We posted an article last week about the lack of diversity in upper management at Twitter and how it affects the company by way of its staffing and ultimately the slow growth in users. Seems like Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, heard that criticism loud and clear and will most likely make changes to its board members as soon as their current terms are up. Click here to read more.
Former Twitter engineer, Leslie Miley, believes that his former company is stuck at 320 million users because it doesn’t have people making product decisions who understand the most prolific communities on Twitter. Miley believes that by failing to add more African-Americans, Hispanics and women to its engineering team, Twitter is ignoring the segments of its user base that are the most active. Although Twitter does not release the demographics of its user base, a 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that 27 percent of African-American Internet users use Twitter, compared to 21 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Hispanics are also heavy users of Twitter, with 25 percent of Hispanic Internet users saying they use the service. Click here to read more.
Twitter has been receiving some major backlash for their frat-themed company party last week. Due to the male-dominated landscape of Silicon Valley and the company currently undergoing a gender discrimination lawsuit, the party was ill-advised.
This week the tag #GrowingUpBlack began trending on Twitter, and along with it came similar tags such as: #GrowingUpMexican, #GrowingUpArab, and #GrowingUpBengali. The intent of this tag was for people to share stories of their childhood and compare how similar the experience of growing up was. When the other tags started popping up, a few similarities drew attention and brought a small group of people together in their experiences.
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Sparked by Twitter’s recently numbers on diversity within their ranks, Washington Post tech reporter Brian Fung delved into issue at the company, as well as other Silicon Valley tech giants. But instead of just hovering above the issue, Fung digs a little deeper… Read More
The country where the highest percentage of Internet users are active on Twitter may come as a surprise. It’s Saudi Arabia. One-third of the country’s online population are active monthly Twitter users, according to PeerReach.
The study considers active Twitter users to be those who tweet, rather than Twitter’s metric of those who log in to the service. It’s important to note that about 40% of the users Twitter considers monthly actives never tweet.
Statista‘s chart below shows the 10 countries with the highest percentage of Internet users tweeting at least once per month. The U.S., home of the microblogging platform, ranks eighth on the list.
As seen on Mashable
Last night Nina Davuluri, Miss New York 2013, was crowned Miss America 2013, making her the first American of Indian descent to win America’s most popular beauty pageant.
Naturally, large swaths of the country couldn’t allow such an achievement by a person of color to pass without racist, ignorant commentary on social media. News being what it is, much of the media’s coverage has focused on the rearing of racism’s ugly head. Buzzfeed, as usual, was quick to the punch, with an article entitled “A Lot of People Are Very Upset That An Indian-American Woman Won The Miss America Pageant.” It includes a sampling of racist tweets reacting to Nina’s win. It’s easy to dismiss the reaction as the ramblings of a discontented and uneducated fringe, but in the latest rash of racist tweets, this author sees the evidence of larger and more alarming trends.
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Yesterday, President Barack Obama made intensely personal comments on the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial, noting that “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” and discussing the toll of racial profiling not only on the African-American community but in his own life. Watch his full remarks below – in our opinion they’re insightful, measured, and well worth a listen.
Naturally, it didn’t take long for a certain brand of cultural commentator to pounce on the president’s remarks with a level of outrage usually reserved for people who make spelling mistakes on Reddit. These folks are able to bring the rage for just about anything the president does, but when race is also involved it seems the dial goes to 11. It might seem that the flaws in these outraged and outrageous Tweets are manifestly obvious, but we think they’re emblematic of much of what’s been wrong about the discussion of Trayvon Martin’s murder from the very beginning. As such we want to take the time to directly rebut six of the top twelve conservative freakouts, as determined by this piece from our colleagues at Think Progress.
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Today we’re pleased to announce the start of a new video series, MMXLII Perspectives. In our first video staff writer Joel, dismayed by the recent rash of Internet racism, has a message for the Twitter racists.
If you haven’t heard of Rachel Jeantel, described by many as the prosecution’s star witness in the Trayvon Martin trial and the last person (other than his alleged murderer) to speak to Martin before his death, you must have spent some quality time under a rock the last few days. People have been talking about Jeantel’s testimony on social media since the moment she took the stand, the blogosphere and mainstream media have been analyzing that reaction since last week, and now we’re here with our take on their analysis.
Reaction to the key witness on social media was as divided as it was swift. There was the usual crowd of racists and borderline racists (perhaps there’s some overlap between that reliably vocal group and supporters of defendant George Zimmerman), who attacked Jeantel for everything from her weight to her English to her perceived lack of intelligence. A few days later a cursory Google search for “Rachel Jeantel” yields results as smarmily racist as this…
…and as maliciously tasteless as this. There were plenty of critics in the prosecution’s camp as well, with numerous Tweets expressing concern that Jeantel’s testimony would damage the prosecution’s case or reflect poorly on people of color. On the other side were the young woman’s supporters, those who expressed sympathy for her difficult situation or applauded her for her “authenticity” and bravery. As usual, Internet commentators and the mainstream media were quick to analyze the meaning of all of this analysis and what it says about the state of race relations in America. We think that conversation is as revealing as the one it seeks to understand.
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