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Twitter, struggling on several fronts, reportedly set to announce layoffs after next earnings report on Thursday

October 26, 2016 by Barry Cooper

Despite its popularity with people of color and others, Twitter is struggling to keep up with Facebook and Snapchat.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is again turning to layoffs as he is under pressure to improve Twitter’s bottom line.

In yet another sign that it faces an uncertain future, Twitter may lay off several hundred people after its next earnings report set for Thursday.

The once high-flying social media platform is facing headwinds because other social media offerings, such as Facebook and Snapchat, are growing faster. In an effort to catch up Twitter has put itself up for sale but has found no takers. Salesforce.com, The Walt Disney Co. and Alphabet (parent company of Google) expressed interest but eventually backed out.

In the past 12 months, Twitter’s stock price has fallen by 40 percent. Poor performance of the stock has made it difficult for Twitter to compete for the best talent in Silicon Valley where engineers and others can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock options at high-performing companies.

Twitter, which is extremely popular with people of color, is recognized as one of the best platforms for sharing content and rallying like-minded users behind causes. However, the company is not meeting its advertising sales goals and may eliminate about 300 people after the earnings report, about the same percentage it did last year when co-founder Jack Dorsey took over as chief executive officer.

Analysts maintain that Twitter must emphasize live video to generate more user growth. The company wants to be known for being the go-to place for web surfers looking for video on what’s happening in real time — a spot currently occupied by Facebook Live.

Black Panther Party celebrates 50th anniversary, says today’s protestors must rely less on Twitter

October 19, 2016 by Staff Report

Millennials must really help people on the streets and do more than just complain through social media.

Longtime Bay Area protester Cat Brooks supports social media, but says the street marches are still important.

Bay Area protester Cat Brooks (left) supports social media, but says the police are monitoring social platforms.

October marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party in Oakland by Bobby Seale and the late Huey P. Newton in 1966. Parties, walking tours, museum exhibits and lectures will be running at various times and locations from Oct. 20 to 23, writer Lisa Fernandez reports for NBCBayArea.com.

In a look back at the Black Panther movement Fernandez found few old-time activists who believe that social media will help cure societal ills. She writes:

Twitter and technology have changed the immediacy and the ability to organize African-Americans to shut down commerce and decry police brutality. But the social injustices that plagued the Black Panther Party 50 years ago still plague the Millenials propogating the Black Lives Matter Movement today, organizers and historians say. And if the current movement wants to stay relevant, some say, then the activists have to really help people on the streets and do more then send off a missive of tweets.

“It’s vital,” said Khalid White, a sociology and history professor at San Jose City College and San Jose State University and author of Black Fatherhood. “The Black Lives Matter movement helped to bring activism to the Twitter generation. But we’re still fighting the same social economic ills the Panthers did in the 1960s and ’70s: police brutality, and criminalizing people of color.”

Veteran protester Cat Brooks notes acknowledges that social media can have a galvanizing effect, she notes that police are working everyday to monitor activists movements on all platforms, including Twitter and Facebook.

She told Hernadez: “Social media gives us the ability to push out a more consistent onslaught of state-sanctioned violence against black and brown bodies.”

See the complete story here.

In a reaction to social media, St. Louis police break code of silence, speak directly to community after cop shoots 14-year-old boy

October 4, 2016 by Barry Cooper

Effort aimed at getting information out as broadly as possible before comments on Facebook and Twitter form a narrative.

An officer in St.Louis speaks to the community after the police shooting of a 14-year-old. Photo credit: St.Louis Post-Dispatch.

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson says he and his officers are finally starting to get it: They no longer can hide, for the most part, behind a code of silence when there is an officer-involved shooting.

In St. Louis on Sunday, police shot a 14-year-old boy who they say fired first at cops. Fortunately, Tyron Edwards, an eighth-grader at Yeatman-Liddell Middle School, was only wounded and will survive. Another victory is that the St. Louis police immediately engaged the community to talk openly — face-to-face — about the shooting. You can chalk that one up to the power of social media.

Although the progress is painfully slow, some police are starting to learn they cannot simply close their mouths or talk only with selected reporters in the wake of an officer-involved shooting.

