If you’re like me, you’re wondering who actually uses Yahoo newsfeed service when there are plenty of popular competitors available. However, for the second time in the last month, the company is making some changes to its newsfeed that will presumably attempt to boost interest and improve the overall experience of reading the news.

Crazy, I know. But this sort of strategy (of doing something instead of, well, nothing) is part of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s plan to revitalize the company’s products through building, buying, and partnering. Back in April, it debuted newly built Yahoo newsfeed advertising units. And now, Yahoo has forged a partnership with Twitter that will bring embedded tweets directly into Yahoo’s U.S. newsfeed service. (See screenshot below.)

“Updates direct from politicians, celebrities, media outlets, and other publishers have become an important source of real-time news and information. 140 characters can connect athletes with their fans, capture live chatter from the red carpet, and inspire global debate,” Mayer wrote on the company’s blog today. “Tweets have become an important information source for many of our users, so we are thrilled to announce our partnership with Twitter to bring Tweets directly into the Yahoo! newsfeed.”

Essentially, that means the news feed will now feature tweets from important people (or even random users if their tweets are relevant) from each respective news genre (celebrity, sports, politics, etc.), lovingly curated by the newsfeed’s editors. Overall, it seems like a pretty good way for  the Yahoo newsfeed to pull in new users, who don’t have time to review all the important updates in their Twitter feed and keep up with the daily news.

The new Twitter integration into Yahoo newsfeed is rolling out now in the U.S., and I’d suspect other regions to follow if this partnership proves successful.

“We may be witnessing the rise of Twitter’s recently acquired Vine,” Compete.com’s Conor O’Mahony said in an email.

Source: Compete.com

Fast movers for April 2013

Vine, which bills itself as “the best way to see and share life in motion,” was acquired by Twitter for $30 million in October of 2012, when it had only three employees. The site is essentially a combination of a video-based Instagram and Twitter, as users upload short 6-second videos and share them with friends.

Two million unique visitors is not huge, of course, although it is significant. But it’s important to note that many users who access Vine solely via mobile will not be counted, and that this is a momentum signal, not a sign that Vine is already at Twitter- or Facebook-style reach.

Vine, which has had some challenges lately due to copyright violations and hardcore porn appearing as an editor’s pick, is ideally suited to grow fast simply due to the fact that Twitter owns it … and can feature it more prominently in users’ tweet streams whenever it wishes. Twitter has already signaled with Twitter #Music that it intends to go full-media and extend what has largely been a textual medium into music and other media.

Other top sites included MLB.com — as baseball season hits — and Boston.com, for reasons too obvious and painful to mention. Java.com and Adobe.com hit the fast mover’s list simply due to new software updates.

photo credit: mclcbooks via photopin cc

After a rash of major Twitter account hacks, rumor says the company will be releasing two-factor authentication. While this is a great extra protection, it’s not the panacea many are looking for.

Over the past two weeks, three major news outlets — NPR, CBS, and the Associated Press — have all had their Twitter accounts hacked. In the AP’s case, hackers took over the account and tweeted about a bogus explosion at the White House. Following that breach, many called on Twitter to introduce that golden security measure: two-factor authentication.

We saw something similar when a journalist was hacked through Apple, prompting the company to figure out two-factor authentication for iCloud. The rumor now is that Twitter is going to release its own version of two-factor authentication. For that, we say, thank you, Twitter! But as PhishMe chief executive Aaron Higbee points out: that’s not the be-all, end-all solution to the problem.

“You would think this is obvious, but there seems to be a lot of undeserved criticism directed towards Twitter simply because AP employees fell for a phishing attack,” said Higbee in an email to VentureBeat, “Calling on Twitter to provide two-factor authentication doesn’t solve the AP phishing incident, nor would a long, frequently-changed password. That’s not to say it’s not worthwhile. Twitter should make an effort to offer two-factor for those that want it.”

The AP confirmed that the hack was preceded by a phishing attempt in a post about the incident.

Brian Krebs provides an excellent overview of why two-factor authentication could fail in such cases. Summarized, people set up phony phishing websites where targets are tricked into submitting their login credentials, which might include two-factor authentication codes. These codes often expire, but for many consumer sites, they are left connected for days because companies don’t want to create a barrier to entry.

Many of these spoofed websites are done really well. In the case Krebs writes about, hackers made a fake Citibank portal that served up error messages just like the real website would if incorrect credentials were supplied. That’s sophisticated and difficult to detect for us regular folk.

Higbee suggests that Twitter open up its own “group tweet” abilities so employees don’t have to share the same login credentials for an official company account. But education on phishing for all types of company employees could help too.

A group of pro-regime Syrian hackers called the Syrian Electronic Army took credit for all of the Twitter breaches, though we haven’t been able to independently confirm this is the case. The group has not mentioned any phishing in its congratulatory touting, but often targets publications based on their coverage of the conflict in Syria. If you’re one of those, it’d be wise to alert your employees to phishing attacks now.

Phishing image via Shutterstock

The Associated Press Twitter account was hacked moments ago. The Syrian Electronic Army, which has been on a spree of media hacks and claimed responsibility for this attack, sent out a tweet claiming that the White House had been bombed through the AP’s Twitter account. This is not the case.

“The AP Twitter account has been hacked. That tweet you saw about the White House is untrue and we’re looking into it now,” AP director of media relations Paul Colford told VentureBeat in a call.

