WARC, 24 March 2014
ISTANBUL: Twitter is reported to be taking legal advice to
challenge the ban imposed on the social networking site by the Turkish
government, with major brands deciding to refrain from using the service while
the dispute remains unresolved.
Access to the site was blocked shortly after prime minister
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told a rally of supporters: "We'll eradicate Twitter.
I don't care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the
power of the Turkish Republic."
Hürriyet quoted a later clarification from the Prime
Minister's office which said Twitter had ignored court rulings to remove some
links and as long as that situation continued the only remedy was "to
block access in order to relieve our citizens".
Before the ban Twitter posted a tweet advising how users
could continue to tweet in the country via SMS. Campaign reported that only one
of Turkey's top 10 most-followed brands on Twitter, the Ticketmaster-owned
Biletix, was still tweeting as usual, along with other local brands, including
Doğus tea and Beymen fashion.
Major brands, however, including Turkish Airlines, Vodafone,
Samsung and Audi, were silent.
The row comes as Twitter celebrated its eighth birthday by
helping users discover their first tweets and it was reported to be looking at
making some major changes to the site's operation.
Vivian Schiller, head of news at Twitter, told a US
conference: "We are working on moving the scaffolding of Twitter into the
background".
When asked if that meant @ replies and hashtags were being
phased out, she gave a non-committal reply: "There's a lot of creative
thinking going on around how to make Twitter more and more intuitive. Watch
this space."
Data sourced from Hürriyet, Campaign, The Drum; additional
content by Warc staff
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