With the country on edge in the wake of so many black men being killed by cops, it is important for the police to speak directly to the community after an incident — in person and through social media. Also, those conversations should include real talk, and not just a bunch of community relations malarkey.

“We have realized how people get information from various sources, especially social media, and sometimes those sources are not helpful,” Dotson told the St. Louis Post Dispatch. “So we realize we need to get them as much information as quickly as we can.”

“And good old-fashioned conversation can never be replaced by Twitter.”

Dotson did take a slight swipe at Twitter, but platforms like Twitter are the driving force behind transparency, and Dotson knows it. Because of pressure from postings on Twitter and Facebook, police departments that are trying to do the right thing are having to act more openly.

“There is this idea of a thin blue wall, and I hope they heard a sincere, honest, genuine conversation with someone who is trying to figure out all the facts just like they were,” Dotson said about his decision to personally meet with residents in the community where the boy was shot.

The Post-Dispatch reported that the police department hasn’t changed its policy when it comes to having officers talk to the public, but Dotson is acknowledging that a culture shift — no doubt impacted by social media — has subconsciously occurred within.
And that’s a good thing.

Dotson said police shot and wounded the teenager after he fired at officers as officers were in the neighborhood searching for a car taken in a carjacking. Dotson said police approached Edwards who was on foot, and the teen ran away and later fired a shot at officers.

According to the police report officers returned fire and Edwards fell to the ground, Tyron’s 16-year-old sister, Darrisha Barnes, challenged the police account, saying her brother fan from the cops because he was scared and had his hands up when he was shot.

“It was mistaken identity. He was just a little kid, why is the first thing you do is to fire shots?” Darrisha Barnes said.

Twitter’s Marcus Mabry moves to CNN as director of mobile

September 23, 2016 by Barry Cooper

Twitter’s Marcus Mabry moves to CNN.

CNN has hired Marcus Mabry as it’s director of mobile. He moves into the role after directing Twitter Moments for U.S. and Canadian audiences.

In the new role at CNN Mabry will focus on off-platform partnerships such as Apple News and Amazon Echo. Christina Cuesta Kline, currently deputy editor for the The Wall Street Journal’s mobile editorial team, is also joining CNN as senior editor for mobile.

The high-profile hires indicate a move for CNN to beef up platforms not directly tied to the broadcast team. Like all legacy news organizations CNN is struggling to keep pace with social media juggernauts such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat.

Why all of Black Twitter didn’t rush to Leslie Jones’ rescue

July 20, 2016 by Carol Hood

The “Ghostbusters” star is attacked on Twitter but hopefully some good will come from it

Leslie Jones is a good actor, but her sense of humor sometimes comes across as anti-black.

Leslie Jones is a good actor, but her sense of humor is sometimes divisive.

I’ve been going back and forth about whether or not to say anything about Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones, but I’m just going to go ahead and put my two cents out there.

Leslie Jones’ brand of humor is disconcerting to me, especially that time on Saturday Night Live when she glorified rape and breeding during slavery, and on another ocassion when, after being confronted by black people about her anti-blackness, she promptly blocked many fans on Twitter, chided them for not having a sense of humor, and told several black women to, well, just go away.

You can see the skit for yourself here. Scroll ahead to about the seven-minute mark:

Now that Jones is being attacked on social media, especially Twitter, it’s very hard for me to conjure any sympathy for her or defend her against anti-black remarks dripping with terrifying misogynoir when she herself played into those very things and turned her back on black women when called out for her hand in it.

Where is the rape idiots. I said nothing about rape you fucking morons. I was talking about being match to another strong brother.

— Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) May 4, 2014

It’s hard for me to defend her in any way, not when she made a joke on national TV about how great she’d have it as a slave and then threw her hands up and yelled, “Uncle!” as soon as she was victimized by racial abuse on Twitter led by Milo Yiannopoulos, even though it was only a teensy fraction of the racial abuse a slave would encounter.

In my opinion, she owes black women an apology just as much as much as white America may owe her one.

That being said, I’ve already written several times about how biased these social media platforms’ abuse policies are, so if she helps shine a light on the greater picture then that’s a win too.