It looks like the Syrian Electronic Army, the same hackers who hacked into CBS and NPR in the past month, has it out for American publications. The group tweeted a picture of the bogus tweet sent out on the AP’s official account. It reads:

“Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”

SEA then tweeted, “Ops! @AP get owned by Syrian Electronic Army! #SEA #Syria #ByeByeObama”

The group of hackers often attacks publications based on their coverage of the situation in Syria. The official AP twitter account is currently suspended.

It seems the Dow Jones stock exchange reacted fairly quickly to the hack as well. A chart tweeted by Owen Callan, a fixed income dealer, shows that the market fell about 1 percent for 1 to 2 minutes following the bogus tweet. You can see a similar chart in the image above.

The Syrian Electronic Army hacked into Al Jazeera’s live blog of the conflict in Syria last year, defacing the website with pro-Bashar regime imagery.

Dow Jones chart via Yahoo Finance

It’s been seven years since Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent his first tweet (back when it was called Twttr) — since then the company has gone on discover vowels and reach more than 200 million active users.

Twitter created a short video (below) celebrating the major moments leading up to its seventh birthday, but beyond that the company surprisingly doesn’t have anything else to mark the occasion (even its user metrics have been announced previously). So what batter chance to reflect on the massive impact of 140 character messages on the world?

Like many, I thought the very idea of Twitter was silly when I first heard about it in 2006. How much can you really say in 140 characters? It seemed to signify that texting was creeping towards more general communication, and there simply was little room for in-depth thought in modern communication.

By early 2008, when I finally joined Twitter, it’s utility was quickly becoming clear. It wasn’t meant to replace longer communication, it instead seemed like the perfect way to join in on a larger, global conversation. Watching my Twitter feed automatically refresh and respond to breaking news, it began to remind me of how characters in The Matrix could see the shape of that virtual world simply by staring at code.

Throughout 2008, Twitter became an indispensable tool for all of my work. It helped me keep track of news for my IT support job, and it was also a great way to get in touch with people in the entertainment industry for my budding movie podcast.

Twitter  became the first thing I looked at in the morning, and the last thing I checked in with at night. My infatuation only intensified when I got my first iPhone, the 3GS, in 2009. Indeed, Twitter seemed like the perfect medium for the smartphone age: it fostered public communication, and its character limit meant users were forced to be clear, rather than ramble on like so many do in e-mails.

Now, Twitter sees more than 400 million tweets a day, and it’s an even more integral part of my daily life.

“Twitter has become a true global town square — a public place to hear the latest news, exchange ideas and connect with people all in real time,” wrote Twitter editorial director Karen Wickre in a blog post today. “This is where you come to connect with the world at large. Get on your soapbox to critique elected officials, or go sotto voce to the neighbor next to you.”

Photo via Clever Cupcakes/Flickr

We have a new pope and it seems that despite all the activity at the Vatican, the conclave was still able to take to Twitter to announce his arrival.

“HABEMUS PAPAM FRANCISCUM,” tweeted those involved with the Pontifex Twitter account. It is roughly translated into “We have a Pope, Francis.”

Pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina is the first Jesuit Pope. And while that’s the most important “first” of this news, this also marks the first time a Pope was officially announced on the social media site, proving just how valuable Twitter is for breaking news. And if you weren’t one of the hundreds of thousands of people gathered in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, you were likely watching the event on Ustream or any of the other livestreaming platforms out there.

The Catholic Church set up the Pontifex Twitter account during the service of the last Pope’s, Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict recently stepped down, citing health issues, resulting in the deletion of all his tweets. We’ll likely not know if this will be a tradition of the Catholic Church until the next Pope is appointed.

Of course, we’ve got to wonder: Will he use line breaks when he tweets?

Image via The Telegraph livestream

We are working with UK Trade & Investment to showcase the United Kingdom's thriving start-up and investment scene through a series of posts and video interviews at SXSW. Check out all of the coverage here. As always, VentureBeat is adamant about maintaining editorial objectivity.

Mass Relevance, a startup that brings calm to a crazy sea of social activity, is rolling out a new digital mosaic product today at SXSW that essentially builds an image using tweets, Facebook updates, photos, and even Vine videos.

You may have seen Mass Relevance’s platform and not even known it, as it’s been used several times to help manage the flow of tweets for broadcast television or streaming events, such as President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall. The company’s technology allows its clients to manage a list of questions sent to someone on stage or on camera, conduct polling in real-time, display a stream of the best social updates, and much more. In fact, Mass Relevance has even been powering the Q&A sessions at SXSW, which has netted the company compliments by nearly everyone on stage who has used it.

The new digital mosaic (called Dynamic Mosaic) integrates real-time social content from multiple sources — including content from Instagram, Facebook, Vine, Twitter, and Google+ – that automatically curates the stream of activity into something that’s visually pleasing and digestible to an audience. Brands that use the company’s new product have control over the experience, too. That means they can choose to flow sponsored and specific accounts to the foreground to promote messages, sponsors, and personalities. (Check out an example here.)

“Social curation and re-display is still very much a new frontier,” Mass Relevance founder and CEO Sam Decker told VentureBeat. “Social integration is typically approached in two ways:  1) Highlighting the content itself, for example a stream of Facebook posts and Tweets, or a photo wall of Instagram content, or 2) … not necessarily show[ing] the content itself, but rather visualiz[ing] how social conversations are trending by criteria like volume, keyword mentions, or geography.”

When I heard about Dynamic Mosaic, I immediately thought of a socially curated mass of content that would be displayed in the form of Abraham Lincoln, but apparently this isn’t the case with Mass Relevance’s new tool.

The mosaic flows from left to right, allowing about 2 seconds for photos to be paused and 6 seconds for automatically played vine videos.

