Alex Howard

Today, Twitter finally started rolling out dual-factor authentication for its users. Twitter will allow users to use text messaging to a mobile phone to confirm their identity upon log-in.

Make your Twitter account more secure with login verification, in 4 easy steps: blog.twitter.com/2013/getting-s…

— Twitter (@twitter) May 22, 2013

In a post and accompanying video on the company blog, Twitter product security team member Jim O’Leary (@jimeo) explained how Twitter’s version of 2-factor authentication will work:

…when you sign in to twitter.com, there’s a second check to make sure it’s really you. After you enroll in login verification, you’ll be asked to enter a six-digit code that we send to your phone via SMS each time you sign in to twitter.com.

To get started, visit your account settings page, and select the option “Require a verification code when I sign in”. You’ll need a confirmed email address and a verified phone number. After a quick test to confirm that your phone can receive messages from Twitter, you’re ready to go.

Twitter has lagged behind Google, Microsoft, Facebook and institutions that allow online banking in providing this additional layer of protection. It’s showed: Twitter has been plagued by phishing scams for years.

Recently, however, high profile hacks of Twitter accounts at the Associated Press, the Financial Times and The Onion have put more focus on adding this feature. As Twitter adds more e-commerce deals and becomes more integrated into politics and business, improving security will only become more important.

Today’s announcement is a much-needed improvement. Here’s hoping it gets rolled out quickly to the hundreds of millions of users who can’t get someone at Twitter on the phone after they clicked on the wrong link.

Hat tip: The Verge

Yahoo’s board has approved a $1.1 billion all-cash deal to buy Tumblr, a New York City-based technology company.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer tweeted that this is the first acquisition announced by an animated GIF and promised “not to screw it up,” keeping the team in place and offering support and integration, not re-invention. Yahoo famously acquired delicious, Flickr and Upworthy, amongst other hot online properties, only to let them moulder. Many users still haven’t forgiven Yahoo for its 2009 decision to close Geocities, an popular online community from the 1990s, without archiving it.

Tumblr CEO David Karp tumbled the news and sought to allay user concerns: “We’re not turning purple,” he wrote. “Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing.”

$1.1 billion dollars is a lot of money for a (re)blogging network with tens of millions of users but scant revenue but it buys Yahoo a foothold in mobile social networking and, at least for the moment, many more young users — as long as the community doesn’t flee.

That’s likely one reason that both CEOs took such lengths to be reassuring this morning. Mayer joined Tumblr and has been posting cheeky animated GIFs that allude to seamier side of the social blogging service.

In the months ahead, Tumblr users will see more ads — “native ads” and dashboard ads from Yahoo’s ad network and perhaps in-line ads on the mobile app — much as Facebook users do. That’s no surprise, although finding the right mix of relevancy, frequency and intrusiveness for mobile advertising will be a delicate dance.
Mayer says that the two companies will work together to create “advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience.”

It will be interested to see if that means more sponsored posts and advertorial from “brand journalists” and corporate media writing for business tumblrs. John Battelle’s looks at on displays, streams and native advertising concludes that this move gives Yahoo “an asset that its branded display sales force can sell as sexy: native, content-driven advertising at scale.”

In an attention economy, ads need to be independently entertaining on their own to avoid the click away or being tuned out by the glazed, jaded eyes of young people exposed to an unprecedented bath of media before adulthood.

That’s a dynamic that WordPress founder Matt Mullenwag alluded to in a comment on his post on “Yahooblr“:

In an advertising business a lot of it comes down to attention: how much and where advertisers spend to get your attention usually lags 3-5 years from where people are actually spending their time, and when that gap closes it can be very impressive. Of course it doesn’t happen for free, there are lots of organizational changes needed to execute on that opportunity, and probably as many people screw it up as get it right.

I believe there is also an even-larger-than-advertising opportunity around subscriptions and products. The big shift from older forms of media is that people aren’t just passively consuming as they might in front of a TV, they’re creating. It’s a hobby and a passion, not a vice. In that context I think subscriptions are more aligned with users than advertising, and that’s the direction Automattic is pointed in.

