Technology Mania : Jack Dorsey

Showing posts with label Jack Dorsey. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Twitter’s Periscope adds ‘Proudly made in America by immigrants’ to app loading screen

31 Jan 2017 , 16:13

As a mark of protest against the US President Donald Trump’s recent executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, Twitter’s live-streaming app Periscope has updated its loading screen with a small text that reads “Proudly made in America by immigrants”. In a statement, Periscope said on Tuesday that the recent executive order to halt immigration from seven countries in the Middle East and Africa forced them to consider a disturbing alternate reality in which the Periscope team is irreparably changed.

“Periscope is built, maintained, and operated by people from many faiths and countries. Without immigrants and refugees, Periscope would not exist. For this reason, we are updating the Periscope loading screen to make a simple true statement: ‘Proudly made in America by immigrants’,” the statement read. According to a report in VentureBeat, messaging giant Viber revealed it would be offering free calls from the US to the seven countries affected by the executive order.

Google has pledged $4 million to four organisations that support immigrants, while Uber will help drivers with their immigration defence by contributing a $3 million pot. Airbnb has announced free temporary housing to those affected by the order. Earlier, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in his support to the immigrants termed the executive order’s impact as upsetting.

“The Executive Order’s humanitarian and economic impact is real and upsetting. We benefit from what refugees and immigrants bring to the US,” @jack tweeted. The executive order bans immigration from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen under measures to “keep radical Islamic terrorists out”. “I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the US,” Trump said during the signing at the Pentagon after the swearing-in of Defence Secretary James Mattis.

IANS

Friday, December 30, 2016

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hints at a ‘tweet edit’ function for the microblogging site

Jack Dorsey is the CEO of both Square and Twitter. Image: Reuters

By tech2 News Staff / 30 Dec 2016 , 13:00

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has hinted that the ‘edit’ functions to edit mistakes may soon be coming to the platform. Dorsey started an impromptu Twitter town hall with the users last night asking them about the most important things that Twitter can improve or create in 2017. He posted his thoughts about the edit feature as a response to the tweets asking for the implementation of the feature.

He pointed out that the company was looking into the request since a long time and that the feature is “def needed” for all the users to improve the platform as a product.

Dorsey responded to users by asking for suggestions on how to implement the feature because of the complexities involved in adding the feature. He asked if the users need a 5-minute window to correct the mistakes done while tweeting or the edit anytime implementation better for the users.

Dorsey did point out that anything beyond a time window based edit feature would require tweet ‘revision’ history so that users can check what the original tweet was in case any troll tries to take the conversation out of context. One Twitter user suggested that the edit function should be rolled out for users with verified Twitter accounts. Dorsey clarified that the feature would roll out to all the users and not just the ones with verified accounts.

Even though he identifies edit feature as one of the most requested and important things on the platform, the discussion does not automatically mean that the feature is confirmed. There is no official confirmation at the moment, but the discussion itself is better than a situation where users think that Twitter is not taking their feedback into account. This comes right after the company launched 360-degee live videos on Twitter and Periscope.

One interesting conversation in the Twitter town hall was the interaction between Dorsey and Bored Elon Musk, a parody account of Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk. Bored Elon Musk suggested verifications for parody accounts to which Dorsey replied with “boring”. Bored Elon Musk quipped with “Multiverse Twitter access for seeing tweets from yourself and yourself and yourself” as an improvement by Twitter. Dorsey responded with humour that “now we’re talking”. Not Jony Ive jumped in to approve of the ongoing interaction with a classic “+1”.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will interview Edward Snowden on Periscope

Jack Dorsey is the CEO of both Square and Twitter. Image: Reuters

By tech2 News Staff / 13 Dec 2016 , 12:20

Jack Dorsey will conduct an interview with Edward Snowden on Periscope. Jack Dorsey is a known supporter of the Pardon Snowden movement, an initiative that aims to get a presidential pardon for Snowden.

Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA spying on US citizens without democratic consent, and pushed the tech industry towards taking more steps to safeguard the privacy of their users. Other known supporters of the Pardon Snowden campaign include Steve Wozniak, Tim Berners-Lee, Neil Gaiman and Mark Ruffalo.

Edward Snowden famously exposed the illegal surveillance of US citizens by agencies. He has been on the run since then, and there has been a campaign to bring him back to the United States after being granted a pardon for spying on the spy agencies spying on the citizens. Snowden describes himself succinctly on Twitter as someone who worked for the government and now works for the public.

Snowden is popular all over the world for defending the right of privacy, particularly in Europe, which has much stronger privacy laws as compared to the United States. In Germany, fans of Snowden asked President Barack Obama if he could pardon Snowden,but Obama ruled out the possibility as the proper procedures were not initiated in the courts in the first place for the pardon to be granted.

Snowden is reportedly working on an iPhone case that prevents any kind of surveillance. He has also warned users against using Google’s instant messaging application, Allo, for holding secure and confidential conversations.

In India, the time for the interview works out to around 10:30 PM, tonight. The live Periscope interview will be hosted by the @PardonSnowden Twitter account. Users can submit questions for Dorsey to pose to Snowden using the #AskSnowden hashtag.