Twitter

Internet audience

2022: Active audience of 397 million people

2021: Ninth on list of most visited sites

2020: In the top 50 largest Internet sites in the world

2018: Top 20 internet giants by size of internet audience

2011: App audience - 100 million users

Performance indicators

2020: $1.13 billion loss

Microblogging service Twitter Inc. at the end of 2020 received a net loss of $1.136 billion against profit a year earlier.

2015: Revenue of $2.2 billion

The total loss Twitter for its almost 10-year activity exceeded $2 billion, follows from the annual report published by the company on Form 10-K.

Twitter revenue in 2015 amounted to $2.2 billion. This is 1.6 times more than in 2014. The company said that in 2015 they already had 130 thousand advertisers, which is 90% more than a year earlier.

Despite the rise in advertisers, analysts question the company's ability to make a profit. Twitter faces many tasks on which this will depend, including increasing the user base, with which the service has obvious problems.

Twitter in Russia

Main article: Twitter in Russia

History

2024: Hackers hack US Securities Commission account and cause hype in crypto market

A notable case of hacking happened on January 9, when the account of the American Securities Commission (SEC) was intercepted, on the page of which a message was published allegedly about the approval of spot Bitcoin funds for exchange trading (BTC-ETF). Moreover, the date of such a verbal intervention was chosen uniquely precisely - it was at that moment that the SEC, according to rumors, had to approve a whole list of such funds. Preparations for this point were underway throughout the fall of 2023, and the market was looking forward to this moment. More

2023

Democratic attack on company through Media Matters "investigation

In November 2023, Democrats continue the information war against the social network H. One of these cases was the Media Matters investigation, released on November 16, in which the organization accused (and provided screenshots of) Elon Musk X's platform of displaying brand ads alongside posts promoting Nazism, despite X's assurances that the platform does not publish ads under extremist posts.

Following this, the large companies involved in the investigation - IBM, Apple, NBCUniversal - as well as Disney, Warner Brothers and others announced that they had suspended advertising cooperation with H. Media Matters called on other companies to also boycott H. And the liberal media immediately picked up on the narrative that Musk was promoting anti-Semitism.

In response, Elon Musk promised to file a "thermonuclear" lawsuit against Media Matters and said that the organization designed its investigation in such a way as to distort the real experience of using the platform in order to harm business.

Media Matters for America is a non-profit organization established in 2004 with the stated goal of 'monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation broadcast in American media'. This publication has always represented the interests of the Democratic Party and its donors. Back in 2010, George Soros donated $1m to the organization to 'hold Fox News accountable for the false and inaccurate information they so often relay'. Media Matters also tarnished its reputation with the accusation that the organization illegally supported Hilary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.

Media Matters' investigative methodology raised many questions: the organization created fake accounts and signed them exclusively to major brands and profiles promoting Nazism and 'white nationalism', and then constantly updated and scrolled the page until it got the desired result.

Independent journalist Michael Schellenberger tried to repeat the Media Matters experiment, but did not get any result. CEO X Linda Jaccarino said that, according to the platform, only two accounts were shown ads next to pro-Nazi posts, one of which was a fake account of Media Matters authors.

The release of the investigation does not accidentally coincide with the beginning of the active phase of the election race in the United States. During the last election, Twitter was actively used by the Democratic Party to promote 'correct' narratives and censorship of speech, which was also considered in the sensational 'Twitter Files'. Now that Elon Musk has carried out a large-scale reshuffle within the company, it will not be so easy to routinely send the management of X (Twitter) a list of accounts to block or intimidate the population with Russian and Chinese bots. X turns from an ally into a potential enemy.

The only thing that remains for Democrats and their donors is to discredit the social network and try to financially harm Musk's business by frightening advertisers to become more accommodating. The accusation of anti-Semitism as a strategy was not chosen by chance. An attempt to urge companies to boycott, and users to "cancel," Twitter may also be aimed at the audience of right-wing views that have taken the side of Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In court, Elon Musk's lawyers will argue that Media Matters defrauded algorithms by creating atypical platform experiences in an attempt to smear H.R.

Fine - $386 thousand in the case of child abuse

On October 16, 2023, the Electronic Safety Commission Australia (eSafety) fined social network X (formerly -), Twitter owned, for Ilona Musk not cooperating as part of an investigation into child abuse practices. The amount of recovery is 610,500 Australian (dollars approximately $386.39 thousand at the exchange rate at the indicated date).

In accordance with Australian laws that entered into force in 2021, the regulator may oblige Internet companies to provide information about their methods of ensuring security on the Internet: in case of refusal, they face a fine. If the recovery is not paid, the regulator can sue the company. In February 2023, the eSafety commission sent official requests to a number of Internet sites, including the social network X.

In November 2022, Musk said that "eradicating child exploitation is the number one priority" for Platform X. However, the eSafety report said that in response to a request, the social network was unable to provide any information on a number of key points. These are, in particular, questions regarding the response time of social networks X to appeals related to the sexual exploitation of children, as well as questions about the tools that the platform uses to identify such activity. On some other points, X gave incomplete or incorrect explanations. The company also failed to adequately answer questions regarding the number of employees responsible for the safety of the social network.

Platform Twitter/X has publicly said tackling child sexual exploitation is a priority for the company. This should not just be empty talk - we need words to be backed up by real action, the Australian regulator said in an official statement.[1]

Twitter doesn't pay severance pay to laid-off employees

On July 12, 2023, it became known that former employees Twitter filed a class action lawsuit against the company. The reason was Twitter's refusal to pay severance pay in the amount of at least $500 million.

We are talking about a program to cut Twitter workers after the acquisition of the platform by billionaire Elon Musk. The trial was initiated by Courtney McMillian, who oversaw Twitter's employee remuneration program. She was fired in January 2023. The lawsuit is sent to federal court in San Francisco.

Senior Twitter employees who had been cut as part of the reorganisation programme were owed basic pay for six months, it said. However, many of these workers did not receive any compensation.

The lawsuit in question accuses Twitter and Musk of violating a federal law governing employee compensation plans. Twitter has already been sued for allegedly failing to pay severance pay, but these cases involve breach of contract requirements rather than benefits law. The company said it had paid the former employees the full amount.

Twitter has also faced a series of other lawsuits related to layoffs that began in 2022. These are, in particular, claims related to the reduction of women and workers with disabilities. Twitter, in turn, denies any wrongdoing.

On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk closed a $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter. Immediately afterwards, he fired a number of members of the company's management, including CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal. This was followed by massive staff cuts in order to reduce financial costs and improve performance.^[2]

Linda Yaccarino became the new CEO

Linda Yakkarino became the new CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk said on May 12, 2023. Musk himself moved to the position of technical director.

Increased EU censorship for fear of losing election

in April European Union 2023, requires expanded censorship by social media, including, and Twitter Google. Facebook Internet Europe's top regulator Thierry Breton said "19 online platforms and search engines have a particular responsibility to make Internet it safer."

The EU uses the same excuse as: USA preventing harm. "Companies will have to do more to combat misinformation, give users more protection and choice, and provide stronger protection for children, or risk fines of up to 6% of their global turnover," reports. Reuters

Elon Musk's platform X (Twitter) is the largest distributor of Russian disinformation, according to the EU. "These are weapons of mass manipulation worth several million euros, aimed both domestically at Russians and Europeans and the rest of the world."

Big tech should do more to combat misinformation, European Commission Vice President Vera Zhurova said in September 2023.

Many online platforms have joined the new EU voluntary code. "Platforms must act ahead of national and European elections due next year."

Elon Musk spoke about the full access of the US authorities to correspondence on Twitter

In mid-April 2023, it became known that the American authorities had full access to all data on Twitter. Elon Musk said that various US government departments had access to the social network, even private messages from Twitter users were not the exception.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk said he was appalled to learn that the U.S. government had full access to reading direct private messages sent through the social network before he took the Twitter position. According to Musk, the previous leadership of the social network had connections with US government agencies that demanded to mark or ban certain content, billionaire Elon Musk admitted this in an interview with Fox News journalist Tucker Carlson in April 2023.

The extent to which various public services had access to everything that was happening on Twitter shocked me. App developers are desperately looking for fraudulent and workarounds that would allow them to circumvent privacy rules, yet the US government is playing the market without rules. After I acquired the Twitter platform, even I, until a certain time was not aware of what was happening, although I was already the CEO of the social network, "said Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

Elon Musk has repeatedly stated that Twitter policy must comply with the laws of the country. However, since the beginning of 2023, he has criticized the former leadership of Twitter for allegedly conspiring with the US government to suppress political statements. Musk said he bought Twitter with the goal of making it a haven for free expression. Musk added that he was ready to sell the social network Twitter. However, its eventual owner, he noted, must be committed to telling the truth. ^[3]

Change of official name to X Corp. and move to new HQ

Microblogging service Twitter ceased to exist as an independent structure, joining the X Corp., owned by Elon Musk. This was reported in court documents released on April 4, 2023.

This is a process initiated by civic activist Laura Loomer. She sued Twitter because the social network blocked her account in 2019. Loomer's Twitter account was later reinstated, but hearings are ongoing.

In her statement of claim, Loomer named Twitter Inc. The disclosed court documents say the company "Twitter Inc. was taken over by X Corp. and no longer exists." Thus, the new defendant will be X Corp., which in turn is part of X Holdings Corp.

When exactly the merger between Twitter and X Corp. took place is not specified. The microblogging service, being a private structure, is not obliged to disclose detailed information about its activities. But it is known that in April 2022, Musk registered X Holdings I, II and III enterprises in Delaware, which were supposed to simplify the acquisition of Twitter. Elon Musk later registered X Holdings Corp. and X Corp. in Nevada. After that, several mergers were made, as a result of which the Twitter service became part of X Corp.

The transformations are part of Musk's massive program to build X - the so-called everything app. As conceived by the billionaire, Twitter will become a kind of "accelerator" within the framework of this initiative. The new platform is expected to combine the functions of a microblogging service, an electronic payment system like PayPal and a number of other sought-after services. The implementation of this project may take several years.^[4]

80% staff reduction under Elon Musk

At the end of January 2023, it became known that Twitter, after coming under the control of Elon Musk, cut 80% of employees. As a result, about 1.3 thousand people work there, and another 1.4 thousand people are listed in the state and receive salaries, but do not work.

At the end of October 2022, Elon Musk completed the takeover of Twitter for $44 billion, it was rumored that he would lay off about 75% of the company's full-time employees. According to CNBC, as of January 27, 2023, only 1.3 thousand full-time employees work on the social network.

