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Twitter in May: Healthy Conversation, Encryption, Video, Google Cloud
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Here’s the Twitter conversation for May:
Twitter Takes Action Against “Trolls”
Twitter says it is in the process of rolling out an automated system that will identify certain objectionable behavior (frequency of tweeting about accounts that don’t follow you, when you don’t confirm your email address, how frequently you are blocked, etc. even when the tweets don’t violate any rules) to limit the visibility of “offensive” tweets.
It expects this to reduce the number of tweets that are reported. The system won’t remove the tweets entirely however, and people who don’t object to them will continue to see them in the normal way. Other changes are also afoot.
The goal is ostensibly to promote more civil conversation, although Twitter typically leans left and both suspends and blocks people and tweets that portray an opposing view point without regard for context.
Twitter sees it differently it seems. The company needs to ensure that the platform doesn’t drive away users and so it has solicited help on methods to determine what constitutes the "health of public conversations." It is in the process of reviewing the 230 submissions received.
As things stand now, if you form a group that creates and propagates a dishonest view point that injures another group or community using sweet words, Twitter will allow you to proliferate. But if any member of that community forwards an emotional expletive in response, it will be “offensive” by Twitter’s standards.
So do tech companies have the right to determine what is offensive? And should offense be determined on the basis of what drives users away? After all, in real life, if you can’t handle a few comments, you distance yourself from the situation. So why should tech platforms be controlled and manipulated in any different way? Because every time the tech platform errs, it takes away a user’s right to free speech.
Dorsey Meets Lawmakers
Twitter CEO met with senators last week to discuss a wide range of issues including net neutrality, privacy, immigration, diversity, Russian involvement in the elections and the “public health of conversations.” As may be expected, most of his meetings were with Democrats, although he also spoke with Republicans Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (S.D.) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (Ore.). Everybody said that the meetings were satisfactory.
Moving In with Google Cloud
Twitter is moving its cold storage and Hadoop clusters (300 petabytes of data across tens of thousands of servers) to Alphabet’s (GOOGL - Free Report) GCP in what could be the first step to a total transition. CTO Parag Agrawal said that when the migration is complete, it will enable "faster capacity provisioning; increased flexibility; access to a broader ecosystem of tools and services; improvements to security; and enhanced disaster recovery capabilities."
Twitter handles some of the biggest data volumes in the world and its choice of Google Cloud has a lot to do with the tools it offers, making Twitter’s engineering man hours more effective. So this is a big thumbs up to Google’s cloud capabilities.
For now, it continues to use Amazon’s (AMZN - Free Report) AWS for other workloads.
Secret Conversations
Twitter is testing a feature that will allow users to send end-to-end encrypted messages after they turn on the feature in direct messages to other users. Computer science student Jane Manchun Wong was the first to notice the feature called “secret conversations” in the Twitter Android application package (APK).
This is both good and bad news for users: good because it improves their privacy in certain conversations if they so choose and bad because terrorists and other law breakers get another method of communication, making life that much more unsafe.
For Twitter, it could be a good thing because it could prevent users from moving to platforms like Signal, Telegram, or even WhatsApp when they want to converse privately.
Encryption scrambles data and only allows access to a person with the correct passcode. The test version also allows the user to verify the encryption keys on the other end of the conversation.
End to end encryption has become a big part of the privacy conversation with Apple (AAPL - Free Report) and Facebook’s WhatsApp being big advocates.
Content Deals
At the Digital Content Newfronts in New York, Twitter announced more than 30 renewed and new deals for live and original programming, an indication of the success it’s seeing as a content distribution platform, and especially as content viewing increasingly moves from TV to digital platforms.
Twitter’s biggest advantage that’s always touted by its management is the fact that it allows simultaneous streaming and conversing, so you can tell peoples’ reaction and their level of engagement with the show even as the show is on. Twitter's head of video Kayvon Beykpour has said that daily views on Twitter have nearly doubled over the past year, so advertisers must appreciate this.
One of the biggest deals was with Walt Disney Co. (DIS - Free Report) , which will create Twitter-specific live sports, news and entertainment programming through the ESPN "SportsCenter" TV show, live stream ESPN's "Fantasy Focus Live" podcast, and produce content through the ABC broadcast network, the Disney Channels, Freeform and the company's movie studio.
Another was with Comcast Corp. (CMCSA - Free Report) networks including NBCUniversal, which will be sharing live video and clips from NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC and Telemundo,
Others included Viacom’s Comedy Central, MTV and BET, Hearst Magazines Digital Media, Will Packer Media, BuzzFeed News, and sports leagues including Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer.
Cambridge Analytica
Twitter revealed that it sold one-time API access to a random sample of public tweets for a five-month period between December 2014 and April 2015 to GSR, Aleksandr Kogan's own commercial enterprise but that no personal data of users had been accessed. This activity is however a regular one with Twitter for the purpose of Twitter surveys. And since Twitter doesn’t require users to reveal their true names or share their location, it doesn’t usually raise eyebrows.
Last year, it generated $8 billion in global revenues. By 2020, it's predicted to blast through the roof to $47 billion. Famed investor Mark Cuban says it will produce "the world's first trillionaires," but that should still leave plenty of money for regular investors who make the right trades early.
