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THIS WAS THE CLAIM

Rais: PM got 3.6m tweets during ‘Janji Ditepati’ rally.

Information, Communication and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Rais Yatim said that within an hour, some 3,611,323 tweets were recorded nationwide to the prime minister’s account, @NajibRazak, containing various independence-themed messages.

“The other record was for the 10,128 tweeters in the Bukit Jalil National Stadium who tweeted #Merdeka55 simultaneously,” he said.

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Malaysiakini

Bernama 9:10PM Sep 9, 2012

Twitter record is legit, says deputy info minister

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Despite grandiose claims from Information Minister Rais Yatim that 3.6 million tweets were recorded in just one hour on August 31 – as Malaysians sent in congratulatory National Day messages to Najib’s #Merdeka55 hashtag – there has been deafening silence from Twitter.

Malaysia Chronicle

Saturday, 08 September 2012 08:27

Using ‘Bots’ to CHEAT on Twitter?Fears grow Najib & BN will DESTROY Msia’s credibility

Written by  Maria Begum, Malaysia Chronicle

From doctored photos aimed to show greater public support than he may really command to using clones or ‘bots’ to cheat on a Twitter record, it looks like Prime Minister Najib Razak may really be on his last legs and clinging to straws as the next general election nears and knives are out to get him from within his own Umno party.

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According to the social media research house, the tweets using the #Merdeka55 hashtag were “almost entirely” confined to Malaysia, with only five tweets streaming in from outside the nation — Myanmar, Switzerland, Britain, Indonesia and Singapore.

“Further investigation revealed that a small group of users were responsible for a large volume of tweets. These users had similar characteristics, e.g. account creation date, profile photos, location and follower/following relationships. All of their duplicate tweets were sent using Tweetdeck,” Politweet wrote, calling these duplicate tweets as “clones”.
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Using ‘Bots’ to CHEAT on Twitter?Fears grow Najib & BN will DESTROY Msia’s credibility

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Malaysian Insider

A screen capture from the Politweet Facebook page showed a series of identical entries on Twitter that were registered during the National Day record attempt.

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 8 — Malaysia could have made Twitter history for the number of National Day messages sent on the microblogging site last week if “clones” had not been used to pollute the actual number of tweets sent, an independent social media research house has concluded.

Politweet.org pointed out in its report yesterday on the #Merdeka55 hashtag movement that despite Putrajaya’s claim that Malaysians had breached the 3.6 million tweet mark in just one hour on August 31, no other third-party authority has since verified this declaration as true.

“So assuming the figure is true, it is possible that the 3.6 million tweets are a world record,” the research house wrote in its report.

“However to date, Twitter has made no announcement on their blog about #Merdeka55. There is also no mention of the #Merdeka55 record online by other tracking websites,” it pointed out.

“Without a third party to verify the data, the 3.6 million tweets figure is doubtful,” Politweet said.

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………Politweet said it had begun tracking mentions of #Merdeka55 on Twitter from August 28, the moment Rais had announced Putrajaya’s aim to hit a one million-tweet mark for tweets sent within an hour from 8.15pm to 9.15pm on August 31.

But during the targeted hour, Politweet said it had observed an “odd pattern” during the live stream — “large blocks of identical tweets were being sent at the same time”.

“Further investigation revealed that a small group of users were responsible for a large volume of tweets.

“These users had similar characteristics, e.g. account creation date, profile photos, location and follower/following relationships. All of their duplicate tweets were sent using Tweetdeck,” Politweet wrote, calling these duplicate tweets as “clones”.

The social media research house said the tweets using the #Merdeka55 hashtag were “almost entirely” confined to Malaysia, with only five tweets streaming in from outside the nation — Myanmar, Switzerland, Britain, Indonesia and Singapore.
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‘Clones’ likely ruined Malaysia’s Twitter record bid, says research house

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Malaysiakini

Nigel Aw 11:12AM Sep 1, 2012

While Putrajaya has been accused on numerous occasions of allegedly deploying phantom voters in the general elections, the trend appeared to have caught up with Twitterjaya during the #Merdeka55 tweet-up last night.

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However, Twitter research firm politweet.org found that 38 percent of the tweets were potentially questionable as they may have come from bots – software which controls multiple twitter accounts.

This was based on a sample of about 107,000 tweets it collected from some 19,000 users within the same time frame.

Of this, 38 percent of the tweets came from 14 percent of the said users, all of which had used TweetDeck.