The Dynamic Mosaic is the first platform to really show the market potential of Vine, the short-video social network that Twitter purchased a few months ago. Within days of the acquisition, Decker said, Mass Relevance’s platform was able to source, curate, and re-display Tweets in real-time that had Vine-embedded videos.

“What’s particularly interesting about how they are displayed within the Dynamic Mosaic is the way the experience automatically detects when Vine videos are embedded,” Decker said. “The motion of the experience will slow down to allow the video to play before streaming to the next piece of content — whether it be a Tweet, another video, or photo.”

Decker said there’s a huge opportunity for Vine:

“It’s more about the opportunity that Vine holds for major brands using the platform to create social experiences within their ‘owned’ digital properties. Now, major brands can leverage real-time video sharing gaining fast adoption within the market. The main difference between Vine and other social video clips is really the brevity — you’re only allowed 6 seconds. The short length of Vine videos force the user to focus on creativity with a less-is-more mentality. … What’s more, Vine is easily integrated into a platform and device where consumers are already spending increasingly long amounts of time — Twitter and mobile respectively. The sharability factor is high, as followers can quickly consume and amplify Vine videos throughout the social sphere.

One of the first clients to use the new Dynamic Mosaic will be IMAX, which is planning to show off a socially driven mosaic experience during SXSW’s Film Intermission party, with a video clip of its mosaic in action to go live tomorrow.

Founded in 2011, Austin, Tex.-based Mass Relevance has over 200 clients and has worked on many high-profile media properties,  including Marvel’s The Avengers, American Idol, X-Factor, 80 Plates, and The Voice.

In a strange social media move, the Vatican has deleted all of the tweets sent from Pope Benedict XVI’s @Pontifex account to make way for a new pope.

Benedict XVI was the first pope to use Twitter to communicate with his flock (though, of course, he’s the only one to hold the pontiff position since Twitter’s founding), and he urged Catholics to use Twitter to spread the “Good News.” The account has more than 1.6 million followers. Benedict XVI stepped down today as pope, and his resignation will become official at 5 p.m. Pacific. His new title will be “pope emeritus,” which was created just for him.

He sent out one final tweet today reading:

“Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives.”

The Twitter account’s name now is titled “Sede Vacante,” which is the name of the period when the papacy is vacant.

Those who want to read through an archive of Benedict XVI’s tweets can still do so at the Vatican’s website.

While it makes some sense to have the Twitter account reserved for just the thoughts of the current Pope, it does remove a lot of history from the account. All of Benedict XVI’s tweets that had been re-tweeted by followers now will not show on their timelines as well.

It’s almost as if Benedict XVI’s messages had never been spread in the first place.

Photo via Pontifex/Twitter

In yet another example of how Twitter is positioning itself as media/entertainment platform, the social network released a report today showcasing the tweeting habits of people while watching television in the U.K.

The “Twitter TV Book” breaks down the tweeting habits of the social network’s TV-watching members by age, sex, peak use, device, and more. It also features a set of analytics that shows TV programmers who make up their tweeting audience is and how to interact with them.

And just to reinforce why these media companies should pay attention to the social network, Twitter reveals that about 60 percent of the U.K.’s 10 million active users tweet while watching a television program. Also, Twitter states that 40 percent of all tweets mention TV in some form.

Not only does the TV book offer a breakdown of programs by demographics, it also provides insights to specific genres as well as advice on how best to engage viewers on Twitter. For example, factual/documentary programs get a constant amount of activity when interesting evidence is presented, while dramas have an ebb-and-flow based on breaks during the program. (See screenshots below.)

While the programming heavily sways some of the data provided, this info does do a good job of making the media industry aware that Twitter is becoming a mainstay for when folks plop down on the couch and grab the remote.

The TV Book is also interesting because it reveals just how Twitter plans on growing its advertising and promotional revenue. Twitter is best at being a real-time communication platform, so targeting media companies that are beholden to their own ad clients is a smart move because it gives them data about their audience as well as a way to show more value when/if the audience mentions those TV ads.

Time to brush up on your shorthand, because come February, you’re going to have two less characters to tweet with when you share links on Twitter.

The information network announced yesterday in a developer blog post that it was extending the maximum length of t.co wrapped links (Twitter shortens your long, original URLs to t.co URLs) from 20 to 22 characters for non-https URLs, and from 21 to 23 characters for https URLs.

What this boils down to is two fewer characters to use when you’re sharing links on the service. It may sound like a small adjustment, but most avid users already feel the pinch when trying to squeeze in their commentary. The change will certainly make for some chopped-off thoughts and even less intelligible quips.

When reached for comment, a Twitter spokesperson declined to provide specific reasons for increasing the length of t.co URLs, expect to say that “we made this change for a variety of reasons.”

Twitter posted the note yesterday to give third-party developers ample time to update their applications. The official launch is scheduled for February 20, 2013.

Feel free to share this story on Twitter and express your disapproval for the change with those two extra characters while you can.

Photo credit: id-iom/Flickr

President Barack Obama had a little fun today on Twitter despite spending most of his time talking about serious topics such as the looming fiscal cliff and middle-class tax cuts.

The president likes to take to Twitter, Reddit, and other social media to take questions from a much broader audience of both supporters and those who disagree with him.

Indeed, House of Representatives Republican majority leader Eric Cantor tweeted, “Mr. President, time to get serious. Let’s protect small businesses and families from a harmful increase in tax rates and cut spending. #my2k”

The president did not respond to this tweet, but to be fair, it wasn’t a question.

Obama does take some tough questions, though they are undoubtedly vetted by his communications team before he answers them. The majority of today’s discussion centered on extending tax cuts for the middle class. Many tweets were about extending the tax cuts versus cutting more government spending, but his Twitter gabfest had a few goofy moments as well.

