By Cynthia Herbert :: 11:37 PM
A multicar wreck occurred today at the Daytona International Speedway, near the end of the Nationwide Series Drive4COPD 300 NASCAR race.
The race had recently restarted after another crash was cleared from the track, and several cars were jockeying for position when they collided, kicking off a chain reaction that involved several vehicles, and ended in a spectacular crash that tossed debris, including tires and an engine, into the stands.
A NASCAR fan had filmed the crash, and uploaded the video to YouTube earlier this afternoon, but NASCAR filed a take-down notice with the video-sharing site, and the video was removed – YouTube cited copyright restrictions as the reason.
Angry NASCAR fans and others quickly took to Twitter and decried the action, and copies of the video began appearing across the Web quickly, on sites like LiveLeak, and popular sports news blog DeadSpin.
NASCAR issued the following statement, “The fan video of the wreck on the final lap of today’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race was blocked on YouTube out of respect for those injured in today’s accident. Information on the status of those fans was unclear and the decision was made to err on the side of caution with this very serious incident.”
Several hours after it has been taken down, YouTube reinstated the video with this message, “Our partners and users do not have the right to take down videos from YouTube unless they contain content which is copyright infringing, which is why we have reinstated the videos.”
Most of the Twittersphere doesn’t believe NASCAR’s reasoning for pulling the video – popular sentiment seems to think that they did it to protect their image. Unfortunately for NASCAR, once something hits the Internet, it’s very difficult to pretend it didn’t happen – just ask Beyonce about those Super Bowl pictures.
The video from the Daytona Speedway crash that NASCAR attempted to censor is below.
By Paul Thomson :: 9:43 AM
Update: Around 11:00, campus officials declared an “all clear” and returned the campus to normal operations. No gunman was found.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Twitter account sent out a warning to students and community members just after 9:00 this morning stating that a gunman with body armor had been reported on campus.
The Tweet ordered those on campus to stay away from the Main Group Building, where the gunman was alleged to be located.
Students and others on campus have been directed to MIT’s Emergency website for additional information.
Tweets below from @MITnews – most recent Tweet at top:
Please shelter in place and stay clear of the main group. Dial 100 to report suspicious activity emergency.mit.net
— MIT (@MITnews) February 23, 2013
Cambridge PD reports info of possible ind. with gun/body armor on campus. Stay clear of main group until notice emergency.mit.net/emergency/
— MIT (@MITnews) February 23, 2013
By Cynthia Herbert :: 8:57 AM
When Pope Benedict XVI steps down from his role as the leader of the Catholic church at the end of this month, his Twitter account, @pontifex, will be closed, according to sources at the Vatican.
The Vatican Radio broadcast a message saying that, “it seems unimaginable that one could continue to use a communication tool so popular and powerful during the ‘sede vacante’ period,” Â referring to the period of time when the Church is between Popes while a committee of Cardinals meet to select a new leader. At this time, it is not known if the next Pope will be expected to Tweet or use social media in any fashion.
Pope Benedict stunned the world recently when he announced that he would resign on February 28, citing his age and health concerns as the reason for his departure. The last Pope to resign office was Pope Gregory XII in 1415 – no Twitter accounts to worry about back then.
The Pope joined Twitter three months ago, and his followers grew to over 1.5 million, despite the fact that the Pope has only posted about 30 Tweets.
Vatican Radio made an assumption that the Pope (or his staff) may send one or two last Tweets from the account toward the end of Benedict’s time at the helm of the Church.
The Pope’s most recent Tweet talked about Lent, and was sent on February 17, “Lent is a favourable time in which to rediscover faith in God as the foundation of our lives and of the Church’s life,” he wrote.
By Paul Thomson :: 3:52 PM
Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer has reportedly pulled the plug on work-at-home arrangements within the company.
Mayer has introduced a new plan with Yahoo’s Human Resources office that would require remote employees to work full-time out of a Yahoo office.
AllThingsD reports that the change in rules will affect several hundred employees, who will either need to move closer to a Yahoo office, or leave their jobs at the company.
By Gilbert Falso :: 11:26 AM
When Facebook was working on improving its mobile applications for iOS and Android over the past several months, the company accidentally made changes to how the data about news feed posts by Pages was calculated.
This glitch caused Facebook’s metrics, Page Insights, to be misreported for several months, leading Page administrators to wrongly believe that their posts and interactions reached far fewer people than they actually did.
Facebook is working now to address this problem, and will ensure that accurate data will be fed into the Page Insights program early next week.
The bug did not have any affect on how posts were seen by fans of Pages – it only affected how these posts or interactions were counted and reported by Facebook.