According to CNBC, the social network now employs less than 550 full-time engineers. The Trust and Security Group, which is responsible for developing policies to help keep Twitter users safe on the platform, employs fewer than 20 people. About five percent of Twitter's 1,300 employees are on leave by the end of January 2023, including 40-odd engineers.

The publication notes that as of January 2023, it is not easy for the remaining employees to maintain Twitter and add new functions of the social network. In this regard, Elon Musk, according to CNBC, allowed 130 specialists from his other companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, to help.

As a result of the first round of layoffs at the end of 2022, about half of all employees lost their jobs. Many employees quit voluntarily weeks after Musk's ultimatum, in which he asked them to be prepared for a "tough" culture of working in offices, without the possibility of remote work. Since then, several more rounds of layoffs have passed.

Experts interviewed by The Washington Post agree that staff cuts will negatively affect the work of the social network. The strongest service, according to them, will get in the case of the "Mask scenario," since the losses in this case will be unimaginable.^[5]

2022

Data theft of 400 million Twitter users

On December 25, 2022, it became known that a hacker hiding under the nickname Ryushi put up for sale on the Breach forum an extensive database with detailed information about Twitter users. The attacker invites the head of the service, Elon Musk, to acquire information on an exclusive basis in order to avoid a huge fine from European regulators.

It is reported that the data was collected through an API vulnerability discovered in 2021 and fixed in January 2022. It is alleged that information about more than 400 million Twitter followers was stolen. This includes, but is not limited to, user email addresses, user names, number of subscribers, phone numbers, and profile creation dates. The hacker claims that Twitter faces a fine for such a large-scale leak in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Your best way to avoid paying a $276 million fine for violating GDPR is to buy this data for exclusive rights, the attacker says.

In support of its statements, Ryushi submitted a sample of approximately 1,000 Twitter profiles. They include the accounts of 37 celebrities, politicians, journalists and businessmen, including Donald Trump JR, Kevin O'Leary and Piers Morgan. The hacker offers Elon Musk to buy the base for $200 thousand, promising in case of refusal to start selling copies of it to third parties for $60 thousand. Third-party checks have already confirmed the validity of at least some profiles from the sample submitted by the attacker. At the same time, experts warn that there is no evidence that the hacker has the entire database containing information about more than 400 million Twitter users.^[6]

Twitter is a US propaganda tool in the Middle East

In 2020, manager Twitter Nick Pickles spoke in the House of Representatives. USA He stated that the fight against information operations supported by some states on the social network is a priority for the company.

However, he lied: all these years, the leadership of Twitter actively supported and distributed the agenda necessary for the American government through a specially created botofarm.

The Intercept journalist Lee Fan studied some of the company's documents, access to which was briefly provided by the new owner Elon Musk in the fall of 2022. It turned out that for more than five years the Twitter leadership helped the Pentagon promote the necessary narratives.

What exactly was discovered?

On July 26, 2017, Nathaniel Kahler, an employee of the Central Command of the US Armed Forces (CENTCOM), sent a list of 52 Arabic-language accounts to Twitter with a request to add them to the "white list."

Some of them were previously marked as bots. The official said the Pentagon is using the accounts "to enhance the coverage and dissemination of certain messages."

On the same day, according to the company's internal documentation, a special tag was applied to these accounts. A Twitter employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that in this way the accounts received privileges for cases of checks by moderators.

What talking points did the American government promote?

American bots covered information about several conflicts at once. In 2017, one of them claimed that US Air Force drones carried out accurate attacks on terrorists in Yemen and did not harm civilians. The author also supported attacks on Houthi rebel units. The tweets were later deleted.

In another account (currently suspended), tweets against the government of Bashar al-Assad appeared in 2022, although since 2017, the same attacks by American UAVs in Yemen have been on the page as the main information links.

The American command conducted an information campaign in another important direction - Iranian.

The article cited several accounts as an example, which regularly claimed that the policies of the Iranian authorities pose a direct threat to the security of neighboring Iraq. And it is the Iranian authorities who are responsible for destabilizing the situation in the region.

According to the author of the investigation, the existence of a whole network of accounts accountable to the Pentagon on Twitter is indirectly confirmed by the report of the Stanford University Internet Observatory.

It does not list specific accounts of social networks, but the creators pointed to the regions in which the American authorities conduct information operations: Iran, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Central Asia.

The "leak" of information about the activities of the Pentagon is only another episode of the struggle of the American authorities and Musk. Such information operations may resume within a few months - after new levers of pressure on the billionaire are found.

Abouammo Ahmad employee sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for espionage

In mid-December 2022, a federal court in San Francisco convicted a Twitter employee who had previously been suspected of spying for Saudi Arabia. The man will be imprisoned for three and a half years. Read more here.

Elon Musk posted internal files with the demands of the US President Biden's team to remove posts from Twitter

In December 2022, Elon Musk posted internal Twitter files, which say that the team of US President Biden demanded to repeatedly delete posts from the social network. Twitter's previous team agreed to remove them and executed the errands.

Among the posts deleted by Twitter were files related to Biden's son, photos from his phone - drugs and erotic content. Also, due to the story of the lost laptop of the son of the President of the United States, the New York Post was blocked on Twitter. This was reported in an investigation involving Elon Musk.

The number of employees decreased from 7,500 to 2,700 people

The number of Twitter employees in November 2022 decreased to 2,700 people. In early November, the company had 7,500 employees. Some of the employees were fired and more than a thousand more people resigned of their own free will after Elon Musk's ultimatum to work more or leave the company.

Twitter verification policy provoked a cyber attack on platform users

Twitter's verification policy provoked a cyber attack on platform users. This became known in November 2022.

The announcement of another Twitter feature offering to include a blue verification tick for a monthly fee provoked phishing a campaign that gathers accounts data who want to keep the coveted blue tick.

The phishing campaign, discovered by TechCrunch experts, includes an email sent from a Gmail account asking users to provide "brief confirmation" that they are a known person to avoid paying nearly $20 a month for the badge.

Then the letter is redirected to a page Google Documents with a link to the Google website. This is to avoid Google's built-in detection systems. The page contains a built-in frame from a site hosted on the hosting Beget web. The page asks the user to provide their data Twitter accounts and phone number.

Google removed accounts and phishing sites shortly after being alerted to the incident. Russian web hosting Beget, which was used by attackers in this campaign, also disabled the discovered domain after reports of the incident.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced changes to the platform verification system: now the Twitter Blue Service, launched in June 2021, will become a premium feature and will be available by subscription ($8 per month).

There is a possibility that verified users will not be able to save the icons if they do not pay for the subscription, but this has not yet been officially confirmed. As of early November 2022, the blue tick used to refer to famous people is free.

In order not to become a victim of such phishing attacks, users are advised to use two-factor authentication (2FA) on all platforms^[7].

Elon Musk laid off 50% of Twitter employees

Elon Musk fired 50% of Twitter employees, according to the Wall Street Journal. 85% of the company's staff in India and 90% of its office in Asia fell under the reduction.

Elon Musk is going to fire 75% of Twitter employees

The founder Tesla SpaceX Elon Musk and billionaire is going to lay off 75% of employees blocked in. Russia social network Twitter According to The Washington Post, several thousand people may be left without work in the very near future. This became known on October 21, 2022.

As of October 2022, there were about 7,500 employees on Twitter. After the repression of Musk, a famous philanthropist and a big fan of charity (in 2021 he gave $6 billion for these purposes), no more than 2,000 people may remain in the company.

Of course, this plan will be implemented exclusively if negotiations on the transfer of Twitter to the ownership of Musk himself are positively completed. They last from the beginning of spring 2022 and periodically stall, regularly finding themselves on the verge of collapse. According to the TechCrunch portal, the agreement between Musk and Twitter may be signed no later than October 28, 2022.

However, even if Musk does not have a chance to thin out the Twitter staff, the current management of the company will do it for him. According to information The Washington Post, the current Twitter bosses intend to "optimize" the social network's spending on. Translated from wages"top management," this means a reduction in staff. How many Twitter employees will be forced to change jobs in this version of further development of events is still unknown, but by the end of 2023, Twitter's salary costs are going to be cut by $800 million. The experts of the publication predict the departure of 25% of the staff.

How exactly the calculations of the potential volume of cuts on Twitter were made in the event of a breakdown in negotiations with Musk, the publication does not specify. It is only known that in 2021 the social network spent on salaries of employees within $1.5 billion. And there are two options: either in 2022, Twitter allocated a much larger budget for employee payments, or everything will not be limited to a 25 percent reduction in staff.

Of the $1.5 billion indicated, part of the funds went to pay for the services of advertising specialists, as well as engineers who support and develop both the Internet service and its infrastructure for Twitter itself. Also, funds are spent on content moderators who delete all illegal materials published by users.

According to the idea of ​ ​ the top management of Twitter, during 2023 the company will begin to reduce the actual infrastructure. Data centers will fall under the distribution. There is no data yet on what kind of recession in this area should be expected.

According to Musk, he has a plan to double the company's revenue and triple the number of users. He intends to achieve both goals within the next three years, moreover, he implements the first plan at the expense of the second. More users will be shown more ads, therefore, revenues from advertisers will also grow.

How Musk plans to implement all this, especially given the upcoming cuts, is still unknown. He also voiced a desire to weaken content moderation. Coupled with the possible instability of the service against the background of the departure of engineers, this can lead to the opposite effect - to the outflow of users and a decrease in advertising views^[8].

Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion and leads the company

American Elon Musk still, the businessman agreed to buy Twitter for an initial cost of 44 billion (dollars 54.2 for dollar one ordinary share). This became known on October 5, 2022.

Twitter noted that they were slightly surprised by such an unexpected decision by the billionaire, who recently tried to abandon the deal. According to the Daily Mail, Twitter agreed to Musk's offer to acquire the company. The publication clarifies that the transaction will be fully completed within a few weeks.

Earlier, Musk sent a letter to Twitter in which he offered to conclude an agreement on the purchase of a social network on initial terms if a judge of the US state of Delaware suspends proceedings on Twitter's lawsuit against him. The social network sued Musk because of its desire to refuse to buy. The leadership of Twitter wanted to oblige the businessman to conclude a deal in court. Musk, in turn, sent counterclaims, the details of the lawsuit were not disclosed.

The Daily Mail notes that after Musk's offer, the price of Twitter shares increased by 22% - to $52^[9].

In October 2022, Elon Musk closed the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter and took over the company.

As management of the social network passed to Musk, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal left the company's management, according to the Financial Times.

Musk postpones Twitter purchase over Putin speech

In September 2022, it became known about the businessman's decision American Elona Musk to postpone the purchase of Twitter due to the president's speech on the Russia Vladimir Putin occasion of Victory Day. Writes about this edition of Business Insider.

