Top 10 Tweets Of The Week

The Week Ending May 23

Hewlett-Packard's pink slip bloodbath, Surface 3 and hacking dominated the IT Twitter-verse this week. We spotted Cisco's tweets, featuring its CEO John Chambers professing his love for partners, Sheryl Crow crooning for IBM partners at its Edge conference, and witnessed a Twitter-based melodrama play out between China and the U.S. over alleged hacking.

Enjoy!

Numbers Don't Lie

Anna Drezen, humorist, actor and former writer at TheOnion.com, wasn't impressed with AT&T's agreement to buy DirecTV for $48.5 billion.

Pink Slip Storm Brewing

Hewlett-Packard's disappointing earnings on Thursday, and its subsequent plans to lay off as many as 16,000 employees, drew a mix of "I told you so" and somber tweets sympathetic to the pending pink slip storm. Dave Cronk, former vice president of U.S. sales, enterprise business inside sales at HP, tweeted his support for employees.

Meanwhile, HP's official Twitter account focused on the positive tweeting: "With the first half of fiscal 2014 closed, I'm pleased to report that HP's turnaround remains on track." –CEO Meg Whitman

Sour On Surface

Microsoft's update to its Surface tablet on Tuesday drew a tsunami of tweets regarding the laptop-like potential of Surface Pro 3. But for some, such as John Obeto II, it was an opportunity to lob a zinger at early false reports of a mini Surface.

Sinofsky On Surface

Steven Sinofsky, former chief of Microsoft's Windows division, has been mum since his departure from Microsoft and subsequent new role at Andreessen Horowitz. But earlier this week, he couldn't resist weighing in with a tweet to congratulate the Surface team on its work with the tablet.

Mobile Wars Heating Up

The mobile OS war received some attention in the twitter-verse this week, as Apple on Wednesday released the official schedule for its annual developer event, confirming that it will hold a keynote presentation on Monday, June 2. Neil Shah, wireless analyst with CounterPoint, said that despite Google's mobile OS dominance worldwide with its Android, the numbers are quite different here in the U.S.

Harping About Hacking

A volley of tweets were launched when the U.S. Justice Department unsealed documents indicting five Chinese hackers called "UglyGorilla" and "KandyGoo" for allegedly engaging in hacking into the networks of Westinghouse Electric, the United States Steel Corp. and other companies. Twitter user Arik Hesseldahl astutely picked up on the ensuing escalation of tensions that would quickly transpire between the U.S. and China.

And on Thursday China made moves that many Twitter users believe was in direct response to the DOJ's actions.

"I am convinced this so called ban on Windows 8 in China has nothing to do with the software and is more to do with America's charging Chinese military officials with industrial espionage. " – @dick_turpin

Better With Partners

At this week's Cisco Live event, CEO John Chambers rubbed elbows with partners. The official EMC Corp. Twitter account tweeted out a picture of one such meeting.

Party Like A Rock Star

There were several big IT conferences this week, each covered by CRN's intrepid reporters on site. There was Cisco Live and IBM's Edge 2014. Beyond the usual barrage of attendee tweets regarding the keynotes, news announcements and break-out sessions, there were a flood of tweets regarding the sponsored rock star performances each event had. IBM treated its business partners to a private concert by Sheryl Crow. Cisco attendees enjoyed a "Customer Appreciation Event" featuring Lenny Kravitz and Imagine Dragons.

Lost In Translation

Matthew Green, a noted cryptographer and assistant professor of research at Johns Hopkins University, referring to a statement from an eBay spokesperson on the length the company took to protect user passwords using an obfuscation technique called salting and hashing.

"I immediately translate 'sophisticated and proprietary hashing and salting' to 'OMG we assigned that to the intern who got busted for pot.'"

The Blame Game

Anyone who is annoyed at the nonstop bickering among Apple, Samsung, Google and dozens more IT firms over patents can appreciate the candor of Ryan Singel, founder of Contextly, who tweeted his not-so-unbiased opinions on a patent reform bill that died in Congress this week.