Obama answered eight questions and retweeted one picture of his hands typing responses taken and tweeted by Pete Souza, the White House’s official photographer. Here are our favorites. You can check out the full conversation on Storify.

Question from @dontbeaprat:

Question from @Mica4Life:

Picture by @PeteSouza:

President Obama photo via The White House/Flickr

Half of retailers can’t aggregate all their data in one place to make detailed reports and conclusions. 45 percent don’t use available data to personalize marketing communications, and another 42 can’t link data together at the individual customer level.

That is perhaps understandable, because 90 percent of the data that’s ever been created has been created in the last two years, and the rate of data growing is increasing quickly.

But it is also a problem, because big data is the key to knowing your customers, and knowing your customers is the key to being able to sell effectively to them. Big data also has its creepy side, as when Target famously used it to figure out that a girl was pregnant before her father knew.

But many retailers are not effectively pulling together tweets, likes and reviews and matching them against customer lists, transactions, loyalty club memberships, and prospects — which means they are using old dumb marketing techniques in a new smart world.

And missing out on sales.

So online marketing optimization company Monetate, which has access to a huge amount of ecommerce information, has put together the following quick guide for retailers using big data:

photo credit: JD Hancock via photopin cc

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July 9-10, 2013
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Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Oprah tweeting about how much she loves the Microsoft Surface is no surprise — she has recently endorsed the Windows-based product, calling it the “Mercedes Benz” of tablets.

But to publish that tweet using an Apple iPad? Well, it doesn’t show a lot of conviction.

Gotta say love that SURFACE! Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts. #FavoriteThings—
Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) November 19, 2012

“Gotta say love that SURFACE! Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts,” Oprah tweeted on Nov. 18. (Must be nice to be a billionaire, I thought, to be able to buy $500 tablets by the case.)

While Twitter’s web interface and official Twitter clients no longer show which app someone used to send a tweet, that data is still available, and some clients show it. For instance, Twitter client YoruFukurou (screenshot to the right) shows the tool used to send Oprah’s tweet:

“from Twitter for iPad”

Now, it’s entirely possible that a celebrity like Oprah doesn’t send the majority of her own tweets. This one, in particular, was probably sent by a staffer — since it’s no doubt tied to a commercial agreement Oprah has with Microsoft to promote the Surface.

Still, that’s not exactly a confidence-boosting endorsement. It’s a bit like driving around town with a bullhorn advertising the Mercedes dealership — while you’re driving a Lexus.

Via Cult of Mac and Zagg (we’re not sure who got it first)

The Israeli Defense Forces is asking civilians not to tweet or Instagram photos or description of bombed sites, according to blog Yid with Lid, for fear that Hamas military officials may be able to locate sensitive IDF zones in the meta data.

In today’s connected world, social media is prevalent during any sort of conflict. It played a significant role in the Arab Spring uprisings, it helped coordinate recent riots in London, and it even let one “witness” provide an account of the killing of Osama Bin Laden — though the man didn’t know what he was tweeting about at the time.  But now, the IDF is reportedly asking bloggers not to report in real time (or anything resembling it) on where rockets land before traditional Israeli media has that information.

The IDF is concerned that the Hamas military will be able to better calculate where bombs could land if it knows how far off the bombs were from their intended targets. Hamas could do this by looking at the GPS information for that image or social post, which is often readily available. Look at a Facebook status. Often underneath the message it will say, “X minutes ago in Palm Beach, FL,” or wherever the status was shared.

IDF has done its own bit of social media, however, through its blog. The blog has received criticism in the last few days for “gamification” features that sends a reader up in the “IDF ranks” through Foursquare-like badges. A reader rises through these ranks by performing different interactions with the site, such as visiting it a certain number of times or tweeting and sharing posts socially.

The IDF responded to the claims today, according to ReadWrite. It explained the badges feature was added to the blog four months ago when the content wasn’t solely about the conflict (called Operation Pillar of Defense) but also included soldier profiles, and other stories about life in the IDF. The spokesperson specifically said it is not a “war blog.”

“During Operation Pillar of Defense we provide our readers with news updates and operational information regarding IDF actions,” an IDF spokesperson told ReadWrite. “In other times, though, the blog has hosted varying content, from reports about routine activities to more lighthearted personal stories. It is this content that ‘IDF Ranks’ was meant to promote.”

hat tip Fast Company; image via IDF Facebook

Today as President (again) Obama won re-election to the White House for another four years, Twitter exploded, setting new tweets-per-minute record of 327,000:

Peak to 327k TPM following @BarackObama's re-election was by far the most-tweeted moment of #Election2012.

—
Twitter Government (@gov) November 07, 2012

That’s obviously a huge number, but it’s even bigger than you think. The previous record was only 116,000, set by the Spice Girls in their reunion concert during the closing ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympic summer games. And the record before that was Usain Bolt’s 100 meters gold medal, at 80,000.

In other words, Obama almost tripled the previous record, and quadrupled the now-third-place tweets-per-minute record holder. That’s significant.

Twitter sentiment analysis also shows the story:

At about 8PM Eastern, Obama sentiment rose rapidly to 89, while Romney’s dropped off a cliff to 18. In Topsy’s sentiment scores, 50 is neutral, so anything above is positive, and anything below is negative.

Re-elected President Obama also had the most-retweeted tweet ever, currently at 370,000 retweets, and 1.25 million likes on his Facebook victory status update.

photo credit: Comicbase via photopin cc

Updated (11/6/2012 at 11:55am PT) with new information about Twitter and Fox’s relationship.