“That’s 41,000 tweets from 2761 users. These were the likely spammers,” Politweet.org said in a Facebook posting in its preliminary analysis of the tweet-up.

TweetDeck is a supporting platform for Twitter, allowing a user to manage multiple accounts at any one time.

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Bot army after Twitter politicians

Avid politicians on Twitter, too, were spammed with an avalanche of identical #Merdeka55 messages.

Bukit Lanjan state assemblyperson Elizabeth Wong uploaded a picture on Twitter showing several users tweeting at her with the message: “Jom ucap Selamat Hari #Merdeka55 to DS @Najib Razak” (Lets wish #Merdeka55 day to Najib Razak) concurrently.

“Spammed by bots earlier, same message, same time by 30 accounts. Some same (profile) picture. 3 million (tweets) cited (is) doubtful,” she said in a Twitter posting.

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In an immediate reaction to the analysis, some Twitter users expressed disappointment at the possible use of bots despite the realistic target with the country’s large social media user base while others poked fun at the allegation.

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Another user nicknamed Dinesweri said: “Is there any partime tweet bot job available? Heard that the job offers a high pay.”

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Phantoms hit Twitterjaya #Merdeka55 tweet-up

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Malaysian Insider

A screen capture from the Politweet Facebook page shows a series of identical entries on Twitter that were registered during the record attempt.

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 1 ― Putrajaya’s claim of setting a record 3.6 million tweets in an hour during the country’s 55th Independence Day celebration was met with disbelief by Malaysian Twitter users, who accused the organiser of rigging the bid by using “bots” to generate false publicity.

A screen capture shows a Twitter post made during the record attempt.

Malaysian users of the micro-blogging service continued today to pour scorn over Information, Communication and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Rais Yatim’s record-beating claim.“Bots doing retweeting 4 thousand times, then u proud of hvg mils of tweets?” Twitter user @Amir_Shari wrote, referring to computer programmes designed to send out automated responses on the service.

Another user, Cyril Dason, tweeted on his account @cyrildason that “#merdeka55 stats online: 1,500 tweets generated 493,610 impressions, reaching an audience of 185,482 followers within the past 24 hours”, in an apparent rebuttal of the federal government’s record-setting claim.

They were responding to Rais’ announcement last night that some 3,611,323 tweets were recorded between 8.15pm and 9.15pm nationwide to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s account, @NajibRazak, containing various independence-themed messages, during the “Janji Ditepati (Promises Fulfilled)” gathering at Stadium Bukit Jalil.

Independent online research house PoliTweet.org, which tracks social media use in Malaysian politics, had also noted the use of “bots” to increase the number of tweets for the event.

A screen capture shows a Twitter post made during the record attempt.

It observed that mentions of the official hashtag movement created for the event, #Merdeka55, had been generated at an unusual rate estimated at 720 tweets a minute, leading it to conclude that the messages were automated.“Noticeable use of bots tweeting the exact same tweet at the exact same time, as seen in this screen-capture,” said PoliTweet.

“From 815-915pm we collected 107K tweets from 19K users. This represents a by-the-minute sample of what was tweeted. 38% of tweets came from 14% of the users, all of whom used TweetDeck,” it said on its website. “That’s 41K tweets from 2761 users. These were the likely spammers.”

Read the rest of the article:

On Twitter, doubts over Putrajaya’s Merdeka record claim

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Malaysian Insider

Rais: PM got 3.6m tweets during ‘Janji Ditepati’ rally

Najib (second left) waves the national flag on stage during the “Janji Ditepati” rally at Bukit Jalil Stadium, August 31, 2012.—Picture by Saw Siow Feng

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 1 — Two records for the most tweets and largest assembly of tweeters were set in the Malaysia Book of Records (MBOR), in conjunction with the country’s 55th Merdeka Day celebrations last night.

Information, Communication and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Rais Yatim said that within an hour, some 3,611,323 tweets were recorded nationwide to the prime minister’s account, @NajibRazak, containing various independence-themed messages.

“The other record was for the 10,128 tweeters in the Bukit Jalil National Stadium who tweeted #Merdeka55 simultaneously,” he said.

Rais, who is also chairman of the 55th Merdeka Day celebrations, announced the achievement during the “Promises Fulfilled” gathering at the stadium, here yesterday.

According to Rais, the MBOR will present the prime minister with a certificate for the record at the Malaysia Day celebrations in Sarawak on September 16.

The Merdeka tweets was among the programmes lined up for the gathering, which aimed to break the world record of the largest number of tweeters at 10,000. — Bernama

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