Editor in chief of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, stars in a parody of the well-known MasterCard commercials, which has gone viral over the last few days, in order to single out MasterCard, Visa, Bank of America, Paypal and Western Union for blocking donations to WikiLeaks.
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An infographic from Mashable, The Winners & Losers of Social Networking, was the most-Tweeted news link during the week of April 11-15, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s New Media Index, while the list of news links shared by bloggers was topped by the first authorized biography of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and the most-watched news and politics video on YouTube, for the second consecutive week, was chaos during a soccer match in Egypt April 2.
Google’s announcement that it would spend $100 million to create original programming for its YouTube video site was the subject of 10 percent of news links shared via Twitter, topping that category in the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s New Media Index for the week of April 4-8.
The WikiLeaks controversy continued to dominate news links shared by bloggers during the week of Dec. 20-24, while a column by Mashable writer Vadim Lavrusik predicting 10 major developments in news media for 2011 accounted for the most Tweeted news links, and the most-watched news and politics video on YouTube was footage from the Dec. 14 shooting at a Florida school board meeting, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s New Media Index.
Julian Assange and company accounted for 35 percent of news links shared via the blogosphere, followed by: the repeal of the don’t ask, don’t tell policy in the U.S. military, at 15 percent; Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez defending his plans to impose broadcast-like regulations on the Internet, at 9 percent; an article from The Washington Post about an environmental study that found probable carcinogen hexavalent chromium in the drinking water of 31 out of 35 major cities examined, at 7 percent; and at 6 percent, another Washington Post contribution about the actions by the administration of President Barack Obama relating to Guantanamo Bay.
Keith Olbermann‘s self-imposed suspension from Tweeting lasted about as long as his MSNBC-imposed suspension from hosting Countdown with Keith Olbermann, as the talk-show host returned to Twitter with this Tweet Sunday:
And we’re back. Tweeting will resume tomorrow. Good night and… etc. (Avatar dates to 1971 at Yankee Stadium).
At the time of this post, Olbermann had Tweeted twice more, including this promise to go into more details about the controversy that drove him to temporarily quit the microblogging service in the first place:
FYI there will be a tweet (and some retweets) later today about the #mooreandme spectacle
Olbermann reacted to extensive criticism via the microblogging service over hosting filmmaker Michael Moore on Countdown, during which Moore said the controversy over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was overblown, and for retweeting a link from Bianca Jagger that dismissed the charges against Assange and possibly revealed the identities of the women who accused him of sexual misconduct.
Keith Olbermann is suspended again, but this time it’s from Twitter, not MSNBC, and this one was self-imposed.
According to The Huffington Post, Olbermann reacted to extensive criticism via the microblogging service over hosting filmmaker Michael Moore on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, during which Moore said the controversy over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was overblown, and for retweeting a link from Bianca Jagger that dismissed the charges against Assange and possibly revealed the identities of the women who accused him of sexual misconduct.
Olbermann’s “final” Tweets, for now:
Approximately 3 p.m. ET:: I’ve discovered that I am accused of being a rape apologist in part because I didn’t remove the quotes from the word rape in a retweet
Minutes later: I’ll thus unblock all blocks, wish you all a Merry Christmas and I’ll suspend this account until/if this frenzy is stopped.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has more important things to worry about, like trying to secure his release on bail from prison in Sweden. There is no celebrating in the office of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Lady Gaga is not dancing. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have one less thing to be smug about on Comedy Central, and ditto for Glenn Beck on Fox News Channel. President Barack Obama is dealing with more significant issues, like war and unemployment. Steve Jobs is gearing up for the release of the second-generation iPad. The Chilean miners are probably just happy to be alive. And, much like Assange and Obama, the unemployed American has far more significant issues to deal with.
What do all of those people have in common? They all finished ahead of Mark Zuckerberg in voting by TIME readers for its 2010 Person of the Year, yet the Facebook co-founder and CEO rebounded from finishing No. 10 on the readers’ poll and impressed the magazine’s editors enough to be named TIME 2010 Person of the Year.
