Proof that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Had Assimilated? He Spoke Black
Black English, the most American part of our language
“A decade in America already, I want out.” This tweet of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s has helped fuel speculations that what drove him to mass murder was that America had failed to assimilate him thoroughly enough. READ MORE >>
Foursquare's Struggle to Remain Relevant
At TechCrunch conference, CEO Dennis Crowley says his app is about more than mayorships
It's been a rough few months for Foursquare. The four-year-old location-sharing app, best known for making you the "mayor" of a place if you "check in" there more than anyone else, generated only $2 million in revenue in 2012; a research firm pronounced in January it would be dead or purchased by the end of the year. READ MORE >>
The Delete Squad
Google, Twitter, Facebook and the new global battle over the future of free speech
A year ago this month, Stanford Law School hosted a little-noticed meeting that may help decide the future of free speech online. It took place in the faculty lounge, where participants were sustained in their deliberations by bagels and fruit platters. READ MORE >>
Facebooking Through Tragedy
When disaster struck nearby, I logged off Twitter for a different kind of news
When disaster and tragedy used to strike, most of us turned on the network news. Now, many of us turn to social media. So it was for me after Hurricane Sandy and Sandy Hook, when Twitter was a vital stream of information, a way of partitioning suffering into more easily digestible updates. And so it began again on Monday, after the bombing of the Boston Marathon. In the initial aftermath of the attack, I was glued to Twitter. And yet, as details of the carnage emerged, I found myself logging on to Facebook instead. READ MORE >>
Newspapers in a Time of Need
Boston's papers shined after Monday's bombing. Then again, so did social media.
Immediately after a pair of explosions wracked the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, those who turned to the city’s two major newsrooms for facts would have found that both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald’s websites were down. Cell phones, which are supposed to provide calm and contact in exactly such an emergency, were failing bystanders, too, with overloaded towers making calls and text nearly impossible to transmit. READ MORE >>
The Problem with Tweeting a Revolution
Andy Carvin tweeted the Arab Spring. He still missed something by not being there.
During the most heated days of the Tahrir Square protests, Andy Carvin sent more than 1,000 tweets per day. He kept at it for 18 hours at a time, aggregating and crowdsourcing information from activists, freedom fighters, and (citizen) journalists. He submitted to sleep only as a biological necessity. READ MORE >>
How Do You Stop Racism on Twitter?
Not by shaming or prosecuting users, for starters
Last week, France embarked on a new frontier of hate speech prosecution: Twitter. READ MORE >>
Kobe Bryant is suffering a midseason crisis. Back in October, with 16 years and five championships under his belt with the Los Angeles Lakers, Bryant had looked to his new super-team—stocked with the aging, future Hall of Fame guard Steve Nash and the veteran big men Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol—as his last, best chance to match or even surpass the six titles won by Michael Jordan, his idol and the rarely disputed Greatest of All Time. READ MORE >>