According to him, Elon Musk on May 8, 2022 sent messages to a banker from Morgan Stanley, who was supposed to finance part of the transaction. In these messages, Elon Musk also referred to the upcoming speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin made a speech on May 9, 2022 on the occasion of the 77th anniversary of Russia's victory over Nazi Germany, in which he stated that Russia's decision to launch a military special operation in Ukraine in February 2022 was the only correct decision, and said that the West was preparing to invade Russia.

Шаблон:Quote 'Let's slow down for a few days! Putin's speech tomorrow is really important. It makes no sense to buy Twitter if we are heading for a third world war, "lawyer Alex Spiro voiced the words written by Musk. According to him, the characterization of the texts in court was complete nonsense, as the full chain of texts shows. The full chain of texts is expected to be presented in court on September 16, 2022. Before the hearing, Elon Musk's lawyers referred to a complaint by former CISO Twitter Peter Zatko, who told the US Congress in August 2022 that Twitter was not adequately addressing various security issues. According to them, the questions presented by Zatko require more time.

Reading out Musk's texts, the Twitter lawyer repeated the company's argument that Musk is violating the terms of the contract, and the only motive behind his attempt to withdraw from the deal is personal financial problems. Musk's lawyers argued that during the hearing, Twitter found no evidence to support its theory that he pulled out of the deal because of economic concerns. Elon Musk's legal team says Twitter deliberately misled him about the number of daily users and spam accounts on its website, which amounts to fraud and breach of contract.^[10]

Ex-head of security: The company hides the truth about the amount of spam and bots on social networks

At the end of August 2022, it became known that executives Twitter were deceiving federal regulators and the company's board of directors about extreme, flagrant shortcomings in its defense against hackers, as well as its meager efforts to combat, spam according to a complaint from the company's former security chief.

The complaint by former security chief Peyter Zatko, a well-known hacker nicknamed Mudge, portrays Twitter as a chaotic and unmanaged company mired in civil strife and unable to properly protect its 238 million daily users, including government agencies, heads of state and other influential public figures. Zatko was hired on Twitter by former CEO Jack Dorsey in late 2020 after a major breach of the company's systems.

Pater Zatko also claims that Twitter violated the terms of the agreement, which has been in effect since 2011 with the US Federal Trade Commission, falsely claiming that it has a reliable security plan. It is noted that Zatko warned colleagues that outdated and vulnerable software was installed on half of the company's servers. In addition, the company's management allegedly concealed facts about the number of hacks and the lack of protection of user data. Instead, Twitter management presented optimistic reports to directors. All of these allegations are contained in a whistleblower complaint filed in July 2022 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Justice Department and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

In addition, it is claimed that Twitter prioritized user growth over reducing spam, although unwanted content worsened user experience. This is due to the fact that the company's leaders were encouraged by individual bonuses in the amount of up to $10 million, which depended on an increase in the number of daily users, and not on the fight against spam. The complaint alleges Twitter Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal lied when he wrote in May 2022 that the company had a strong interest in detecting and removing as much spam as possible.

{{quote 'I felt ethically connected. This is not an easy step! The decision to speak publicly as a continuation of its previous work to identify flaws in specific parts of the software and broader systemic flaws in Twitter's cybersecurity, said Twitter security officer Peiter Zatko. }} Thousands of employees still had wide and poorly tracked internal access to the company's main Twitter software, which for years led to shameful hacks, including the seizure of accounts of high-profile users like Elon Musk former presidents USA Barack Obama and. Donald Trump^[11]

Twitter employee passed data from critics of the authorities to Saudi Arabia for bribes

And in August 2022, it became known that a Twitter employee transmitted data from critics of the authorities to Saudi Arabia. In return, he "received hundreds of thousands of dollars and luxury wristwatches," the prosecution said.

Court appeal against Elon Musk

Twitter, which owns the social network of the same name, went to court to force billionaire Elon Musk to complete a deal to buy the company. This became known on July 13, 2022.

The source claims that the lawsuit was filed by the company's lawyers in a Delaware court, which in the future should determine whether Elon Musk had the right to unilaterally declare the termination of the merger agreement with Twitter because of that the management of the social network did not provide him with the necessary information on the share of fake accounts and accounts, used for mass distribution, or it is still subject to the obligations to acquire^[12].

Elon Musk refuses to buy the company

In July 2022, Elon Musk canceled a deal to buy Twitter, saying the company had made "misleading statements" about the number of spambots on the service.

Twitter intends to sue in connection with the termination by Elon Musk of the deal to acquire it, the chairman of the board of directors said.

Ministry of Digital: Instagram, Ministry of Digital Development and Twitter lost 80% of Russian traffic after blocking

On June 16, 2022, the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation reported a sharp drop in Instagram, Facebook traffic (owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) and Twitter after blocking these services. Read more here.

Payment of a fine of $150 million for the disclosure of user data

Twitter will pay a fine of $150 million for disclosing personal data of users. This is stated in a joint statement by the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, published on the website of the Ministry of Justice at the end of May 2022.

The settlement concerns a complaint that Twitter fraudulently used users' email addresses and phone numbers for targeted ads. In addition to the fine, the social network must also agree to audit its data privacy program, among other restrictions.

The statement of claim alleges that between 2013 and 2019, Twitter misled users about its policies, violating not only the current law but also the 2011 ruling of a previous settlement agreement. The company urged users to add a phone number or email address to ensure security measures such as two-factor authentication. However, in reality, Twitter also included this information in its data for ad targeting. In 2019, the company apologized for this practice, saying that it accidentally sent addresses and numbers to its advertising system. The complaint also alleges that during this period, Twitter falsely claimed compliance with framework agreements between the EU and the United States, as well as Switzerland and the United States, under the Privacy Shield agreement, which limits the ability of companies to repurpose user data.

{{quote 'Our agreement with the FTC reflects Twitter's existing security and privacy commitments and investments! We will continue to work with our regulators to make sure they understand how Twitter's security and privacy practices are constantly evolving for the better, "said Damien Kieran, Twitter's chief privacy officer. }} The new compliance measures will oblige Twitter to maintain a comprehensive privacy and information security program, as well as conduct regular audits and audits of its guarantees. The company must also notify anyone who joined Twitter before September 2019 of the settlement after it is approved by a U.S. federal court.^[13]

Elon Musk stopped buying Twitter due to the large number of fake accounts

On May 13, 2022, Elon Musk announced the suspension of the process of buying Twitter. Against the background of this statement, the shares of the social network fell significantly - at the peak, the fall in quotations reached 26% in preliminary trading.

The deal with Twitter has been temporarily suspended pending details confirming data that fake and spam accounts do represent less than 5% of [social network] users, Musk's Twitter blog said.

Two hours later, the businessman wrote that he "remains committed to acquiring" Twitter. At the same time, he did not specify how long the pause in the execution of the transaction will last and whether it will be closed in the end. Initially, Musk wanted to close the deal by the end of 2022, after which Twitter, according to the entrepreneur's plans, should become a non-public company.

Twitter's report for the first quarter of 2022 said fake or spam accounts on the social network make up less than 5% of its "monetizable daily active users." In total, 229 million users saw the ad.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched an investigation into Elon Musk's purchase of a stake in Twitter. According to American laws, within 10 days from the date of acquisition, the investor must inform the SEC about the purchase of more than 5% of the company's shares. This is a signal to stakeholders that a large investor may try to gain control of the company, notes The Wall Street Journal.

Musk did not notify the commission, because of this an investigation was launched. Twitter shareholder Mark Bain Rasella has filed a lawsuit against the businessman in a Manhattan court. Rasella believes that the delay in providing data helped the businessman buy more shares at "artificially low" prices from their owners (after Musk's purchase of a share in the social network, the company's shares rose by 27%).^[14]

Elon Musk wants to introduce end-to-end encryption in Twitter messages

On April 29, 2022, it became known that Elon Musk wants to introduce end-to-end encryption in Twitter messages.

The lack of end-to-end encryption of Twitter messages raises concerns.

{{quote 'Twitter posts should have end-to-end encryption like Signal so no one can spy on you or hack messages, Musk tweeted. }}

The lack of end-to-end encryption of Twitter messages raises concerns and could undermine user privacy and security, noted the American non-profit human rights organization Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF).

Because messages are not end-to-end encrypted, Twitter has access to them, the EFF said. - This means that Twitter can transmit information at the request of law enforcement agencies, and internal access can be abused by hackers and Twitter employees themselves, as has happened in the past.

Earlier, the UK government joined forces with charities and law enforcement. The goal of the campaign was to spread the idea that end-to-end encryption could interfere with efforts to combat child abuse on the Internet^[15].

Conducting pilot payments in cryptocurrency to content authors

and Twitter the digital payment service Stripe will conduct pilot payments to cryptocurrency in for some product users. monetization of content This became known on April 26, 2022.

In 2021, Twitter added a content monetization feature to integrate into the economy of "creators" and increase revenues. Now users of Twitter's Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows monetesation programs will be able to receive income from USDC, a stablecoin whose value is pegged to the US dollar.

Users will be able to store currency in crypto wallets on the Polygon network, which deals with cryptocurrency infrastructure on, and blockchain Ethereum then exchanges it for other currencies. In the future, Stripe plans to add payment options in other cryptocurrencies^[16]

Elon Musk plans to buy out the company for $44 billion

On April 14, 2022, Twitter shares jumped 12% in premarket trading after Elon Musk offered to fully buy out the company. The richest man in the world said he was ready to pay $54.2 per paper - almost 20% more expensive than they cost at the close of previous trading.

On the same day, Saudi Prince Al-Walid ibn Talal, Twitter's largest shareholder, rejected Elon Musk's offer to buy the social network.

"I don't think Musk's proposal matches the true cost of Twitter given the prospects for its development," he wrote.

On April 25, 2022, it became known that Elon Musk nevertheless persuaded the main holders of Twitter shares to sell the company. 100% of the shares will cost the billionaire $44 billion. Earlier, Musk aggressively bought up shares that were freely available, and Twitter, resisting an unfriendly takeover, used the so-called. "Poisoned pill": the release of additional shares, which at a large discount go to top management and key shareholders to blur the share of the attacking side. However, as you can see, Musk was able to break the resistance.

Later in early May, Elon Musk announced that he had raised $7.14 billion in funding for his $44 billion offer to buy Twitter from investors, including the co-founder, Oracle Larry Ellison cryptocurrency exchange Binance and asset management company Fidelity, and. Brookfield Sequoia Capital

To finance the purchase, Musk needs to raise $21 billion in equity.