For the presidential election, Twitter is teaming up with Fox News, which will be reporting specifically on Twitter data for the first time during a presidential election.

The two are working closely together to integrate Twitter’s data into Fox’s live election coverage. Twitter’s data is available to any news network, and really anyone, who wants to keep up with the election in quick bursts of information. Twitter representative Rachael Horwitz told VentureBeat that Fox is not getting exclusive data, and that the data is available to all other news organizations. That said, it’s likely that Fox will get a lot of the data up first given that it has specifically reached out to Twitter to form that kind of relationship.  The data includes “state-by-state engagements” and other real-time information that could be interesting if Twitter or Fox include some real-time sentiment analysis of the swing states.

It’s obvious at this point that social media is at the front lines of breaking news, particularly Twitter. News organizations covering the election minute-by-minute will do well to analyze more than just the polls, but that micro-blogs and status updates that come from voters.

In January of this year, we chatted with Fox about its web redesign that was heavily influenced by the election. At that time, the focus was on making it easy to get video and other content across all different kinds of devices. It also created new video experiences for watching the debates, and following different candidates. Now that the election is here, it seems Fox is paying more attention to social media, where we’ll likely see hints of the results before they even come in.

You can see anchor Jenna Lee analyzing the Twitter data live during the election tomorrow.

Jenna Lee image via Fox News

We now offer more #transparency in processing copyright reports by withholding Tweets, not removing. Learn more: support.twitter.com/articles/15795.

—
Jeremy K. (@jer) November 03, 2012

In essence, Twitter will now tell users when content has been removed from the site, and give them at least a suggestion of a reason why. This is in addition to Twitter’s already-existing policies of posting takedowns at Chilling Effects and per-country censorship of locally offensive content.

In the site’s documentation, Twitter describes the new process this way:

In an effort to be as transparent as possible regarding the removal or restriction of access to user-posted content, we clearly mark withheld Tweets and media to indicate to viewers when content has been withheld …

Here’s an actual, live example of a withheld tweet:

This Tweet from @torrentfreak has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder. Learn more: support.twitter.com/articles/15795#

—
TorrentFreak (@torrentfreak) November 05, 2012

This is a good move by Twitter. Not only does it add clarity and transparency to what the social network is doing, it avoids the black-hole problem: content that has just disappeared, causing havoc for links, retweets, replies, and more.

Typical offending tweets are ones that link to copyrighted or trademarked material — for example this tweet that linked to a download site for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. In the past, Twitter just deleted the tweets (as this one was), resulting in essentially a 404 web server error: page does not exist.

Source: Twitter

But … it used to exist …

A withheld tweet notification is far more web-friendly, and far more informative.

One thing that could be improved: the link to learn more goes to Twitter’s Copyright and DMCA policy, which is generic information that is not specifically applicable to the tweet. What would be even better would be a direct link to the notice on Chilling Effects from the copyright holder, which would then provide a fairly full and complete explanation of why the tweet was removed.

Perhaps Twitter, which has been doing a reasonably commendable jump walking the tightrope between users’ freedom and copyright holder’s rights, will add that feature next.

photo credit: !borghetti via photopin cc

Imagine you could get everything you needed from the online world — news, photos, videos, music, movie trailers, product information — without ever having to leave Twitter. That would make Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey very, very happy, and today, we’re all one step closer to that Twitter-centric vision.

The information network announced Thursday that its working with a dramatically expanded list of partners to provide Twitter users — er, customers — with more than 2,000 ways to engage directly with content, on web or mobile, through expanded tweets.

Listen to a song from inside a tweet.

Expanded tweets, also called Twitter Cards, keep Twitter users engaged with content in the form of photos, news articles, videos, song previews, and weather information, all embedded within the tweet stream and provided by Twitter’s partners. Twitter has continually added partners to the program since first launching the functionality in June of this year.

Thursday, Twitter touted some of its brand-new expanded tweets options such as the ability to view Amazon product descriptions, ratings and prices, along with the option to check out live statistics from CNN, preview songs hosted on Soundlcoud, or watch Fandago movie trailers.

All these actions take place right inside the tweet and allow the information network to keep its audience glued to Twitter. Or as Twitter developer advocate Sylvain Carle put it, “By providing more information in Tweets, we hope to help you more easily find exactly what you’re looking for –– right here on Twitter.”

It’s an interesting, self-centered view of the real-time web that consumers, publishers, and developers will either love or hate.

Twitter has started rolling out changes to a select number of users today, including a new “Like” button and a rebranded “favorite” button that the company is now calling the “Star” button.

A sprinkling of Twitter users have posted screenshots about the new Like and Star buttons, but the company hasn’t made an official announcement about them.

The features are very similar to some of the core mechanics of Facebook, which has always encouraged its users to “Like” and share updates from friends. My guess is that Twitter wants to put more of an emphasis on its new activities stream, which currently shows you recent people who’ve followed you, liked your Tweets, or retweeted something you said. And with more users liking and “starring” tweets, that stream could expand to show the collective activity from everyone you follow.

The new buttons would also probably bring Twitter closer to the improved search and discovery it’s been targeting, as VentureBeat previously reported.

We’re reaching out to Twitter for official confirmation about the new buttons and to find out when it plans to roll out this update to all users. We’ll update this post with any new information.

Via TNW

Twitter bird image via zozain greetings/Shutterstock

If you’re American, and you’re on Twitter, you may have noticed that there’s an election on. Twitter users have been seeing an avalanche of political tweets in past weeks as the U.S. election heats up. The recent presidential debate alone generated 10 million tweets, which makes it the most tweeted event ever in U.S politics.

