figure out how to adapt. Read More »
Is Google’s new privacy policy another sign it has broken its promise and is becoming more evil? Or is the fuss over the new version — which will allow the search giant to share data among its various services — a tempest in a privacy teapot? Read More »
The back-and-forth between Google and Twitter over Google’s new social-search results is only the latest manifestation of a much deeper problem with the relationship between the two former partners. The reality is that both sides need each other more than they would probably like to admit. Read More »
There’s been a lot of journalistic finger-wagging over a student website that filed an erroneous report on the weekend saying Penn State coach Joe Paterno had died. But that student site behaved better than some other traditional news sources, both before and after the report. Read More »
A team of developers led by Facebook’s Blake Ross has launched a browser plugin called “Don’t be evil” they claim presents Google’s search more fairly — but is this a war Facebook can win, or just a chance to make cheap PR points against Google? Read More »
More Must Reads
Not only were the authorities able to shut down MegaUpload and arrest its founders without either SOPA or PIPA, but the facts of the case raise even more red flags about what the government would be able to do to similar services under those proposed laws. Read More »
Twitter’s purchase of Summify, which delivered an email summary of interesting links from a user’s social networks, shows Twitter is trying to get smarter about how it filters the flood of information users are exposed to. It’s a challenge that’s only going to grow. Read More »
Apple’s new textbook offering and book-authoring software are attractive, and the idea of digital textbooks makes sense, but they are both locked to Apple’s walled-garden ecosystem. That may be fine for music and movies and games like Angry Birds, but is it appropriate for educational material? Read More »
Thanks to an almost unprecedented grass-roots awareness campaign conducted by his friends through Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and other social media over the past three months, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Amit Gupta was able to find a compatible bone-marrow donor whose cells could help him conquer acute leukemia. Read More »
In a presentation about SOPA and PIPA, author and media theorist Clay Shirky starts with an anecdote about a mom-and-pop bakery in his old neighborhood that made custom birthday cakes for children. What does that have to do with piracy? More than you might think. Read More »
Critics of Wikipedia’s decision to shut the encyclopedia down as a protest against U.S. anti-piracy legislation say the site shouldn’t be taking an advocacy position on such an issue, but if anything, that decision is a great illustration of how Wikipedia functions and why it’s important. Read More »
Although the House has said it will shelve the much-criticized SOPA anti-piracy act until there is consensus on the legislation, critics — including Reddit and Wikipedia — say they plan to go ahead with blackouts to protest the law and its Senate counterpart, known as PIPA. Read More »
News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch’s comments about piracy reinforce the sense that the billionaire media and entertainment mogul doesn’t understand how content works in a digital era, and that he is continuing to try and impose the scarcity that media companies have had in the past. Read More »
With its new “Search plus Your World” personalized results, Google may argue it is enhancing its service, but it’s also coming dangerously close to reneging on the promise it made to users in 2004: to provide unbiased links to those who are searching for information. Read More »
The firestorm of criticism that erupted over the New York Times public editor’s question about whether reporters should be “truth vigilantes” is a sign there is still a huge gap between what the mainstream media thinks its job is and what readers think. Read More »
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