The largest check of $1 billion will come from Ellison. Venture capital company Sequoia will provide $800 million, and Dubai investment group VyCapital - $700 million. Binance will provide $500 million.

During the 2020 presidential election in the United States, the billionaire actively supported Donald Trump. Twitter, in turn, was one of the key platforms for Trumpists. However, towards the end of the race, the administration of the service decided that Joe Biden was nicer to her, after reports of numerous falsifications in favor of Biden, both the then president himself and thousands of his supporters who replicated this information fell under the ban.

In the case of buying a social network, we are also not talking about economics, but about politics. After the deal closes, Twitter will become a private company whose management will only answer to Musk. The billionaire buys a powerful media resource on the eve of the congressional elections and 2 years before the next presidential election. Probably, he regards the social network as a counterweight to Facebook, which has finally turned into an appendage to the press service of the Democratic Party. The White House has already raised its concerns about the deal.

Interestingly, Trump is not going to return to Twitter yet. This is also understandable, firstly, Trump plans to return to the presidency, does not want to become overly dependent on Musk, who, although an ally, plays his games. Secondly, the deal has not yet been closed and it will have to pass approval in the antimonopoly department. And here difficulties may arise: antitrust officers can delay the process so that Musk becomes a full-fledged owner of the service only after 2024.

Musk bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter worth $3 billion

On April 4, 2022, it became known that Elon Musk acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter and became the largest shareholder in the platform. The cost of this package is estimated at $3 billion.

Twitter shares rose 27% after Musk's purchase became known in a regulatory document published on April 4, 2022. The rise was the biggest intraday share increase since the first day of trading since the company's 2013 stock offering.

The announcement will be another major test for Twitter's new CEO Parag Agrawal, who took over from Jack Dorsey following his surprise resignation in November 2021. Agrawal vowed to increase accountability, make decisions faster and improve product execution. The company has set ambitious development goals, including increasing annual revenue to $7.5 billion and reaching 315 million daily users by the end of 2023.

Twitter is particularly vulnerable to external pressure because unlike Google, Facebook, Amazon and Snap, the company's founders have no say in voting for its future. The company has just recovered from activist pressure from Elliot Management that began in 2020, leading Dorsey, who served as Twitter's CEO for the second time, to come up with a succession plan.

It is not yet clear what Musk plans to do with his share. The declaration filed with the SEC states that the date of the event that served as the basis for the disclosure of information is March 14, 2022. The type of form used often indicates that the investor does not seek to acquire control of the company or influence its management.

As Bloomberg notes, Twitter is under pressure from investors who want a faster speed from the company to create new products. The company has set ambitious revenue and user growth targets to convince skeptical investors that it is serious about expanding its business. While Twitter has developed steadily for years, its stock growth has lagged similar performance in the industry, the April 4, 2022, release said.^[17]

New Twitter chief Parag Agrawal goes on decree three months after appointment

In mid-February 2022, TwitterParag CEO Agrawal took parental leave. It comes three months after his appointment as CEO. Read more here.

2021

Purchase of corporate messenger Quill

On December 7, 2021, Twitter announced its acquisition of Quill. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The purchase is supposed to help the social network improve its own messaging tools. Read more here.

CEO Jack Dorsey leaves the company. Parag Agrawal new CEO

Jack Dorsey, Twitter's co-founder and chief executive officer, is leaving his post, sources said in November 2021. Read more here.

Twitter confirmed Dorsey is stepping down.

Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal has been appointed CEO and a member of Twitter's board of directors.

Twitter opens division to work with blockchain

Twitter's Crypto division has been created, which will deal with cryptocurrencies and NFTs, as well as, possibly, decentralization of social networks. This became known in November 2021.

Twitter is exactly in business regarding everything related to crypto (payments in bitcoins, NFT, etc.), but there are still many other possibilities, - said Rainirson.

As indicated in the material TechCrunch, crypto payments and NFT galleries are the most obvious direction for Twitter, but the creation of a division in the company indicates that it is going to move towards decentralizing social networks, which will allow them to independently function on blockchain, and not on large business hosting, such as Amazon Web Services. The idea is that such decentralized networks will give individual users more control over their data and privacy.

Twitter Crypto will work closely with the Bluesky initiative, which aims to create an "open decentralized standard for social media." The initiative is sponsored by Twitter, but its goal is to create a protocol independent of any single social network - just as no bank controls Bitcoin or Ethereum cryptocurrencies.

Blockchain is one of the most discussed technologies, whose potential for November 2021 has not been fully explored and the scope of which may be much wider than one can imagine, "said Georgy Lagoda, Deputy General Director of the Software Product Group of Companies. - Twitter's research, apparently, will be purely practical, but in the process some insults may form, which will have far-reaching consequences[18]

Twitter includes the ability to ask for tips on Bitcoin through its app

In September 2021, it became known that Twitter includes the ability to ask for tips in Bitcoin through its application, becoming the first major social network to adopt cryptocurrency as a payment method.

Bitcoin payments will go through a crypto wallet application called Strike, first on iOS, and then on Android.

In addition to Bitcoin, Twitter will allow users to connect nine traditional payment systems to their profiles, including Venmo and Cash App. Twitter does not process payments on its own.

During a press conference on September 23, Twitter said it also planned to support authentication for the NFT.

Payment of $809.5 million in a shareholder lawsuit for failure to meet audience growth forecasts

On September 20, 2021, Twitter agreed to pay $809.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit by shareholders who accused the company of painting a "too rosy picture" of its future. The soocial network has been accused of violating securities laws by misleading investors about its growth prospects.

The settlement stems from a 2016 lawsuit alleging that Twitter and its executives misled shareholders about user growth in November 2014, promising an increase in monthly active users to 550 million in the midterm and more than 1 billion in the long term. The company did not meet any of those forecasts and concealed that it had no basis for such forecasts. The company's user growth was flat, causing the company's share price to plummet, the lawsuit said. According to a statement made by the company on September 20, 2021, the proposed settlement contains no guilty plea or wrongdoing by Twitter.

In April 2019, Twitter stopped reporting monthly active users and at the last count, their number was 330 million. The company now views daily users who view ads as a key metric. In July 2021, the company announced that its monetized daily active users (MDAU) rose to 206 million in the quarter, which ended in June 2021. The increase in the number of users helped the company, which receives most of its advertising revenue, increase quarterly revenue by 74% to $1.19 billion.

According to The Wall Street Journal, US District Judge John Tigar in 2020 paved the way for a full trial, deciding that a reasonable jury could conclude that by hiding the falls of key user indicators, the company was deceiving its investors.

The settlement, which contains no admission of misconduct by Twitter, is subject to court approval. The payment of funds is expected to be paid in the fourth quarter of 2021.^[19]

Plans for the use of bitcoin

At the end of July 2021, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told investors that Bitcoin would be a big part of the company's future, as he sees opportunities to integrate cryptocurrency into existing Twitter products and services.

Dorsey has been an ardent supporter of Bitcoin for many years, but how it will be applied on the Twitter platform has not yet been detailed. However, Dorsey has often spoken publicly in support of cryptocurrency, saying it reminds him of the early days of the internet.

On July 21, 2021, Dorsey named Bitcoin one of three key trends for the future of Twitter, along with areas such as artificial intelligence and decentralization (implemented as part of the Bluesky project).

Jack Dorsey spoke about Bitcoin to investors during his Twitter earnings call for March-May 2021, saying that he could help the company move faster in terms of expanding its products, while explaining that this is the best candidate to become the native currency of the Internet.

If the internet has its own global currency, we can move much faster with products such as Super Follows, Commerce, Subscriptions, Tip Jar. We will be able to reach every person on the planet thanks to this, instead of following the path from market to market. I think we're in for a lot of innovation beyond currency, especially when we think about decentralizing social media and creating economic incentives. Therefore, I think it is very important for the company and for shareholders that we continue to consider this space and actively invest in it. And I think that an open standard that is native to the Internet is the right way to go, so I and we will ultimately focus on Bitcoin, "said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed this is the first time Dorsey has spoken publicly about how Twitter can integrate bitcoin into its product line. The possibility of paying with bitcoin in the social network is expected in the near future (the information was released at the end of July 2021).^[20][21]

Russia entered the top 3 countries in terms of the number of requests from the authorities to remove content on Twitter

In mid-July 2021, Twitter released a report on the removal of content on the social network at the request of the authorities of different countries. In terms of the number of relevant requests, Russia took third place.

According to the Twitter report, in the period from July to December 2020, the service received 6351 requests from the Russian Federation for the removal of materials, which is 29% less than six months earlier - in the first half of the year, the number of requests was measured 8939. It is clarified that the number of requests on the basis of propaganda of suicide and harm to health increased by 64%. 569 requests from Russia were made in court.

In just the second half of 2020, Twitter received 38,524 legal requirements to remove content with 131,933 accounts. Most of all - 16,649 - from Japan. India is in second place (6971 requests), Turkey is in fourth (3749), and South Korea is in fifth (2,644).

Russia was not included in the five leaders of the countries in terms of the number of requests made by Twitter to the authorities to provide information: India became the largest source of such requests, which accounts for 25% of global requirements. In second place is the United States (22%), in third and fourth - Japan (17%) and South Korea (16%).

The company stressed that the number of requirements for the removal of information from the accounts of media representatives has increased, and the authenticity of the accounts has been confirmed.

If possible, we notify the user when we receive these requests. Importantly, unless we are prohibited from doing so when we delete or hide content in a particular country, Twitter provides a copy of the request to Lumen's public database. When content is blocked, it is only hidden in the country requiring removal and remains visible in all other jurisdictions, the company said.[22]

Main article: Censorship (control) on the Internet. Experience of Russia

Blocking Trump's account after Washington riots

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump's Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts were blocked after riots began at the Capitol. Read more here.

2020

Fine of 450 thousand euros for violation of the regulations on the protection of data of the European Union

On December 15, 2020, it became known that Twitter Inc. was fined 450 thousand. euro The Data data protection Protection Commission (DPC Ireland) due to the company's insufficient disclosure of information about. data breach This is the first fine imposed on the American a technology company under the General Data Protection Regulation (), GDPR European Union which entered into force in 2018, reports "."Interfax

We are talking about a vulnerability safety in the Twitter system, which for more than four years has allowed access to private messages of some users. The company announced that the problem had been fixed in January 2019. Under the GDPR, the company was required to notify the regulator about a data breach within 72 hours of its discovery. However, an investigation by the DPC found that a top Twitter executive in charge of protection matters had data not been notified of the issue in a timely manner, leading to a delay in disclosure to the regulator.