All those tweets — and especially the paid promoted tweets — are translating into increased donations to political campaigns, says Twitter. To track exactly how political tweets influence voters, Twitter commissioned a study from Compete.

Source: Twitter

Frequency drives action

According to the results, Twitter users in general are more politically active than average internet users, being 68 percent more likely to visit Barack Obama’s or Mitt Romney’s campaign donation page.

But Twitter users — I refuse to say tweeps — who follow a political party, or who see political tweets retweeted by someone they follow, are 97 percent more likely than the average Twitter users to surf over to one of the party’s donation pages.

That’s good news for Twitter, which lost no time suggesting that, as Election Day approaches in less than a month, Republican and Democratic campaign managers and boosters buy ads on the social news site:

As Election Day approaches, the most efficient way to increase your campaign’s impressions is by utilizing our suite of promoted products. Contact us at politics@twitter.com to get started.

Another result in the study is that, unsurprisingly, frequency drives behavior. Twitter users who see more political tweets, were more likely to visit donation sites. Promoted tweets, which are seen more and for longer than other tweets due to their enhance visibility in search and on profile pages, could then be very valuable for political campaigns.

The two things the study did not reveal?

First, whether people who visited the donation sites actually contributed, or how much they gave. And second … who people will actually vote for in November.

For that, citizens are actually going to have to vote, not just tweet.

photo credit: Vox Efx via photopin cc

Dick Costolo, the chief executive of Twitter, has tapped his background as a former professional comedian to run what has become one of the most important companies in Silicon Valley, according to a long profile in the New York Times.

San Francisco-based Twitter is often mentioned as the next major initial public offering candidate in the social media space. But that’s only going to happen if Costolo guides the firm in the right way. (Some critics think a Twitter IPO is very unlikely, after Facebook’s weak performance. Twitter’s revenues for 2012 are expected to be about $350 million this year.

And Costolo isn’t just winging it. He’s embracing improvisation and is communicating both inside and outside in a way that taps his stand-up comedian skills. Costolo can stand up in front of all of the employees and “just work the crowd,” the Times quoted one employee as saying. One way that Costolo has become more comfortable as CEO is that he says he doesn’t mind so much that he’s older and bald, in contrast to the spate of social media startup CEOs who are young and svelte. He thought about his “un-CEO demeanor,” he says, and concluded that he doesn’t care. The story doesn’t dwell that much on Costolo’s decision to oust some third-party applications from Twitter, a move that angered developer partners.

One of the interesting parts of the story is the reason for the reduced role of Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter. Dorsey left to found Square and came back to help Twitter. But the Times quotes one person as saying that Dorsey didn’t get along with the employees so well and that he isn’t decisive. Costolo, on the other hand, is decisive. And he’s ad-libbing.

Twitter is an indispensible communications tool. But how do you save all the good stuff?

For example, what if you want to save the URL of a funny video your friend tweeted or something really nice that someone said to you? Twitter has no easy way to save your favorite tweets, and search doesn’t always work.

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo has said that the company would offer a way for you to download all of your tweets, probably before the end of this year, but he didn’t provide any details.

And in the meantime, geek utility If This, Then That (IFTTT) — which used to be great for saving Twitter posts — has been disconnected from Twitter.

For packrats like myself, this is a drag. I don’t need to save every tweet, but I do like to save certain tweets.

Fortunately, I’ve found some workarounds.

Depending on your archiving needs, the tips below might be just the ticket. I can’t guarantee that Twitter will allow these services to keep running. But for now, here are some ways to save your most important tweets elsewhere.

Got other workarounds? Let us know in the comments!

Pinboard

Remember bookmarking site Delicious? Pinboard is just like Delicious was before Yahoo sold it off to a group of people who seemed to have no idea what Delicious was about. It’s a simple, bare-bones site for saving URLs. Usefully, Pinboard lets you link up to three separate Twitter accounts. You can configure it to import anything you favorite, anything you tweet that includes a URL, or both. Pinboard charges a one-time fee (currently $9.89) to sign up.

Diigo

Diigo is a useful tool for saving URLs and annotating them with notes. It’s got a handy Twitter tool, which saves every tweet you mark as a “favorite” as a bookmark in Diigo. You have to sign up for Diigo, but once you do, you can connect Diigo to Twitter to save your favorites. Diigo is free to try, but it costs $20 per year after that. Its new-user signup page appears to be offline Sunday, but it’s up today..

Evernote

Evernote is a handy multiplatform utility for saving notes and URLs of all kinds. Usefully, it integrates with your Twitter account, though it’s less automated than we’d like. To link Evernote to your Twitter account, first follow Evernote’s @MyEN account on Twitter. You’ll get a direct message from MyEN; after you click on it, you can go into Evernote and link it to Twitter. From then on, add @MyEN to anything you tweet in order to have Evernote archive it, or send a direct message to @MyEN.

LinkedIn

You can no longer link Twitter to IFTTT recipes, but IFTTT still supports LinkedIn, and vice versa. That’s handy, because you can use LinkedIn to update your Twitter profile. This means you can have it both ways: You can save your tweets in the service of your choice and still use IFTTT. Say you want to save all your updates to Evernote. First, add the IFTTT LinkedIn channel to your IFTTT account. Set up the recipe to file your LinkedIn updates to Evernote. Then connect your LinkedIn account to your Twitter account (via LinkedIn settings). Finally, start using LinkedIn to post your status updates instead of Twitter. When you do, your status updates will be saved in Evernote, and simultaneously piped over to Twitter.

