Micro-blogging service Twitter suffered an outage Thursday that affected users on multiple continents.
“Users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter. Our engineers are currently working to resolve the issue,” the San Francisco-based company wrote in a blog post shortly after 8:30 a.m. Pacific time (2100 IST).
The service went dark for several hours in June. That episode revived fears that stability issues may once again be plaguing Twitter, which suffered frequent outages in its early years, but has claimed to have improved its infrastructure.
READ ON: Twitter suffers widespread outage
Islamist website offers $100,000 for Iranian rapper's death
An Iranian rapper living in Germany has a $100,000 bounty on his head after an Islamist website offered a reward for anyone who kills him over a song that satirizes the Islamic Republic and irreverently addresses a historic religious figure.
The Iranian news and religion website Shia-Online.ir said hip-hop star Shahin Najafi deserved to die for a song which it said “grossly insulted” Ali al-Hadi al-Naqi, one of the 12 imams, the religious figures highly revered by Shi’ite Muslims.
Najafi denied his song focused on the revered Shi’ite imam or was meant to criticize Islam.
When you ‘like’ something on Facebook or read an online newspaper, perhaps a dozen or more companies are squirreling away data on your tastes, your habits, whether you’re male or female, old or young, gay or straight.
They mean no harm. They just want to give you, the customer, exactly what you want - it’s the grandfather of all business slogans. Their dilemma, now regulators’ noses are twitching, is how to serve you, and serve themselves, when what you want is to be left alone.
There are thousands of analytics companies, audience targeters, ad brokers, ad exchanges and the like that can collect and sell data-based services on internet users for 5,000 euros a time to big brands, which then buy ad space where their potential customers might be lurking.
You only know these trackers are at work if you read the fine print. The New York Times has a disclaimer saying it hires WebTrends and Audience Science to interpret its readers’ interests, and Britain’s Guardian newspaper says it pays Criteo and Quantcast, among others, to do the same.
Breaking News from SXSW: Reuters blogger Felix Salmon has learned from an unnamed source that CNN will buy social media website Mashable for more than $200 million. The source says an announcement is expected for Tuesday. (March 12, 2012)