In total, the Irish regulator took almost two years to complete Twitter's case, writes The Wall Street Journal. In May 2020, after a 15-month investigation, the DPC sent a preliminary opinion on the Twitter case to the regulators of the rest of the EU forming the European Data Protection Council (EDPB). Some of the regulators made a number of comments and Ireland launched a settlement process in August in the case.

One controversial point was the size of the fine, which was planned to be collected from Twitter. GDPR allows regulators to impose a fine of up to 2% of the company's global annual revenue, or up to $60 million in the case of Twitter (based on the company's 2018 revenue). However, the Irish commission recommended a substantially lower penalty - between 0.25% and 5% of the maximum amount, as the violation made by Twitter was minor, unintentional and non-systemic. The regulator, Germany at the same time, proposed a larger fine - from 7 to 22 million euros, according to data EDPB. In

In early November, the EDPB made a final ruling on the case, siding with Ireland on all matters except the size of the fine, which it demanded to increase. The final amount of the fine - 450 thousand euros - is about two-thirds higher than the amount originally proposed by the Irish regulator.

As of December 15, the DPC is also close to ruling on a data protection breach case against, and messenger WhatsApp this is just one of 14 cases opened by the regulator against Facebook both its divisions.^[23]

Hackers took 24 hours to hack Twitter

The financial New New York York Department of Financial Services has submitted a report on the results of an investigation into Twitter the hack that took place in July 2020. According to the report, it took cybercriminals 24 hours to carry out the hack. This became known on October 16, 2020.

As the investigation established, the attack began on July 14 and ended the next day, when it became obvious that the accounts of a number of public personalities, including politicians and founders of large companies, were hacked by hackers for fraudulent purposes.

The attackers, identified shortly after the incident, used access to the internal Twitter network to change e-mail addresses and account data users of interest to them and seize control over their accounts. In total, hackers tried to attack 130 accounts, and 45 of them were changed. passwords

A few weeks after the incident, the Twitter administration said that during the attack, the attackers contacted the company's employees by phone and tricked them into accessing the necessary internal support tools. Almost a day has passed since the phone call before the break-in, according to the New York State Financial Services Authority.

The attack was allegedly carried out by 17-year-old Florida resident Graham Ivan Clark, aka Kirk# 5270, 19-year-old Briton Mason John Sheppard, known as Chaewon, and 22-year-old Florida resident Nima Fazeli, also known as Rolex.

On July 14, after lunch, attackers called several Twitter employees and, posing as employees of the IT department, reported problems with VPN (a very common problem, given the number of employees working remotely). They then asked employees to enter their credentials into a form on a phishing page.

The investigation did not find any evidence that the employees deliberately helped the hackers. With the help of personal information of employees, the attackers managed to convince them that they are really the ones they pretend to be. While some employees did report a suspicious call to Twitter's internal anti-fraud department, at least one victim fell for the bait.

Although the first victim did not have access to internal systems of interest to hackers, they used her credentials to move around the network and search for employees who had such access. On July 15, attackers attacked these employees, including those responsible for handling sensitive global legal requests.

Shortly after the attackers gained control of Twitter accounts (including OG accounts - "original gangster"), they began discussing the sale of OG usernames and demonstrating that they had access to Twitter's internal systems.

Cybercriminals then switched to verified accounts with the aim of giving credibility to their cryptocurrency scam scheme. Within hours, they attacked the accounts of cryptocurrency trader AngeloBTC, cryptocurrency exchange Binance and ten other cryptocurrency-related accounts, including Coinbase, Gemini Trust Company and Square.

A few hours later, hackers began posting tweets from hacked accounts, including Apple, Uber, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Floyd Mayweather, Kim Kardashian, etc. As a result, they managed to steal $118 thousand in bitcoin.

As established by the New York State Financial Services Administration, as a result of the incident, non-public data of some users was compromised, and Twitter did not timely update information about the incident^[24].

Pay reduction for employees transitioning to permanent remote work

In mid-September 2020, it became known that VMware employees who will accept the company's offer to become permanent remote employees will receive wage cuts if they move from Silicon Valley, one of the most expensive areas in the United States, to a less expensive city. Read more here.

Hacking Obama, Musk, Gates accounts

Some of the more prominent Twitter accounts, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former President Barack Obama and Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, were subjected to a stunning hack Wednesday related to the Bitcoin scam.

Twitter Inc. temporarily blocked all verified accounts from posting or even changing their passwords while it investigated and found a solution to this problem.

The scale of the break-in was unprecedented.

Testing Voice Tweet Feature

On June 18, 2020, it became known that Twitter is testing the voice tweet function. The company said the voice feature will allow users to tweet using their voice. One voice tweet is for 140 seconds.

The feature will be available to a limited number of users, and Apple then, within a few weeks, deployed to more device owners on. iOS

Twitter said users will be able to create a voice tweet using the added "wavelength" icon on the screen.

Social media, including Twitter, has long been under pressure because of problems with abuse in the areas of harassment and misinformation. The company says it will review all voice tweets under the rules and take action for protection, including labeling tweets.

Twitter adds labels to the containing to content manipulative or synthetic texts. The network also adds shortcuts with a warning about the need for fact checking. First of all, this also applies to coronavirus elections USA^[25]

Twitter removed tens of thousands of pages

Twitter has revealed 32,242 accounts that Twitter claims are linked to state-funded cyber operations. The accounts sent to the archive included pages used in three separate campaigns, allegedly followed by China, Russia and Turkey^{[26][27][28][29]}.

The Chinese government's cyber operation used two sets of accounts - 23,750 and 150,000 pages each (these pages were amplifier accounts for distributing information furrows). They participated, according to Twitter, in various coordinated and manipulative activities. Publications on these pages were made mainly in Chinese and were devoted to geopolitical news. In addition, the pages published information about the political dynamics in Hong Kong.

The archive also sent 1,152 pages related to a news site allegedly used by the Russian government for political propaganda. The pages were blocked by the Twitter administration for numerous violations of the rules of use, including for cross-hosting and distributing content in an inauthentic, coordinated way for political purposes.

In addition, 7,340 fake and hacked accounts were sent to the archive, disseminating information beneficial to the ruling Justice and Development Party in Turkey, as well as its leader, President Recep Erdogan.

All pages and content related to the above campaigns were permanently removed from the social network, and information on them was transferred for analysis to the Australian Institute for Strategic Policy and the Stanford University Internet Observatory.

US President Trump signed a decree regulating the work of social networks

American President Donald Trump signed a decree in May 2020 to regulate the work of social networks. This was reported by Reuters with reference to the White House. It is assumed that the new law, which Trump has already promised to adopt, will regulate the work of social networks in the country.

The dispute between the president and social media came after Twitter on May 26 identified some of Trump's posts as containing untruths, namely unsubstantiated remarks about voting by email. In these messages, the US leader allegedly "falsely claims that mail ballots lead to vote fraud and the receipt of ballots by non-voting voters." The Twitter administration posted a warning badge under these posts. It means readers are better off checking the content of the message themselves. In response to this, the head of the White House pointed out that social networks do not make the voices of conservatives sound, and promised to "strictly regulate or close them."

Main article:

• Censorship (control and anonymity) on the Internet. World experience
• Fake (fake) news (fake news)

Twitter allowed employees to stay in remote work forever

On May 12, 2020, Twitter allowed employees to stay in remote work forever, that is, even after the authorities lift quarantine restrictions related to the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, said Jack Dorsey, CEO of the company.

The last few months have shown that we can allow employees to work from anywhere in the world. If our workers are in a situation that allows them to work from home, and they want to continue in this mode, we will help this come true , "he said.

Those employees whose duties imply the presence in the office (for example, equipment support employees) will not be able to work from home.

Twitter adds that offices will not open until September 2020, until this time there will also be no business trips and corporate events that involve the physical presence of employees.

Twitter switched to remote work in March 2020. At the beginning of that month, the company began recommending that employees work remotely to reduce the risk of coronavirus infection. Other tech giants, including Google and Microsoft, have issued similar recommendations.

By May 12, 2020, Twitter has more than 35 offices around the world, including in Paris, New York and Toronto. In a statement, the company noted that it was one of the first to switch to the "work from home" model, and now it intends to continue to put the safety of people and society first. 

We were in a unique position to respond quickly and allow people to work from home, given our emphasis on decentralisation and supporting the ability of employees to work from anywhere. The last few months have proven that we can make it work, "said Twitter Vice President Jennifer Christie.[30]

Disabling Twitter via SMS

On April 28, 2020, it became known that for security reasons, Twitter decided to permanently disable the Twitter via SMS service, which existed since the start of the social network and allowed posting tweets through SMS messages.

We want to help keep your account secure. We have encountered vulnerabilities in publishing via SMS, so we have disabled Twitter via SMS, with the exception of several countries, according to the Twitter support page.

The source recalled that in September 2019, the administration of the social network temporarily turned off the possibility of posting tweets through text messages in connection with several security incidents. Unknowns took advantage of the vulnerabilities on Twitter via SMS and posted a number of false messages on behalf of celebrities, including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Now it was decided to turn off the service forever.

Users will still be able to log into social networks and manage their accounts through "important SMS messages." For those who used Twitter via SMS, the administration of the social network recommends switching to the web version of Twitter or downloading mobile application to "enjoy all the possibilities of Twitter." two-factor authentication passwords The social network has not yet refused from and checks using SMS^[31]

NFL team accounts hacked

In January 2020, just a week before the Super Bowl, more than a dozen National Football League teams' Twitter accounts were taken USA over. Twitter said the accounts were hacked through a third-party platform.

Billionaire will give $9 million to Twitter subscribers

In early January 2020, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced his readiness to give 1,000 Twitter followers 1 million yen or $9,000 each to find out if basic income can make people happier. Studies show that this is quite possible. Read more here.

2019

Vulnerability allowed to match 17 million phone numbers with Twitter accounts

On December 25, 2019, it became known that security researcher Ibrahim Balic discovered a vulnerability in the Twitter app for Android, the exploitation of which allowed him to match 17 million phone numbers with Twitter accounts.

Operation is carried out through the function of loading contacts in the application. When a user downloads their phone number, the system sends user data. The Twitter contact upload feature does not allow the list of numbers to be downloaded in sequential order to avoid abuse, Balich said.

The researcher generated about two billion phone numbers, randomized them and uploaded them to Twitter via an Android application (the vulnerability does not apply to the web version of the download function). According to Balich, he collated user records from,,,,, and for a long time, Israel Turkey Iran Greece Armenia but stopped France Germany working after Twitter blocked his attempts on December 20, 2019.