Flipboard

Flipboard is a handy tool for reading news culled from various public channels or your social network. Although there might be reasons to worry about Flipboard’s relationship with Twitter, for now it works quite nicely with Twitter. That’s handy, because it’s possible to make your Twitter favorites into a Flipboard section. Once you do, it’s easy to retrieve those favorites for later reading via Flipboard, and from there you can save the linked articles into other apps, like Pocket, Instapaper, or Readability.

Gnip

Gnip is a provider of social media data to enterprise application developers, and it recently released something called Historical PowerTrack for Twitter. This lets you download every tweet ever tweeted since Twitter’s launch in 2006. Are you a packrat and a coder? Then you can probably figure out a way to munge through this dataset to get whatever you want. Pricing is not available, but it’s probably not free.

Packratius

I don’t know how I forgot to include Packratius in the first version of this post, as I’ve used it before, and it’s made for exactly the purpose I describe here. Whenever anything you tweet or retweet includes a URL, Packratius will save it for you in the services of your choice: Delicious, Pinboard, Diigo, Instapaper, Pocket, and more. It can also save URLs in @ replies that people direct to you, as well as your favorite. Packratius is free.

Backupify

Backupify is a service that, well, backs up your cloud-based data, including Twitter as well as Facebook, Gmail, Google Drive, and Flickr. The free version of the service will archive up to three online services for you, once a week. For $5 per month it’ll back up every night. This would be a good way to save absolutely everything from your Twitter account. (Thanks for the tip, Rich!)

Photo credit: redjar via photo pin

“We’ve got about 10 minutes. Please keep your questions focused on Techonomy,” one of them said.

Dorsey spoke at Techonomy last week in Detroit. I was there to hear him, among others, and visit Detroit startups. But I had a very specific question for Dorsey, and it had nothing at all to do with Detroit, or tech economies, or the speech he had just given.

It had much more to do with what Twitter is becoming.

The social network of now has massively tightened down access to its API recently, reducing the amount of Twitter data that third-party developers can use in their applications. Applications need to be certified, and authenticated, and likely, at some point, paid for. That’s causing some angst for developers, who — with some justification — feel that third-party applications are part of what made Twitter a massive success in the first place.

Source: John Koetsier

Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey at Techonomy Detroit

The tactic seems to be part of a larger strategy that takes Twitter away from its roots as a communication utility with open access for all and towards an old-school media and publishing company that jealously guards its crown jewels. O’Reilly Media’s Edd Dumbill calls it a “bait-and-switch,” saying that Twitter is now cable TV, or even Comcast, Verizon.

In other words, no more rip-mix-burn here.

So I decided to be a little rude. And I asked the question: what, with the API changes — and extended tweets that suck even more content into Twitter, discouraging user exits — is Twitter becoming?

Dorsey answered thoughtfully, as he always does.

“Whatever its users want it to be,” he said. “Twitter is a communication utility … ask 100 people what Twitter is and you’ll get 100 different answers, and that’s OK.”

Dorsey said that this was just the same as asking what the world is — again you’d get hundreds if not thousands of different answers, as each replied according to his or her own perspective.

“We’re just focused on building the best platform and making sure it’s up and stable,” he finished.

There’s no question that throughout Twitter’s history, users have played a huge role in determining the uses of the site. Retweets, hash tags, lists, search, and many other Twitter features were started by users and migrated into the core product as they gained traction.

But it’s hard to believe that users have asked for the Twitter API to be restricted.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen any demonstrators outside of Twitter headquarters asking the company to shut down small third-party apps in the consumer space that Twitter has claimed for its own. Nor have we seen hundreds of thousands of retweets on a Twitter-would-be-so-much-better-if only-we-killed-RSS-access message.

And so it’s hard to believe that the it is only interest for users that is driving the future of Twitter.

photo credit: ~Ilse via photo pin cc

And, if I’m not mistaken, Twitter’s guidelines have a lot of do-as-I-say, not as-I-do.

Source: Twitter

The first tweet

On March 21, 2006, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey posted the first-ever tweet: 24 characters, including spaces. Timestamp, source, and author.

All simple and easy — the marked difference from Facebook or other social networks that offered multiple options, full media, and unlimited status update lengths. And that very difference was a big piece of Twitter’s brand story and attraction to users.

Much of that simplicity has disappeared as Twitter has evolved into a personalized news network — the interest graph rather than the social graph — and incorporated images, video, and short previews of links in expanded tweets for favored partners.

In short, this has happened as Twitter has become more publisher than utility, and as Twitter gets all grown up into a corporation that needs to (shockers) generate revenue.

But with Twitter’s recently announced API changes, developers who integrate with Twitter and incorporate tweets into their apps no longer have display guidelines. They have display rules, and that means that there will soon be at least 32 Laws of the Tweet that developers need to obey … or risk losing their access to the Twitter API and the Twitter ecosystem.

