Post date: Mar 22, 2014 10:13:57 AM
R Reports - Twitter and its dedicated army of users may be getting the last laugh-staging a "digital coup" after Turkey's prime minister- a heavy Twitter user himself- blocked the social media site.
The Twitter ban came ahead of bitterly contested elections. Tech-savvy Turks- including the country's own President- quickly found a workaround- with a little help from Twitter itself.
Mashable's Lance Ulanoff:LANCE ULANOFF, EDITOR-AT-LARGE AND CHIEF CORRESPONDENT, MASHABLE:
"The really fascinating thing now what they are doing is they are spray painting on walls the DNS changes you need to make to re-access Twitter. I mean that is how the public has changed. That is how tech savvy people have become."
The hashtag #TwitterisblockedinTurkey among the top trending hashtags in the world.
The ban came after Twitter ignored requests to remove content related to a political scandal.
But while this incident likely won't impact Twitter's bottom line- it's not the first time politics has gotten in the way of social media- and some countries, like China, are more effective in their bans.
LANCE ULANOFF, EDITOR-AT-LARGE AND CHIEF CORRESPONDENT, MASHABLE:
"It is a big risk. Certainly because the biggest markets for the social media networks are the developing nations, are the nations where they haven't really built a stronghold or gotten a foothold or - in the U.S. they are saturated, so they are looking outside the U.S. to really grow."
Those risks are no secret to investors says S&P Capital IQ's Scott Kessler:
SCOTT KESSLER, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, GLOBAL EQUITY RESEARCH, S&P CAPITAL IQ :
"These companies, to a large extent, highlight pretty extensively in the context of public SEC filings that there are risks related to countries and governments that choose to not make these offerings available in a broad sense or in a selective sense. And the fact is, that really we don't see these as very impactful to these companies or their businesses."
Twitter says it hopes official service in Turkey can be restored soon.