According to the resource, TechCrunch by comparing mobile numbers, in one case the specialist managed a to identify high-ranking Israeli politician.

The company has not yet officially acknowledged the presence of a bug in the application, and it is not known whether the recent fix of the vulnerability in the Android version of Twitter is associated with this problem^[32].

Twitter user data in the public domain

On November 24, 2019, it became known that American security researcher Vinny Troia discovered an accessible one database containing more than 4 TB - information a total of 1.2 billion records, including from data the profiles of hundreds of millions of users, and. social networks Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Github More. here

The average price of a paid publication is growing

Twitter bans political ads on its platform

The founder of the social network TwitterJack Dorsey announced that from November 22, 2019. Social network stops all political advertising on its platform. It is reported by RIA Novosti.

It is noted that the innovation will enter into force on November 22. The company expects all current advertisers to be notified of the decision during the three-week period.

Dorsey noted that the relevant regulations will be applied in all countries using Twitter. He also added that this reflected the company's position that the reach of political statements should be earned rather than bought.

The average salary is $170 thousand.

In September 2019, the recruiting portal Glassdoor published a rating of American companies with the highest salaries. On Twitter, the average annual salary of employees amounted to $170 thousand. Read more here.

CEO sends offensive tweets

In August 2019, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's account, which had more than 4 million followers, posted a slew of vulgar and racist tweets that were taken down about 20 minutes later.

The reason, according to a Twitter spokesperson: "The phone number associated with the account has been compromised due to security controls by the mobile operator."

Twitter shared user data without their consent

On August 7, 2019, it became known about problems in the application, social network Twitter due to which some settings did not work properly, due to which data users were transferred without their permission.

According to Twitter, if a user viewed or clicked on ads in a mobile application or used them since May 2018, then the company shared his data with "reliable partners" in analytics and advertising, even if the user did not give consent to it. The data included a country code, information about the ad, and interactions with it.

As part of a process used by the company to run more relevant ads on Twitter and other services since September 2018, the social network ran ads to the user based on conclusions made about the devices in use without their permission. According to the company, the data did not contain information such as passwords, email data, etc.

The problems were fixed on August 5, 2019, and the administration also launched an investigation to determine the number of affected users^[33].

2018

Attackers hid malicious code in Internet memes on Twitter accounts

On December 20, 2018, the company Trend Micro reported on a study that aimed to exemplify the use of steganography - writing hidden code to various areas of harmless files - to bypass antiviruses and protect systems. PERSONAL COMPUTER Malefactors used to activate two malware images with - Internet mems, specially loaded into. social network Twitter

On October 25 and 26, 2018, unknown attackers published on the Twitter account created in 2017 images with the character of the movie "Matrix" Morpheus, in which the/print command was encoded. As Trend Micro experts found out, the malware, designated as TROJAN.MSIL.BERBOMTHUM.AA, searches for images in the specified account according to certain parameters <img src=\`(.*?):thumb\` width=\`.*?\` height=\`.*?\`/>(), then downloads them to the affected system and uses the commands encrypted in the files to collect information about the computer and send it to the server address encoded using the Pastebin service . At the same time, in the case of published memes, hackers most likely used not the real server address, but a temporary "stub."

The most interesting thing from the point of view of the company's researchers was that the attackers chose a completely legal service to activate their malware, which is used by hundreds of millions of people around the world every day. And the only way to eliminate the threat is to disable the Twitter account (as of December 13, 2018, the administration of the social network has already blocked this account), for which there would simply be no reason without information from Trend Micro.

In addition to the/print command, which takes a screenshot, the detected malicious ON also supports the following commands:

• / processos - collects data about the list of running processes;
• / clip - collects data about the contents of the clipboard;
• / username - receives information about the username of the infected PC;
• / docs - gets a list of file names located at a pre-specified address, for example, on the desktop.

Trend Micro noted that the study did not consider ways to get malware on victims' computers, but they are clearly not related to a "compromised" Twitter account. It is also interesting that the software itself was discovered by the multi-level protection system Trend Micro XGen even before starting to study this software, but the company's specialists believe that without comprehensive and versatile protection, user computers and conventional antivirus programs may be defenseless in the face of malware, which uses completely legal channels to activate its functions and, more importantly, it uses an absolutely harmless command set from the point of view of the system.

Attackers use Twitter support forms

In November 2018, Twitter announced that it had identified a problem with one of its support forms that could reveal the country code of the user's corresponding phone number. A large number of requests were received through a compromised form of support from individual IP addresses in China and Saudi Arabia.

Encrypted messaging feature may appear on Twitter

A hidden "secret chat" feature has been discovered on the Android app Twitter, which will allow users to send encrypted messages using end-to-end encryption technology. The encrypted messaging feature was first discovered in a Twitter APK file by researcher Jane Manchun Wong. APK files often contain feature code that companies test before starting.

Hundreds of Twitter employees view users' personal correspondence. Video

The social network Twitter pays its employees to view all personal messages of users available on the company's servers, analyze them and make up a "virtual profile" of the user that can be sold to advertisers. This was admitted by software developers and other Twitter employees. Their confessions were recorded on a hidden camera by members of Project Veritas, an organization that investigates corruption, fraud and human rights violations^[34].

The tape captures the statements of four employees currently working on Twitter: Conrado Miranda, Clay Haynes, Pranay Singh and Mihai Alexandru Florea.

2017

Average salary - $161,860

The average salary of Twitter employees in 2017 was $161,860.

Twitter has increased the maximum message size to 280 characters

According to an official press release, Twitter management decided on this step in order to give users more freedom to express their thoughts. Previously, people needed to be as concise as possible in order to meet 140 characters. Now microbloggers will be able to become more liberated. There will be no need to worry that a couple of words will not fit into the message, cutting it off in the most interesting place, and you will have to cut the text by abbreviations and other tricks.

According to Twitter statistics, with a norm of 140 characters, the maximum length reaches about 9% of tweets, while with a norm of 280 characters - only 1%. According to the company's observations, long tweets are also written and posted faster than short ones, as the user thinks less about the wording. The data came from global pre-testing of the new norm, launched in late September ^[35]

The test results showed that users do not particularly actively use additional characters at all. Just 5% of tweets exceeded the old maximum of 140 characters, and just 2% of phrases were longer than 190 characters. The company notes that this is even good because the time subscribers spend reading tweets will not increase significantly.

A limit of 140 characters was introduced at the dawn of Twitter by analogy with SMS messages. Messengers and similar applications at that time were not yet widely used, and SMS remained the main means of mobile text communication. The SMS limit was 160 characters, but Twitter cut it to 140, reserving 20 characters for the username. When it turned out that not all users had enough space to express their thoughts, the social network thought about increasing it. In 2015, the idea of ​ ​ introducing a limit of 10 thousand characters, as on Facebook, was discussed.

Logical vulnerability on Twitter

On May 4, 2017, it became known about the identification of a logical vulnerability in the social network Twitter. Discovered bug allowed you to publish messages on behalf of any user, without access to the victim's account.

The vulnerability was discovered by Yegor Zhizhin, an employee of Digital Security. To exploit it, the company said^[36] enough advanced skills^[36].

The vulnerability was identified on February 26, 2017. By February 28, 2017, the social network closed the "hole." Twitter addressed official gratitude to Zhizhin, coupled with a "large monetary reward," Digital Security said.

The vulnerability found is related to the service ads.twitter.com. The service acts as a library that allows you to download files, such as images or videos. To exploit the bug, you had to go to the ads.twitter.com and select the "Download Media" function. In the process, the social network provided the user with the opportunity to tweet this file and share it with users of choice.

The ability to tweet a file involves, among other things, using the image owner ID and the social network user ID, on whose page the tweet will be published. To successfully post a tweet on someone else's account, it was enough to intercept the tweet request and replace these idS in the POST request, as well as the media file key.

Replacing a hacker's ID with those belonging to the victim was quite simple: you can find out the necessary accounts using various services. The difficulty is that the attacker somehow needs to get the media key of the file contained in the victim's library. Only the owner of the file can find out this key. It is almost impossible to find an 18-digit key. Therefore, it was necessary to use another option - to share the file with the victim. After that, the target account became a co-owner of the file, the key of which is already known to the hacker.

Digital Security saw a particular danger of vulnerability as the likelihood of a disaster as a result of an attacker publishing the same information in several accounts at the same time. If these were news publications or pages of public figures, such actions could provoke dire consequences.

48 million Twitter users are bots

According to a study^[37] of the University of Southern California and Indiana, about 48 million Twitter accounts can be bots. This was noticed^[38].

Scientists have calculated that up to 15% of all English-speaking users Twitter are bot accounts. They mostly retweet other users or add tweets to "favorites." But some bots are much less harmless - they are designed to mimic people's behavior and influence the formation of socio-political opinion.

2016

500 million tweets per day

Twitter has about 320 million users, and according to the information of the social network itself, about 500 million tweets are published per day. The most popular user in the world is Katie Perry - more than 84 million people follow updates to her page.

In Russia, the palm belongs to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, 4.74 million users are subscribed to his page. He is followed by Ivan Urgant (4.68 million subscribers) and Pavel Volya (4.13 million). The most popular Russian athlete on the social network is Maria Sharapova. Her page is followed by 2.03 million subscribers.

Since February 2016, the microblogging service Twitter has blocked 235 thousand accounts due to propaganda of terrorism. The company noted that they sharply condemn the propaganda of terrorism on social networks. In total, 360 thousand accounts have already been blocked since June 2015, RNS reports. Also on Twitter, they noted that they developed a system that blocks new accounts of people whose profiles the company had previously closed due to suspicions of distributing extremist materials.

See also: Censorship (control) on the Internet. World experience

Apple, Alphabet and Rupert Murdoch among contenders to buy Twitter

The price of the microblogging service and Twitter-owned applications Vine and MoPub in the event of a sale will be no more than $18 billion. At the same time, the amount can be considered overestimated for a company that reports negative financial indicators every quarter.

Among the contenders for the purchase are Alphabet, Apple and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, along with 21st Century Fox and News Corp.

The current difficulties of Twitter are managerial confusion, poor growth indicators and an unresolved identity crisis, writes Bloomberg. "The company strives to be what it could never become, namely, to be a service that everyone uses every day or more often," said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group^[39]

The lack of growth of the user base for six consecutive quarters is considered the main reason for the sale of the company. But Twitter still has great potential: there are tens of millions of subscribers to such show business stars as Kim Kardashian, as well as users who protest against repressive regimes, still use the service.

