With Google revising its search engine to include personalized Google+ results, you might wonder how other social networks are reacting. Do they see it as the start of a search engine revolution they can participate in, or the unfair promotion of a competitor over their own services? If you’re leaning towards the latter, your cynicism’s well-earned.

While Facebook has declined to comment on the change (though remember, Facebook is already partnered with Google competitor Bing), Twitter has released a statement saying it’s “concerned” about Google’s ‘Search plus Your World’ functionality, because it worried that the changes would make finding Twitter results — something it called “a vital source of … real-time information” — ”much harder for everyone [and] we think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.” The company pointed out that people “have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet,” and suggest that introducing a more social search will lessen the relevance not only of Twitter, but Google search overall.

It’ll be interesting to see how — if at all — Google responds to this criticism, in part because it’s not altogether accurate. Not only is there the option to shut off personalized searches for all users, but the personalized results don’t replace the “regular” search results; they’re shown in addition to the results you would have turned up before Search plus The World launched yesterday. Whether Twitter’s reaction is based upon a misunderstanding or not, it highlights the need for better elucidation of what Search plus The World is and isn’t, and how it will impact both users and those who’ve benefited from Google’s search results in the past.

A best case scenario here is that Twitter partners with Google to add its own content to Search plus The World, although that may be impossible without fully integrating with Google+. In any case, surely personalized search — especially if it’s controllable by the user — is the future of Internet search, in which case…isn’t it better to join rather than hope to beat them?

Prepare for a war of words (and tech blogs) as Google picks up Twitter’s implied “is what Google’s doing anti-competitive?” gauntlet and tosses it back with a nonplussed one-liner suggesting the whole kerfuffle’s actually Twitter’s fault.

If you’re just tuning in, Google launched something called “Search plus Your World” yesterday, basically a way of folding Google+ social networking content (shared with you) into your Google search results. Twitter, who had to know this was coming, reacted immediately with a prepared statement, saying in so many words that Search plus Your World is el major problem-o because it surfaces Google’s social networking content before competitors’ data. (Facebook’s keeping mum, for the moment.)

Here’s what Twitter wrote in full:

For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet.

Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results.

We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.

Google responded last night with a single sentence and a link highlighting Twitter’s decision to remove itself from the search equation.

We are a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer (http://goo.gl/chKwi), and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions.

As you can see, Twitter elected not to renew an agreement it had with Google to include Twitter updates in its search results. That agreement ran from October 2009 to July 2, 2011. To date, no one’s entirely sure why Twitter opted out of its partnership with Google (Google had been paying Twitter for access to its tweet firehose, so money was probably a factor) but I’m assuming it had something to do with Google+ (launched on June 28, 2011), and Twitter’s competitive concerns about freely providing Google a motherlode of easily mineable social networking data.

So there’s reason to be sympathetic with Google’s position here — they can’t integrate results they’ve been forbidden access to — but Google’s (feigned?) surprise also seems disingenuous. Between Google search and Google+, Google holds both the spigot and the cup. It’s in many ways analogous to the relationship Microsoft Windows has with Microsoft Office, where one company controls both the underlying platform (or one of the biggest slices) while simultaneously competing with others at the applications level. If Google search is the predominant Internet search mechanism (it is), and that search mechanism surfaces Google+ content before any other social network’s, I’d call that a clear conflict of interest.

But! Google’s Amit Singhal claims the company is “open” to integrating Facebook, Twitter and other services, telling Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan:

“Facebook and Twitter and other services, basically, their terms of service don’t allow us to crawl them deeply and store things. Google+ is the only [network] that provides such a persistent service … Of course, going forward, if others were willing to change, we’d look at designing things to see how it would work.”

The trouble with Google’s “open” position here, if I’ve surmised Twitter’s original reason for opting out of Google search correctly, is that it affords Google access to massive pools of ostensibly valuable data that Twitter, Facebook and the like wouldn’t have about Google+. Google+ allows Google to paddle around in the social networking pool with everyone else, while Google search (with Twitter, Facebook et al. fully integrated) would give Google access to a bird’s eye view of usage patterns its competitors lack.

There’s no easy solution here. If Google pays Twitter gobs of money to aggregate the social networking site’s content, there’s still Google’s ability to view how that data’s accessed (via Google search) in ways Twitter can’t, giving Google a competitive leg up. And if Google and Twitter remain unpaired, Google+ stands to benefit enormously if Search plus Your World takes off, at which point Google’s holding both the spigot and cup.

A San Francisco judge has declared cyber stalking on Twitter and blogs constitutionally-protected free speech, reports The New York Times. The ruling is a victory for the First Amendment. But like all things worth fighting for, it comes at a price.