The big question most technology pundits and business analysts will be asking today is whether this makes sense for Yahoo and puts them on a stronger course. The initial market reaction put Yahoo stock up nearly 1% at 11 AM.

On a personal note, I expect to keep tumbling, though I find WordPress to be a superior blogging platform. That said, my attention is spread across many different social platforms and media organizations, not to mention my inbox and iPhone.

If I’m confronted by too many ads on the Tumblr mobile app, I’m going to spend less time consuming and creating there. I’m sure I’m not alone.

Thursday was my last day at O’Reilly Media. The past three years have been extraordinary. No other professional experience I’ve had even comes close to matching it.

Tim gave me the opportunity to have an impact on the world in the spring of 2010 and I took it and ran with it for all that I was worth.  I started my career at O’Reilly by interviewing Tim Berners-Lee, live on the Internet, and I finished by sharing the stage with Al Gore and Madeline Albright at Stanford, albeit in a non-speaking role. (Recognize that young looking fellow below?)

As I’ve navigated the corridors of power in DC,  statehouses, boardrooms and legislatures around the world, O’Reilly’s name and reputation opened doors everywhere. I lost count of the number of times that I pinched myself during my travels.

I also lost count of the number of the hundreds of articles I wrote over the years, bracketed by videos, annotated pictures, and tens of thousands of tweets and status updates on Facebook, Google+, Tumblr and other services. My wonderful editor, Mac Slocum, encouraged me to use the Web and social media as a platform for narrative expression, increasing the surface area for ideas and amplifying the work of people innovated at the edges of society and social change.

I was blessed with brilliant, supportive colleagues who approached collaboration and work with purpose, good humor and wit. I’m deeply grateful for all of the advice, mentorship, teamwork and wisdom that they  offered over the years.

I enjoyed the support of an amazing executive team when I spoke truth to power and pushed for change on important issue.  Few companies would have provided the degree of editorial freedom and institutional support that I had from my very first day. I saw the work we did together had a positive effect upon the world, from Israel to Africa to Australia to Australia to San Francisco — and I heard about it from people in those places and many more. I’m deeply honored to have spent this time with O’Reilly.

Briefing the president and cabinet of Moldova about the Internet and the next generation of open government remains a highlight, as was my interview of the prime minister of Georgia and delivering remarks in front of the Brazilian Congress. There are also  thousands of other moments and memories that I treasure that will never be as public but will be remain important to me in the years to come. Thank you all for your confidence and trust.

My email address at oreilly.com may no longer be a secure direct connection to but I welcome your news, tips and ideas through more than a dozen social media channels.

I’ll have more to share with the world about “what’s next” for in the days and weeks to come. For now, I’m looking forward to becoming a father for the first time in about 40 days.

Thank you to each and every one of you who have read, commented, replied, retweeted, reshared, picked up the phone and offered your time for interviews and reflections.

I look forward to seeing you online and around the world.

For the last decade, I’ve thought about going offline like Paul Miller. Turn off, drop off, tune in to life offline.

I’ve never done it. Thinking back, I don’t think I’ve been fully offline more than a month since 1999. I do periodically unwire. A night out here, a long bike ride there, a long weekend in the woods.

The last time it truly happened for more than 24 hours was in January in Anguilla, where I took long hikes, paddles, swims or went sailing without a connection. (I didn’t attempt a tweet during my kite boarding lesson.) Or last August, up in Cape Cod. Vacation is now virtually defined for me as being offline, without commitments. Before that trip, the last truly offline time was my honeymoon, in Greece, where, again, there was (often) no connection to be had.

I may still choose to share my experience and stay connected while I’m on vacation, or “paid time off,” as my former employer calls it, but doing so was always on my own time, at my own choosing. Each time I disconnect, I’ve learned something valuable about myself, both in terms of the person I’ve always been and the man I’ve become.

I’m glad Paul Miller did this and shared his experience. I think such reflection is important and the insight derived from it has always helped to shape and guide my subsequent choices about using technology.

In particular, his shift to finding other distractions, from games to television, was a reminder that we have agency in our own lives. We can choose whether and how to maintain our relationships, our minds, our bodies and our professional, intellectual or recreational pursuits, whether we’re connected or not.