Twitter is trying to make a difference by signing a contract to livestream National Football League games and plans to stream other sports games, political events and entertainment. Any company that acquires Twitter will have to take over this strategy.

The search for buyers of the popular microblogging service started amid a slowdown in the number of users and Twitter sales over several quarters. In September, Twitter received offers from interested companies such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Allen & Co. At that moment, the head of the company, Jack Dorsey, opposed the sale of the company, while co-founder and board member Eve Williams supported the Twitter deal^[40] as soon as^[41].

As a result, Twitter decided to look for other options, such as sales of non-core assets, Bloomberg said, citing its own sources.

Analysts explain the refusal of Google, Apple, Walt Disney and other applicants to buy Twitter by the fact that company investors spoke out against such a deal, considering it too costly for a return on investment in the foreseeable future.

Earlier, Twitter was also called Microsoft among potential buyers, but no detailed information about the plans of this company appeared on the Web.

The last major contender for Twitter with real plans to take over it was the developer of the CRM system of the same name, which provides customers with cloud services using the SaaS model (software as a service).

32 million user passwords listed for sale

In June 2016, it turned out that hackers, using malware, collected more than 32 million Twitter passwords and put them up for sale in Darknet, TechCrunch reports. Twitter said its own systems had not been hacked.

2015

Start a video service and group chats

The management of the popular social network Twitter announced in January 2015 that it would expand its functionality by introducing its own video service. Now in mobile applications you can not only publish video materials, but also record them on camera. Previously, to publish a video, it was required to post content on other sites, to publish only a link to material on social networks.

The ability to shoot videos, place them and process them will be added to the microblogging capabilities. The maximum recording size is limited to a 30-second interval. To use the new features for users of mobile devices on platforms Android iOS , it will be enough to click on the camera icon in the mobile application. In addition, the owners iPhone or iPad will be able to download files from the device archive. A similar function will appear on Android devices, but this will happen a little later. The news feed will display a short preview with a description of the video, and it will be viewed in one click. The level of privacy of video files will be at a standard level, comparable to other tweets on the network.

Expanded Twitter and chat opportunities. Now a private conversation can be organized not only with one person, but also between a group of participants. Such an opportunity, according to the developers, will increase the convenience of discussing some topics. The maximum allowed number of participants in the conversation can reach 20 people.

Purchase for $100 million startup Periscope

In March 2015, Twitter acquired the popular startup Periscope for $100 million, which allows you to live, watch and comment on user broadcasts from anywhere in the world. In Russia, the streaming platform became known mainly thanks to celebrities for whom Periscope turned out to be a way to be closer to fans. Around "Periscope" subsequently formed its own base of fans who are looking for the most extraordinary broadcasts and share pictures and links on social networks.

US military account tweets ISIS messages

In January 2015, the US Armed Forces Central Command sent threatening messages on Twitter and changed the message's title to the text "I love you Isis."

The Washington Post said the military viewed it as an act of "cybervandalism" and responded by immediately shutting down its social media accounts.

2014

Almost half of Twitter users did not leave a single message on the social network

As studies by Twopcharts showed (spring 2014), 44 percent of users who registered on the social network never wrote a single message. Another 30 percent created no more than 10 tweets.

According to Twitter, about a quarter of billions of people use its services every month, and any visitor, even the one who entered once, is counted and no longer used this service.

Only 13 percent of users of this site can be called active. They posted more than 100 messages. At the same time, out of half a billion accounts, the owners of which created at least one message, only 25 percent did it in the last month. Twitter refuses to comment on this, as the research was conducted by a third-party organization.

Most of the users register to follow the news and accauns of famous people. Twitter, on the other hand, is not interested in a monologue, but in a discussion between users, since this increases the involvement of users in the discussion, and therefore increases the time spent by people on the portal. Namely, this is an argument in negotiations with advertisers.

Russia in the top three countries that more often than others asked Twitter to remove content

Microblogging service Twitter published in February 2015 a Transparency Report for the second half of 2014, which showed an increase in official requests for content removal around the world.

The top three countries, most often contacting Twitter with demands to remove this or that content in the second half of 2014, were headed by Turkey (477 requests), Russia (91 requests) and Germany (43 requests). The total number of such requests increased from 433 (January-June) to 796 (July-December).

Turkish requests were most often related to alleged violations of the personal rights of citizens and officials. The company in some cases went to court in an attempt to defend the content, but this was only possible in five percent of cases.

Russian requests for content removal ranged from advertising narcotic substances to announcing peaceful rallies.

Also in the second half of 2014, Twitter received 108 requests from the Russian authorities for various information about accounts, none of which was ultimately satisfied.

Germany most often appealed to Twitter with requests to block content of a discriminatory nature, 37 percent of complaints were satisfied. All satisfied requests for blocking content and deleting accounts are available with explanations on Chilling Effects.

Partnership with IBM

On October 31, 2014, the companies Twitter IBM announced the conclusion of a partnership agreement, the purpose of which is to transform business decision-making processes and assist the business community in this.

The collaboration between the two companies will help combine Twitter information with cloud analytics, technology platforms to attract customers, and IBM consulting services .

The partners plan to focus on three areas:

• Integration of Twitter data and IBM analytics services in the cloud. IBM will offer Twitter data analysis as part of some cloud services, including IBM Watson Analytics and a cloud-based data service to help developers embed data services into applications. Entrepreneurs and developers will be able to integrate Twitter data into software on the IBM Watson Developer Cloud and IBM Bluemix platforms.

• Create new big data capabilities for enterprises. IBM and Twitter will offer a suite of enterprise applications to help improve business decision-making processes in various areas of the economy. The first joint solution will combine Twitter data with IBM ExperienceOne solutions, allowing sales and marketing managers to understand moods and behavioural characteristics to better serve customers or customers.

• Specialized consulting services. IBM Global Business Services consultants will have access to Twitter data, which will improve the quality of consulting services. Moreover, IBM and Twitter will collaborate to develop unique solutions for banking, consumer products, retail, tourism and transportation. The collaboration will draw on the professional abilities of tens of thousands of IBM Global Business Services consultants and application developers, including employees of the industry's only integrated Strategy and Analytics practice and IBM's Interactive Experience - the largest digital agency in the world.

"Twitter provides a unique opportunity to take a fresh look at the world - both as a platform for engagement between millions of customers and business professionals, and as a synthesizer of mainstream trends," noted Ginny Rometty, Chairman of the Board, President and CEO of IBM. - A partnership with Twitter, powered by IBM's cloud analytics platform, will help customers transform their business decision-making with a perfect new class of data. This is one of the newest examples of IBM trying to rethink the concept of "work."

Through the development of new technology solutions from IBM and Twitter, organizations will be able to structure existing data streams to improve business decision-making processes. For example, integrating social data with corporate information will help accelerate product development by predicting trends in the long term, or predict demand growth using current data.

2013

Revenue $664.9 million (+ 110%), loss $645.3 million

Twitter revenue in 2013 increased by 110% to $664.9 million compared to $316.9 million in 2012, while the loss increased 8.1 times - from $79.4 million to $645.3 million.

Analysts are embarrassed by the fact that Twitter's monthly audience growth rate is slowing. In the IV quarter, the number of users increased by 3.8% compared to the III quarter (to 241 million people). For reference, in the first three quarters of 2013, growth was 10%, 7% and 6%, respectively. At the same time, the number of views of Tweets Timeline (home pages) fell from 159 million in the third quarter to 148 million in the fourth quarter.

Analysts fear that Twitter's monthly audience has already passed the maximum value, but Costolo disagrees with this opinion. The problem is that the service cannot force new users to stay in it.

IPO on the New York Stock Exchange

Shares of the microblogging service Twitter as part of their initial offering (IPO) in the first minutes of trading on November 8, 2013 on the New York Stock Exchange rose 85% compared to the original price of $26, the price of one share rose to $47.10. During the trading session, the peak price of the share reached $50.09. At the close of the first day of trading, the value of the company's shares amounted to $44.90 per share (+ 72.6%). On the second day of trading, the share price dropped 3% to $43.55. In December 2013, Twitter's share price reached $74.

A thousand fake Twitter readers cost $11

Marketing Land reported in July 2013 about a thriving fake reader market for Twitter accounts, with prices plummeting - a thousand can be bought for as little as $11. By comparison, a hundred fake links on LinkedIn will set you back $15. Barracuda Labs analyzed more than a thousand accounts whose owners acquired fake readers. It turned out that on average each such account has more than 50 thousand readers, and 16 of them have over a million subscribers.

After processing 100,000 fake accounts, Barracuda learned that their average age is about seven months, and only very few are older than three. Fake accounts even post their own tweets (on average, each has 77 messages) and have their own readers (on average - 32). They are often created by completely copying information from real accounts, only some additional character like underscore is attributed to the username.

According to Barracuda, existing automated means of verifying the legitimacy of Twitter accounts do not recognize accounts with fake readers. Recently, the New York Times reported that fake readers on Twitter are present in large numbers even at Pepsi and rapper 50 Cent.

US President Barack Obama is the leader in the number of fake readers on Twitter

In 2013, the undisputed leader in the number of readers on the Twitter microblock network, US President Barack Obama, turned out to be the owner of both the largest number of fake subscribers, or, as they are called, "followers." There are more than half of them. Read more here.

Half a billion Twitter entries are added to the Library of Congress every day

In April 2010, the Library of Congress USA entered into an agreement under which the company Twitter pledged to transfer to it all records published in the microblogs of the service since its launch in 2006. The first phase of this project is already coming to an end. The library now holds approximately 170 billion entries from Twitter, and this collection is replenished daily by another 500 million.Ошибка цитирования Неправильный вызов: ожидался нечисловой ключ

The next stage is to decide how to ensure researchers have access to this vast information archive. Twitter has allowed the non-commercial use of the data provided, but the technology for studying such large amounts of information is still lagging behind the technologies for their creation and distribution, the library notes.

The archive for the first four years contains approximately 21 billion records, which in uncompressed form and taking into account service information occupy about 20 TB. New records arrive in the library as archive files for every hour. This is done by Gnip, a Twitter partner that provides commercial access to microblogging archives. Two compressed copies of the full archive now occupy 133.2 TB. For reliability, they are stored on tapes in two different places.

2012

 500 million tweets a day, Russia in 14th place

The volume of records published daily on the microblogging service Twitter reached 500 million in October 2012. This was announced at the Internet Advertising Bureau Engage conference by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. This means that every second 8 thousand records are posted on Twitter, adds V3, which published the data.

The last time the company officially reported reaching 400 million tweets a day - in June 2012. According to Dick Kostolo, in October 2012, the Twitter database contains 140 million active users.