From the explanation penned by managing editor Richard Stengel:
Like two of our runners-up this year, Julian Assange and the Tea Party, Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t have a whole lot of veneration for traditional authority. In a sense, Zuckerberg and Assange are two sides of the same coin. Both express a desire for openness and transparency. While Assange attacks big institutions and governments through involuntary transparency with the goal of disempowering them, Zuckerberg enables individuals to voluntarily share information with the idea of empowering them. Assange sees the world as filled with real and imagined enemies; Zuckerberg sees the world as filled with potential friends. Both have a certain disdain for privacy: In Assange’s case because he feels it allows malevolence to flourish; in Zuckerberg’s case because he sees it as a cultural anachronism, an impediment to a more efficient and open connection between people.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appears to be one step closer to being released from prison, according to reports, but even if prosecutors in Sweden appeal the ruling to release him on bail, he has one piece of good news to hold onto: Assange was the readers’ choice for TIME‘s Person of the Year 2010.
Editors from TIME will reveal the magazine’s choice for Person of the Year on NBC’s Today Wednesday morning.
TIME said Assange collected 382,020 of the total of 1,249,425 votes cast, far outdistancing second-place finisher Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who finished with 148,383 fewer votes. However, the magazine added that Lady Gaga crushed Assange on Facebook, totaling 65,417 likes versus 45,643.
The readers’ top 10, unchanged from last Wednesday:
1: Julian Assange
2: Recep Tayyip Erdogan
3: Lady Gaga
4: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert
5: Glenn Beck
6: Barack Obama
7: Steve Jobs
8: The Chilean Miners
9: The Unemployed American
10: Mark Zuckerberg
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may be cooling his heels in a London jail, but he will likely be heartened by the news that with four days left in the voting, he is atop TIME‘s voting for Person of the Year.
Voting ends Sunday, and the magazine will name its Person of the Year Wednesday, Dec. 15.
The top 10, as of Wednesday:
1: Julian Assange
2: Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
3: Lady Gaga
4: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert
5: Glenn Beck
6: Barack Obama
7: Steve Jobs
8: The Chilean miners
9: The unemployed American
10: Mark Zuckerberg
While major online financing services such as PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa have shut down their dealings with the embattled WikiLeaks, one microfinancing startup is still hanging on. Flattr, a micropayment startup created by Peter Sunde, co-founder of the infamous BitTorrent sharing site The Pirate Bay, still accepts donations on behalf of the document-leaking non-profit.
WikiLeaks, which has come under intense international pressure after publishing leaked U.S. diplomatic cables, has seen its most of its major funding sources dry up (the big ones are U.S.-based). PayPal, owned by online auction giant eBay, restricted WikiLeaks’ account on Saturday, saying the organization violated its policy on facilitating illegal activity. MasterCard began denying donations to WikiLeaks on Monday, followed by Visa a day later.
PostFinance, the financial arm of the Swiss postal system also shut down a bank account owned by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was using it to collect donations. Assange was arrested in London on unrelated criminal allegations Tuesday.
Sunde has been a public advocate for Assange and WikiLeaks. He has also proposed a peer-to-peer DNS system that would prevent domain name registrations from being revoked, as was done with the WikiLeaks.org domain.
His company Flattr, based in Sweden, allows users to vote on content they like, much like Digg or Condé Nast’s Reddit, except each vote is actually a micro amount of cash. Users pay a monthly donation to Flattr (minimum €2). At the end of the month, that fee is split between all the content providers that user has Flattr’d.
Sunde started Flattr in March along with Linus Olsson. WikiLeaks, which has experienced funding problems in 2009, was among its first financing partners, although any company can now sign up to accept Flattr payments. At the time, he told TechCrunch that Flattr was “prepared for the controversy.”