It’s tempting to blame “the Internet” for poor choices or bad habits — and there are reasons to be cautious about how games or social networks tap into certain innate aspects of human behavior — but my personal experience with the network of networks has been enormously empowering and uplifting.

Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Earlier today, the White House officially joined Tumblr. A short initial post and a hand-drawn infographic explained what the 100 million or so active members of the social blogging platform what to expect when they visit whitehouse.tumblr.com:

We’ll post things like the best quotes from President Obama, or video of young scientists visiting the White House for the science fair, or photos of adorable moments with Bo. We’ve got some wonky charts, too. Because to us, those are actually kind of exciting. But this is also about you. President Obama is committed to making this the most open and accessible administration in history, and our Tumblr is no exception. We want to see what you have to share: Questions you have for the White House, stories of what a policy like immigration reform means to you, or ways we can improve our Tumbling. We’re new here, and we’re all ears.

The move onto Tumblr is only the latest in the progression of the White House establishing beachheads on the most popular social networks on the planet.

Over the past several years, the White House digital team has used unprecedented scale of its connections on these networks to try to influence national debates on proposed laws, policies and rules, applying public engagement to politics with mixed results. Now the team will be  as well as tweeting, blogging, liking , pinning and plussing.

The White House had already joined other popular social networks over the years, including:

• Facebook: The White House
• MySpace: The White House
• Google+: The White House
• Twitter: The White House
• LinkedIn: The White House Group
• YouTube: The White House Channel
• Vimeo: The White House
• Flickr: The White House’s photostream
• iTunes: White House Podcasts
• Foursquare: The White House
• Socrata: whitehouse
• SlideShare: White House
• Storify: The White House
• Digg: The White House
• Github: White House
• Vine: White House

While the conventions of Tumblr will mean the way that the staffers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue communicates will be different than 140 character tweets, White House Hangouts or holiday pinning, the overall strategy is the same: use new media tools to go directly to the public. For a fun twist on that strategy, look no further than the White House joining Vine on the day of the White House Science Fair.

Tumblr’s culture lends itself to infographics and pictures, particularly animated versions of images in the Graphics Interchange Format. (Animated GIFs were a big deal in Election 2012, if you missed it.)

The White House clearly understands that context, given the nod at the end of today’s initial post: “…yes, there will be GIFs.” So, apparently, does the staffer running the Twitter account of First Lady Michelle Obama:

The @whitehouse is now on @tumblr (and there will be @letsmove GIFs). whitehouse.tumblr.com, ow.ly/kt1eG

— FLOTUS (@FLOTUS) April 26, 2013

I can only imagine what might have been if these tools had been around two decades ago.

@billclinton If you were still in the @whitehouse, would you post GIFs of Socks to Tumblr? bit.ly/120lBGm twitter.com/digiphile/stat…

— Alex Howard (@digiphile) April 26, 2013

One detail in the first tumblr post shouldn’t go unnoticed: the White House is asking users to send them posts using Tumblr’s submission tool.

If they’re anywhere near as daring with resharing submissions as they’ve been with retweets at @WhiteHouse on Twitter, many political reporters will soon be adding “reblog does not equal endorsement” to their Tumblr profiles in the days to come.

Postscript on Pronunciation: At Buzzfeed, Ellie Hall noticed another detail embedded in the graphic accompanying today’s inaugural Tumblr post: the White House weighed in on the pronunciation of GIF, coming down on the side of the hard “G,” like “gift.”

As she correctly reports, however, the creators of the GIF format have long held that the correct pronunciation of GIF with a soft “G,” like “gem.” That’s how Compuserve employees pronounced it as well, back in the late 1980s.

Who’s right? The GIF Pronunciation page comes down hard (er, soft?) on the side of “jif.” As noted in Wikipedia, however, where such contentious debates never fully expire, the Oxford English Dictionary^[5] and the American Heritage Dictionary.^[6] accept both pronunciations as correct. Good luck successfully navigating this debate, Mr. President.

Post-Postscript: The White House made good on its promise quickly, publishing an animated GIF of President Obama brushing his shoulder off prior to his appearance at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner to Tumblr last Saturday.