The user base of the Twitter microblogging service in June 2012 exceeded half a billion accounts, of which more than 140 million belong to residents of the United States - the native state for the project. Such data are reported in a report by research firm Semiocast.

According to analysts, there are about 8 million Twitter users in Russia. According to this indicator, Russia ranks 14th, behind Venezuela (13th position), Colombia (12th position) and Turkey (11th line).

It is noteworthy that a significant part of registrations among Russian users took place after January 1, 2012 (more than a third of all accounts). The rest of the users registered until the end of last year.

Fewer Twitter users than in Russia: South Korea in (next place right after), Russia , Netherlands Argentina,, and. France Germany Italy

The United States accounts for 27.4% of Twitter accounts out of a total of 517 million accounts. In June 2012, American users wrote 25.8% of all public "tweets" in a month. According to this indicator, the United States dominates, but the growth rate abroad is higher, Semiocast reported.

The twenty most active cities in terms of the number of "tweets" Moscow did not make it. In total, 10.6 billion entries were published by users of the service worldwide in June. The most active audience is located in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. In second place -, in Tokyo third - London. Residents of Sao Paulo, the largest city in, Brazil showed the fourth result - the New York fifth.

The introduction of censorship at the request of some countries

The leadership of the microblogging service Twitter announced in January 2012 its readiness to obey the requirements of the authorities of countries where, for historical, cultural or other reasons, there are reasonable restrictions on the promotion of certain ideas. This decision is due to Twitter's desire to expand its presence in the national segments of the Internet.

Previously, the social network spoke out for absolute freedom of speech. And the categorical refusal to introduce partial censorship was justified by the fact that technically the operator can remove a dubious text message only globally, and not in one single segment of the Internet.

"Starting today, we have gained the ability to prevent users in a particular country from getting acquainted with content, while maintaining access to content for users in the rest of the world," the message says.

At the same time, Twitter promised to try to notify the authors that their text message was blocked and seized. It was decided to store the details of such incidents in the database ChillingEffects.org.

Mobile Trojan uses Twitter

Joji Hamada, an expert at Symantec, posted information on the company's official blog about the growing attractiveness of the Twitter platform in the eyes of cybercriminals. At least it managed to prove its effectiveness on the example of the spread of the infamous polymorphic Trojan Android. Opfake for mobile devices based on the platform of the same name.

As you know, effective placement malware on the Internet, the result of which is an increase in the number of downloads, requires certain efforts and time on the part of cyber criminals. Of interest, first of all, are official app stores, third-party stores and even fictitious stores. Another option involves the use of specialized websites for hosting malicious ON or its distribution under the guise of genuine applications. To attract traffic to such resources, it is usually customary to place links on forums or use SEO optimization to bring them to the top of search results.

It seems that now the social network, especially popular among mobile users, has replenished the arsenal of tools available to attackers. Android.Opfake is not located in the official Android Market - the malware guide is individual tweets that may appear in search results for some popular keywords (software, mobile devices, pornography, etc.). They usually contain short hyperlinks and a message mainly in Russian interspersed with English-language terms. It is enough for a gullible user to visit the site of cybercriminals, as the installation of malware begins. The catch is that before clicking on the link, it is almost impossible to unequivocally say whether a tweet is infected or not.

Examples of message lists, some of which contain malicious code

Source: Symantec, 2012 

Some infected messages are easier to recognize because they are often sent out and do not have followers. However, there are also those that are sent out less often and have followers, i.e. by all indications indistinguishable from ordinary tweets. Most of the names of the accounts of infected messages are very peculiar, but again it is not necessary.

Multiple malicious accounts

March 21, 2012 Twitter turned six years old

On this occasion, the company published a number of statistics on Twitter's audience growth. So the number of active users of the service is about 140 million. They send about 340m tweets daily. In March 2011, users sent only 140 million tweets a day every day.

2011

Loss of $25.8 million in the first quarter

Between January and April 30, 2011, Twitter's revenue reached $23.8 million, while the company remained at a loss and during this period recorded net losses of $25.8 million. For comparison, Facebook's revenue during about the same time was 26 times higher than Twitter, while the company was able to turn about a third of this amount into a profit. Between January and April 2011, the company spent $13.1 million on research and development, $5.4 million on sales and marketing. Another $12 million amounted to administrative costs. In addition, the list of expenses includes a clause called "cost," opposite which the amount of $18.7 million is indicated.

Gawker called Twitter "the biggest bubble in the history of high-tech or mass media."

Rumors about a possible sale of the company on Facebook or Google

In February 2011, it became known that microblog owners Twitter could sell it in the near future, among likely buyers Facebook - and, The Google Wall Street Journal reported, citing its own sources. Negotiations on this have been going on for several months, at the moment potential buyers estimate Twitter at $8-10 billion. It also became known about the purchase of part of the microblog shares by the Andreessen Horowitz investment fund. The latter invested more than $80 million on Twitter. What percentage of the total number of microblog shares they represent is not disclosed in Andreessen Horowitz.

155 million tweets a day

In April 2011, the number of records published daily in microblogs for the year increased by 41%. In total, as of the beginning of April 2011, users post an average of 155 million tweets per day against 55 million a year earlier. The number of logins to a Twitter account from mobile devices increased by 50% in the first quarter. This figure for Twitter inputs has increased by 52% from all devices in general.

The record is 177 million tweets, which was recorded on March 11, 2011.

First disclosure of user data at the request of the court

May 2011 - The administration Twitter declassified personal data one of its users at the request of the court. Great Britain Resident Ahmed Khan was accused of desecrating the honor and dignity of his colleagues from the local council of one of the British regions. The Twitter administration was forced to provide his personal data and e-mail at the request of a California court, where a lawsuit was filed against Khan. According to him, the service violates the rights of all its users by indulging in such court requirements:

"

It violates not only my civil rights, but the rights of everyone who has ever sent me a message via Twitter. I only had fourteen days to hire a lawyer and try to defend myself in court, which is ten thousand kilometers from my house, and I took on all the expenses. "

In March 2011, a similar precedent took place - an American court ordered Twitter to provide IP addresses of participants in the infamous WikiLeaks project.

2010

Raising $200 million at the company's valuation of $3.7 billion

In 2010, Twitter's advertising revenues amounted to $45 million. In addition, in 2010, Twitter managed to receive $360 million in venture capital.

In mid-December 2010, Twitter managed to raise $200 million as part of the next round of financing, which estimated the service at $3 billion 700 million. The leading investor was the venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins Claufield & Byers.

In 2010, Twitter users sent more than 25 billion tweets, and more than 100 million new users registered with the service itself. In 2010, the number of Twitter employees grew from 130 to 350.

Evan Williams hands over CEO post to Dick Castolo

In October 2010, Evan Williams, one of the founders of the popular microblogging service Twitter, left the post of executive director at this company. According to Williams, he offered to take the position of Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, at that time the chief operating officer. Williams himself plans to continue working for the company and intends to focus on Twitter's product development strategy.

Dick Kastolo was one of the founders and executive director of Feedburner. He sold this service to Google in 2007 for $100 million. After that, Castolo held a post at Google and left it in July 2009, joining the Twitter team.

"There are a lot

of challenges that have to be dealt with in the event of an organisation growing as fast as we have. Big growth in itself is not a success. For us, success consists in realizing our potential as a profitable company that can maintain its culture and focus on users, positively affecting the world around us. So the task is not simple. I realized that I get the most satisfaction by managing work on products. My passion is to create new things and I'm very optimistic about our plans, "Evan Williams wrote on Twitter's official blog

.

"That's why I decided to suggest that chief operating officer Dick Castolo become CEO of Twitter. Starting today, I will fully focus on the product strategy. During his first year on Twitter, Dick proved to be a remarkable leader in developing and executing our efforts to increase the company's revenue, "the former Twitter chief executive noted

.

165 million users, first ad launch

In October 2010, about 300 people worked on Twitter, while in 2008 the company had only 20 employees. The number of registered users of the service exceeded 165 million people, against 3 million in 2008. Now they publish about 90 million records daily in their microblogs, while before the appointment of Williams this figure was 1.25 million records a day^[42] as^[43].

Twitter began advertising for the first time in April 2010. Since that time, the administration of the service has been introducing new types of ads and focusing on monetizing the site. In particular, Promoted Tweets ("promoted tweets") appeared - a contextual advertising platform that appears at the top of the page if the user searched for one of the keywords, as well as the Promoted Accounts ("promoted accounts") and Promoted Trends ("promoted trends") platforms.

2009: First user with a million followers

Gradually, the service gained popularity in the world, going beyond the United States. In 2009, the first user with a million subscribers appeared on Twitter - he became the American actor Ashton Kutcher. A year later, another important event occurred for Twitter, which caused the growing popularity of the service. In January 2010, Timothy astronaut John Creamer sent the first tweet from space.

2008: Jack Dorsey hands over management of the company to Evan Williams

In 2008, Jack Dorsey resigned as head of Twitter and handed them over to Evan Williams. He himself became chairman of the board of directors. In parallel with this, Dorsey worked on other projects of his own, for example, the mobile payment service Square. By the way, he was the first to propose ways to monetize Twitter, for which it was not originally intended.

2007: Appearance of# hashtags

In 2007, a landmark event took place for all fans of social platforms. Then the# hashtag first appeared on Twitter, which allowed you to group and find posts on similar topics.

2006: Twitter social media launch

At the origins of the creation Twitter was Jack Dorsey's uncomplicated idea: the creator of a network that unites people around the world, ten years ago, thought only about a platform for a small group of people who could instantly go out on, communication exchanging a couple of phrases. Such short posts bore the original name "statuses"^[44]

SMS However, Dorsey had the idea of ​ ​ exchanging something like - messages between several people back in the early 2000s. Subsequently, the founder himself wrote about this on his page in. Flickr According to him, after he registered for (LiveJournal "Live Journal") on May 31, 2000, he came up with the idea of ​ ​ making a similar but more lively service. Then Dorsey came up with a raw name for the service - Stat.us.

Dorsey kept his designs secret for six years, working out the details of the future site. Until in 2006 he made the Odeo team and finally implemented such a long-hatched plan along with Biz Stone and Evan Williams. On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey (@ jack) wrote the first post on Twitter.

By the way, the notorious character restriction (140 per message) was also not taken from the ceiling. Dorsey did his service with an eye on popular SMS messages, which also had a sign limit. There is still debate about the expediency of such a concept, which the creators of Twitter have never changed in all ten years. For some, this is a limiting factor, while others believe that the limit allows you to clearly formulate a thought and not clog the tape with "long posts."

Notes