Image: Bigstock
Twitter in May: Healthy Conversation, Encryption, Video, Google Cloud
Here’s the Twitter conversation for May:
Twitter Takes Action Against “Trolls”
Twitter says it is in the process of rolling out an automated system that will identify certain objectionable behavior (frequency of tweeting about accounts that don’t follow you, when you don’t confirm your email address, how frequently you are blocked, etc. even when the tweets don’t violate any rules) to limit the visibility of “offensive” tweets.
It expects this to reduce the number of tweets that are reported. The system won’t remove the tweets entirely however, and people who don’t object to them will continue to see them in the normal way. Other changes are also afoot.
The goal is ostensibly to promote more civil conversation, although Twitter typically leans left and both suspends and blocks people and tweets that portray an opposing view point without regard for context.
Twitter sees it differently it seems. The company needs to ensure that the platform doesn’t drive away users and so it has solicited help on methods to determine what constitutes the "health of public conversations." It is in the process of reviewing the 230 submissions received.
As things stand now, if you form a group that creates and propagates a dishonest view point that injures another group or community using sweet words, Twitter will allow you to proliferate. But if any member of that community forwards an emotional expletive in response, it will be “offensive” by Twitter’s standards.
So do tech companies have the right to determine what is offensive? And should offense be determined on the basis of what drives users away? After all, in real life, if you can’t handle a few comments, you distance yourself from the situation. So why should tech platforms be controlled and manipulated in any different way? Because every time the tech platform errs, it takes away a user’s right to free speech.
Dorsey Meets Lawmakers
Twitter CEO met with senators last week to discuss a wide range of issues including net neutrality, privacy, immigration, diversity, Russian involvement in the elections and the “public health of conversations.” As may be expected, most of his meetings were with Democrats, although he also spoke with Republicans Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (S.D.) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (Ore.). Everybody said that the meetings were satisfactory.
Moving In with Google Cloud
Twitter is moving its cold storage and Hadoop clusters (300 petabytes of data across tens of thousands of servers) to Alphabet’s (GOOGL - Free Report) GCP in what could be the first step to a total transition. CTO Parag Agrawal said that when the migration is complete, it will enable "faster capacity provisioning; increased flexibility; access to a broader ecosystem of tools and services; improvements to security; and enhanced disaster recovery capabilities."
Twitter handles some of the biggest data volumes in the world and its choice of Google Cloud has a lot to do with the tools it offers, making Twitter’s engineering man hours more effective. So this is a big thumbs up to Google’s cloud capabilities.
For now, it continues to use Amazon’s (AMZN - Free Report) AWS for other workloads.
Secret Conversations
Twitter is testing a feature that will allow users to send end-to-end encrypted messages after they turn on the feature in direct messages to other users. Computer science student Jane Manchun Wong was the first to notice the feature called “secret conversations” in the Twitter Android application package (APK).
This is both good and bad news for users: good because it improves their privacy in certain conversations if they so choose and bad because terrorists and other law breakers get another method of communication, making life that much more unsafe.
For Twitter, it could be a good thing because it could prevent users from moving to platforms like Signal, Telegram, or even WhatsApp when they want to converse privately.
Encryption scrambles data and only allows access to a person with the correct passcode. The test version also allows the user to verify the encryption keys on the other end of the conversation.
End to end encryption has become a big part of the privacy conversation with Apple (AAPL - Free Report) and Facebook’s WhatsApp being big advocates.
Content Deals
At the Digital Content Newfronts in New York, Twitter announced more than 30 renewed and new deals for live and original programming, an indication of the success it’s seeing as a content distribution platform, and especially as content viewing increasingly moves from TV to digital platforms.
Twitter’s biggest advantage that’s always touted by its management is the fact that it allows simultaneous streaming and conversing, so you can tell peoples’ reaction and their level of engagement with the show even as the show is on. Twitter's head of video Kayvon Beykpour has said that daily views on Twitter have nearly doubled over the past year, so advertisers must appreciate this.
One of the biggest deals was with Walt Disney Co. (DIS - Free Report) , which will create Twitter-specific live sports, news and entertainment programming through the ESPN "SportsCenter" TV show, live stream ESPN's "Fantasy Focus Live" podcast, and produce content through the ABC broadcast network, the Disney Channels, Freeform and the company's movie studio.
Another was with Comcast Corp. (CMCSA - Free Report) networks including NBCUniversal, which will be sharing live video and clips from NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC and Telemundo,
Others included Viacom’s Comedy Central, MTV and BET, Hearst Magazines Digital Media, Will Packer Media, BuzzFeed News, and sports leagues including Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer.
Cambridge Analytica
Twitter revealed that it sold one-time API access to a random sample of public tweets for a five-month period between December 2014 and April 2015 to GSR, Aleksandr Kogan's own commercial enterprise but that no personal data of users had been accessed. This activity is however a regular one with Twitter for the purpose of Twitter surveys. And since Twitter doesn’t require users to reveal their true names or share their location, it doesn’t usually raise eyebrows.
Recommendation
Twitter has a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and here is the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks.
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Last year, it generated $8 billion in global revenues. By 2020, it's predicted to blast through the roof to $47 billion. Famed investor Mark Cuban says it will produce "the world's first trillionaires," but that should still leave plenty of money for regular investors who make the right trades early.
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