Here’s what happened: A Buddhist religious leader in Maryland named Alyce Zeoli became friends with a man named William Lawrence Cassidy. At some point, the two had a falling out. Cassidy took the mature route, and began posting thousands of messages on blogs and Twitter, often using pseudonyms, that aggressively disparaged Zeoli. Some of them even called for her death.

Understandably distraught, Zeoli then worked with the FBI to have Cassidy arrested, which he was, based on interstate stalking laws. Cassidy, the government argued, had caused Zeoli “substantial emotional distress.”

This, however, was not enough to convince Judge Roger W. Titus, who declared that Cassidy’s actions, while distasteful, were not enough to set a precedent that could cause serious harm to the entire foundations of speech on the Internet.

“[W]hile Mr. Cassidy’s speech may have inflicted substantial emotional distress, the government’s indictment here is directed squarely at protected speech: anonymous, uncomfortable Internet speech addressing religious matters,” wrote Judge Titus, in his official order.

Titus ruled that, because no one was forced to read Cassidy’s posts and tweets — as opposed to a “telephone call, letter or email specifically addressed to and directed at another person” — they are considered free speech, not harassment, just as personal bulletin boards of the colonial era fell under the protection of the First Amendment, which “protects speech even when the subject or the manner of expression is uncomfortable and challenges conventional religious beliefs, political attitudes or standards of good taste.”

One of Zeoli’s lawyers, Shanlon Wu, told the Times that Zeoli was “appalled and frightened by the judge’s ruling.” It is not yet clear whether there will be an appeal to the ruling.

The controversy over rapper Soulja Boy’s comments regarding the United States military and the FBI continues to grow.
The rapper is under fire for comments he made about the U.S. armed forces on a new track titled “Let’s Be Real.”

“F**k the FBI and the army troops/fighting for what?/Be your own man/I be flying through the clouds with green like I’m Peter Pan” Soulja Boy raps on the track.

Now, a former military veteran has filed an online petition, seeking to have the rapper’s music banned from all U.S. military bases, while another rapping veteran has released a diss record aimed at Soulja Boy.

“Many Americans, civilians and military personnel, have requested that you please discontinue any and all of Soulja Boy’s memorabilia,” reads the petition, which already has over 1,000 signatures.

“In doing so, you would not only earn the respect of the American audience but you would also create a peace among all Americans today,” the petition states. “Military personnel have become greatly offended with the previously mentioned song and removing said artist would ease a lot of the tension and violence that has been created.”

According to TMZ.com, a former infantry sergeant and five-year combat veteran who raps under the name “Sgt. Dunson” disses Soulja Boy in the new song “Change Your Name.”

Sgt. Dunson said that Soulja Boy song was the most “ignorant thing I’ve heard in so long” and he was especially offended, because of the upcoming anniversary of 9/11.

Representatives for Soulja Boy have yet to comment.

DeAndre Cortez Way
Soulja Boy
twitter.com/souljaboy
www.facebook.com/souljaboy

Soulja Boy
226 Van Voris Street
Batesville, MS 38606

This video is probably the best

AllHipHop

Twitter marked the fifth anniversary of its public launch Friday with a slew of statistics demonstrating the explosive growth of the real-time blogging service.

“There were 224 Tweets sent on July 15, 2006. Today, users send that many Tweets in less than a tenth of a second,” Twitter said in a message on its @TwitterGlobalPR account.

“Yesterday, we saw more than 600,000 signups. It took us more than 16 months to reach the first 600,000 Twitter accounts,” Twitter said.

Twitter Engineering said it is delivering 350 billion tweets a day.

The San Francisco-based Twitter said last month that Twitter users are sending 200 million messages a day, most of which have to be delivered to multiple accounts.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey fired off the first tweets on March 21, 2006 and the service opened to the public on July 15, 2006.

Twitter now has more than 200 million users.

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 13 percent of online US adults use Twitter, up from eight percent in November 2010.

Hacker activists Anonymous sort of hacked Apple over the weekend, not to disrupt the iTunes store or to break into iCloud, but just to make a point.

That point is, quite simply: “We could attack Apple if we wanted to. But right now, we don’t want to.”

Anonymous posted a brief warning on Twitter on Sunday. The link in it pointed to text allegedly showing usernames and passwords for 27 logins on Apple’s abs.apple.com server.

The post included the hashtag #AntiSec, suggesting the attack was part of the wider series of anti-security operations by Anonymous and the recently-disbanded LulzSec group.

If nothing else, the rash of security stories that have made it to the front pages of the mainstream media in recent weeks and months are evidence that the public perception of data security is rapidly changing. It used to be considered something to be left to the geeks, because no one else understood or cared.

Most people still don’t understand it. But more and more are starting to care, now that they’ve realized their bank accounts, their online shopping and browsing, their personal data, their health records, almost everything they do, is done and stored online.