Other posts include three pictures, in keeping with Tumblr’s visual style, including links to the White House blog and video of the President’s comedic set from the dinner.

This afternoon, I gave a talk on open data journalism at the Developing the Caribbean Conference at the University of the West Indies, Mona in Jamaica. The diGJamaica liveblog captured the discussion. Video may be available later. For now, my presentation is embedded below, with many links inside of it.

I never expected to associate a “tweaser” with The Wolverine. (I assumed Wolverine’s healing powers would always extrude any splinter.)

That changed yesterday, when James Mangold, the director of the most recent cinematic treatment of the comic book hero’s adventures, tweeted the first “tweaser” of the new century. He used Twitter’s new Vine app to share the short clip, a tightly edited 6 seconds of  footage from the upcoming film. You can watch Vine’s big moment in tweet embedded below.

The tweaser. vine.co/v/bDExaiMjJ1F

— James Mangold (@mang0ld) March 25, 2013

Twitter certainly has come a long way from txt messages. As Lily Rothman quipped at Time, the emergence of a 6 second tweaser that can be retweeted, tumbled and embedded gives “new meaning to the intersection of Hollywood and Vine.”

Jen Yamato has the backstory behind 20th Century Fox’s debut of a 21st century tweaser over at Deadline, including credit to Fox executive Tony Sella for the coinage:

Last week FilmDistrict was the first studio to use Twitter’s new looping app as a marketing tool. Here’s an even buzzier use of Vine: A 6-second “tweaser” (that’s Twitter teaser, or “TWZZR”) previewing Fox’s July 26 superhero pic Wolverine.

I suspect that at least a few of the tweasers that go flickering by on Twitter, Vine and blog posts will lead people to do what I did: become aware of the upcoming and film and look for a longer version of the teaser trailer elsewhere online. If a tweaser comes with a custom short URL, so much the easier.

To that point, If you want to watch a higher quality “full-length” version of the teaser, there’s now a teaser trailer available on the iTunes Store and a YouTube version:
… which, it’s worth pointing out, can also be embedded in tweets.

Hopefully, history remember will remember “The Wolverine for more than being the subject of the world’s first “tweaser.” Then again, our attention spans may not be up to it, particularly if the length of the interactive media we consume continues to shorten at this rate.

Nisha Chittal asked a number of journalists (including me) about where they stand for on using same-sex marriage symbols on their social media profiles.

Here’s what she found: “The answer is a multi-layered one: it depends on the journalist, the outlet they work for, the social media platform, and whether the journalist is covering this week’s Supreme Court hearings.”

I was honored to see that Nisha gave me the “kicker quote” at the end. If you’d like to weigh in on your stance on this ethical issue, comment away.

Here’s the statement I submitted to her inquiry:

In general, the consensus answer amongst the journalists I respect is that changing your avatar to a symbol like this is not OK, based upon the ethics policies of places like the AP, WSJ, NYT, PBS or NPR.

I think the capacity to demonstrate support for one side of a contentious social issue like this varies, depending upon the masthead a journalist is working under, the ethics policy of that masthead, the role of the journalist and the coverage area of the journalist. Staking out positions on a reporter’s beat is generally frowned upon.

Opinion journalists who regularly take positions on the issues of the day as columnists have often already made it clear where they stand on a policy or law. Advocacy journalism has an established place in the marketplace for ideas. Readers know where a writer stands and are left to judge the strength of an argument and the evidence presented to back it.

If a reporter takes on overt, implicit position on an issue that she is reporting on, however, will it be possible to interview sources who oppose it?

On the other hand, there are a number of social issues that may have had “sides” in past public discourse but have now become viewpoints that few journalists would find tenable to support today.

How many journalists were able to remain neutral or objective in their coverage of slavery in the 1860s? Womens’ suffrage in the early 20th century? Civil rights in the 1960s? Child slavery, sex trafficking, so-called “honor rape” or the impression of child soldiers in the present?

Interracial marriage was illegal in some states in the Union, not so many years ago. That is not the case any longer. It seems to me that gay marriage is on the same trajectory. The arc of the moral universe is long indeed, but I tend to agree with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on its trajectory: it bends towards justice.