Finding The Voice of Tech That’s Seldom Heard

May 27, 2016 by Tracie Powell

Photographer Helena Price wants to tell the stories behind tech’s diversity problem

Silicon Valley’s diversity problem isn’t a secret. The world of technology is overwhelmingly white and Asian, and the leadership is mostly male. Two years ago, tech giants like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter began to release reports on the homogenous face of their own workforces. The public disclosures and the hiring of a “head of… [Read more…]

Twitter CEO Admits To Its Diversity Problem

March 28, 2016 by Guest Post

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

BOSTON — One of Twitter’s biggest problems beyond user growth was put into the spotlight Friday. In front of a room of hundreds of black engineers, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said his company knows there is a diversity problem and that they are committed to overcoming it. “We’re not going to be creative, relevant [without diversity].… [Read more…]

The First Black Twitter Conference Was Long Overdue

February 29, 2016 by Seve Chambers

Two attendees of the inaugural Black Twitter 2016 Conference in New York City.

Between the Oscars this weekend, artists who held a concert in Flint about the water crisis and important conversations about race in the spotlight, a conference about Black Twitter is timely. Black Twitter has either initiated or promoted such conversations and has many times spurned activism around them.

The National Association of Black Journalists held its first Black Twitter conference at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism on Saturday (#BlackTwitter16). Several hundred attendees came for the all-day event, from those who were immersed in this space to those who had heard a lot about it but were getting their first crash course in it.

The event included frequent Black Twitter users and Black Journalists who had covered the impact of this phenomenon. Some of the day was focused on understanding social media as a tool, while the other part was focused on social media as a force that has impacted activism and discussions about inequality. April Reign, creator of the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, was the keynote speaker. She explained the origins of the hashtag and how it amplified a decades-long discussion about diversity in Hollywood. Reign announced that she would not be watching the Oscars the next day, and instead would be doing a live tweet of the film ‘The Wood.’

While the discussions focused on the impact of Black Twitter, there were also observations about the nuances of the space. Sherri Williams, a professor at Wake Forest University, said that while she admires how Twitter has been used, she found it sometimes to be unfriendly and a difficult place to navigate. Rembert Browne of New York Magazine had a similar thought when describing how one’s ‘Blackness’ is sometimes questioned in this part of cyberspace. These observations are a reflection of life, on and off Twitter, but also highlight the complexities of a safe space such as Black Twitter.

Yet, in general, the day, which had some differing opinions and viewpoints, had more mutual understandings and people on the same page than not. In fact, throughout the day there was a common call for more communication between Black journalists and activists. Williams said that journalists covering Black Twitter need to “pick up the phone” and call the activists behind the handles. Black Lives Matter activist Nakisha Lewis and Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery said that journalists should make themselves accessible to Black Twitter and people in BLM, and to get to know the people being covered.

“The reason [activists] trusted me was that I was there when everybody was getting teargassed,” said Lowery, who covered the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014.

Another topic discussed was how engaged journalists should be in this discussion if it is not their beat. Journalist Jozen Cummings who acutally works at Twitter asked if every Black journalist should be prepared to write about a topic, even if they may not have anything worthwhile to contribute. Charreah Jackson of Essence magazine thought that journalists do not have to necessarily report on Black Lives Matter or Black Twitter, pointing out how stories on ‘new’ fashion trends that have origins in the Black community can also factor into the discussion. Browne said that for him, his writing is his contribution, which prompted a piece of advice given out by nearly everyone: Be careful of what you tweet. “Don’t waste all of your fire thoughts on Twitter,” said Browne. “Save some of it for a story.”

Perhaps just as interesting as the conference was the discussion taking place on Twitter around the hashtag, #BlackTwitter16. With journalists and activists live tweeting from the conference, people followed along through the hashtag but also provided thoughtful resources, input and jokes. The hashtag for the conference also invited curiosity, people jumping in to promote themselves, and, of course, trolls throwing insults and race-baiting remarks.

Based on the activity of the hashtag, the turnout and how anticipated it was, it is fair to say that the Black Twitter conference was a success. There are as many think pieces about Black Twitter at this point as there are days in a year, so it is hard to say anything revelatory about it. But with everyone that it brought together, there is an argument for the significance of this gathering.

It was an event that was long overdue.