The movement isn’t just a wake-up call to ordinary folk, it’s a wake-up call to businesses and governments. If they haven’t already done so, senior executives and managers everywhere need to be summoning their team and posing the question: Is our stuff secure enough? If not, how do we make it so? That’s a good thing for all of us.

(Via Reuters)

A 17 year old member “TeaMp0isoN” went to Twitter tonight after defacing one of the members of LulzSec websites to boast about easy it was to not only hack into the site but also deface it. LulzSec has been in the news lately mainly due in part for them going on Twitter to mention the “hacks” they are doing. However earlier today members of LulzSec and TeaMp0isoN started to go at it on Twitter and that quickly escalated into TeaMp0isoN going right after LulzSec on its home turf.

As of now JoePie91s who was outed as being a member of LulzSec in the Tweet blog is still down now. No telling if it was him who took it down or members of TeaMp0isoN who took it down. But we do know from going through the Tweets is you can tell that TeaMp0isoN has had enough of both LulzSec and Anon on their “childish” hacks. Calling both DoS’ing and taking to Twitter to boast about “hacks”

As of now we have yet to hear any response from LulzSec, or members of Anonymous about this break-in. However knowing that TeaMp0isoN members(just 2) where so easily able to do this, would a response from other hackers be wise? Or has TeaMp0isoN just thrown down what not even the US government been able to do and thats stop both LulzSec and Anon members from hacking knowing full well TeaMp0isoN is out there. Bellow is a screen shot of what TeaMp0isoN left on the blog site of JoePie91s, however what you don’t see in this picture is the music video that have playing below the site which is Celine Dion’s music video for the theme to Titanic. Feeling they are trying to send a message that the LulzBoat is going down hard and fast…

PayPal has hit back at hackers claiming to have released the online payment gateway’s account information to the public.

The hacking group Lulz Security stated that last week they released log-in information for 62,000 private internet accounts, taking in the likes of Facebook, PayPal and Twitter. But a statement on PayPal’s blog noted: “These reports are not accurate. We wanted to assure you that our site has not been breached or hacked in any way.”

“A group of hackers is claiming they have compromised another, less secure website and have secured the usernames and passwords of a number of accounts from that site. The hackers have released these login credentials to the public and have encouraged criminals to try accessing personal online accounts at a number of companies, including PayPal, with this information. These usernames and passwords are not necessarily associated with us, but if people have used the same login credentials for multiple sites, including PayPal, then their accounts could be accessed by another person,” it added.

The company says that its security team became aware of the situation at an early stage and so began monitoring a number of accounts for suspicious activity. “We always safeguard our customers from qualified unauthorised payments sent from their accounts. We regularly monitor for unusual activity on accounts and will work directly with customers if they suspect their accounts have been accessed fraudulently,” the statement said.

You know those “Promoted” items that appear in the list of trending topics on your Twitter home page? Ever wondered how much it might cost to buy one?

Turns out the going rate is a cool $120,000 per day.

And if you’re smart, you’ll buy one sooner rather than later, because that price is five times higher than it was just a year ago. Who knows what it will be another year from now. Twitter’s head of revenue Adam Bain revealed the figures in an interview with Clickz.

The $120,000 per day fee for promoted trends is just one income stream for Twitter. Would-be advertisers can also pay for promoted accounts and tweets in an auction, although the minimum spend is $15,000 over three months.

And to think there were people slamming Twitter in its early days, saying it would never have any ways of making money. Twitter is enormously valuable to advertisers in the same way that TV shows are. It’s got enough eyeballs looking at it to make an advertiser weak at the knees.

It’s also valuable in a way that TV shows are not. TV slots might cost thousands – hundreds of thousands, easily – but the audience there is a passive one. They’re watching, not doing. They might not even be watching, just leaving the TV on.

Twitter’s different. The audience there is 100% engaged and committed and taking part. Simply by checking your timeline, you’re a far more active pair of eyeballs—a far more attractive target for advertisers—than when you’re sitting in front of the TV.

That’s why the price has reached $120,000 so fast. And how it’s likely to soar higher, fast.

(Via CNET)

You may not be away of this, but Robin Williams’ daughter, Zelda, is a huge fan of Nintendo. Believe it or not, she was named after Princess Zelda.

Her interest in Link’s adventures and the Big N’s other franchises may have helped her to secure work on a “Super Secret Nintendo” project. Williams posted these comments on Twitter earlier this week:

“The Super Secret Nintendo shoot has begun! More fun pics as the day progresses. Stay tuned! Nintendo set update: don’t be fooled, even directors get tired! That’s a wrap on Super Secret Nintendo set part 1! Look, real building, fake skyline”

With E3 so close, there’s a possibility that Williams is involved with some of Nintendo’s plans for the show. Perhaps she appears in some sort of video for Skyward Sword or a feature for Zelda’s 25th anniversary.

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