Here they are:

1. Tweeter’s name must be displayed
2. Tweeter’s username must be displayed
3. Tweeter’s avatar must be shown
4. The username must always be displayed with the “@” symbol
5. Tweet text must be shown on a line below the author’s name and username
6. Tweet text must not be altered or modified in any way
7. Any mentions of other Twitter users using “@” must link to those profiles
8. Any hashtags must link to Twitter search for that tag
9. Any links must use the API URL field
10. Any links must use the Twitter shortener t.co
11. Reply …
12. Retweet …
13. and Favorite action icons must be visible for the user …
14. and the relevant actions must be enabled via API or Twitters web intents technology
15. No additional social or third party actions may be attached to a tweet
16. The tweet timestamp must always be visible
17. The tweet timestamp must always be linked to the tweet permalink on Twitter.com
18. The branding must clearly be Twitter’s
19. The Twitter logo or follow button for the tweet author must always be displayed in the top right corner
20. Any pics or images must be displayed as part of the tweet …
21. and link back to the Tweet permalink
22. Images may not be detached from the tweet and displayed separately
23. The user’s name and Twitter username must be displayed on one line
24. The user’s icon must be to the left of the name and tweet text
25. Timestamps should be in the top right corner
26. Use a short-form timestamp in …
27. seconds if the tweet is less than a minute old …
28. minutes if the tweet is less than an hour old …
29. hours if the tweet is less than 24 hours old
30. Use a date and month timestamp if the tweet is more than 24 hours old
31. If the tweet is a retweet, the name of the retweeter and the retweeter icon must be displayed under the tweet
32. No third-party content can be mixed in with Tweet content

This is the example tweet that Twitter included with the list of requirements, which seems to obey them:

Source: Twitter

Twitter example third-party tweet use

Of course, here’s the official Twitter app on iPhone, directly from Twitter. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine whether or not tweets shown in Twitter’s own app follow the rules:

Source: John Koetsier

Twitter app screenshot

There’s a good reason why they don’t: Tweets that include all the voluminous information that Twitter is requiring developers to display will simply not be as simple, as clean, as readable … in short, as user-friendly as the Tweets shown just above in Twitter’s iPhone app.

Ergo: Third-party developer’s apps will not be as good as Twitter’s.

I should be clear: Twitter is under no obligation to make life easy or lucrative for developers. The company can do as it pleases and when it pleases, and it is only accountable to its investors and the law. Specifically, it can require different things from developers than it offers to users via its own apps.

However, when developers cannot easily and quickly build products of utility, beauty, and simplicity on a software platform, they can and often do choose to abandon that platform. As one developer replied to my initial post about the Twitter development guidelines:

Screw you, Twitter. You just saved me some development time, because I’m not going to suck up to a service that will arbitrarily waste it.

That’s something for Twitter to think hard about as the company continues to monetize. No platform that is not good for developers is likely to succeed in the long term.

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photo pin cc

Note:
The guidelines (they will be rules when the API reaches version 1.1) are not presented as above but grouped for easier reading. I’ve separated some that seem to be different specific actions required by developers, but kept others together that seemed too trivial to separate.

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One thing is certain: The changes will affect some of your favorite apps, such as InstaPaper:

I suspect that I’ll have to remove Twitter from most of Instapaper’s “Liked By Friends” functionality.

—
Marco Arment (@marcoarment) August 16, 2012

First, the key changes:

Authentication
To minimize bots and scraping of Twitter content, authentication will be required for each and every API request. In other words, Twitter needs to know about you — and authorize you — before you can get data from the Twitter API.

Fewer retweets and fewer followers, but more datapoints
Currently Twitter limits the number of free accesses to its API to 350 calls per hour, whether the requesting site is looking for a tweet, a profile, a user, or a search. In the future, Twitter will implement per-endpoint rate limiting: 60 calls per hour.

If I’m understanding that right, you can get only 60 calls for certain API functions that take more system resources. Twitter’s post does not specify, but it seems that calls like getting the status of retweets on a post, or getting a list of followers for a particular user, would fall into this category.

For those high volume endpoints, such as tweets, profiles, user lookups, and user searches, Twitter will allow up to a maximum of 720 calls per hour.

Full details on these rate limits will be announced later, but it seems clear that Twitter is giving with one hand and taking back with the other. You can have more simple calls; you will presumably need to pay for complex API calls if you want more than 60 an hour.

Display guidelines: Before it was please, now it’s Thou Shalt
Twitter has had display guidelines in place for some time. Now, they’re not guidelines anymore … they are requirements.

Examples include linking @usernames to Twitter profiles and showing standard Twitter actions such as retweet, reply, and favorite. If you fail to comply, Twitter may just revoke your application key.

It’s the C-word: Certification
No more Wild Wild West with Twitter clients. If you want to build a Twitter client for a mobile platform or any other electronic device (such as a smart TV), you’ll need to have your application certified by Twitter. The goal is quality. “We want to make sure that the developer is providing the best Twitter experience possible.” But the result is lockdown.

If Twitter doesn’t like you, tough nuts. And if you do not certify your embedded software, Twitter “reserves the right” to revoke your application key.

Big boys: Talk to the hand
If you have a big app that wants big data, Twitter wants to talk to you. You’ll need permission to access the streams and messages of more than 100,000 individual Twitter users. If you are already doing so, having jumped the queue and built your application when Twitter was more concerned with growth than with control, you may continue, but the cut-off point is 200 percent more users than you currently have.

It’s the classic “them that has, gets,” but at least it’s similar runway for all third-party developers on a percentage basis.

But if you’re just accessing users for data purposes and not providing an application that enables Twitter-like interactions in a third-party app, you’ll be able to access up to 1,000,000 individual users.

Want more? Talk to Twitter, who will guide you “toward areas of value for users and their businesses.”

You’ve got six months
The API migration period is six months, during which time developers will need to migrate their applications from version 1.0. to the new version, 1.1. If you’re already a good boy and only making authenticated calls, this will be simple, says Twitter.

If not, good luck. You will need to start making authenticated calls, and since you probably have a reason for not doing so in the first place, your content-scraping business may be toast. Or your extremely legit app that Twitter just doesn’t like.

And what’s the goal, you ask?
Twitter wants to encourage innovation in the business and analytics side of the business. That’s one of the reasons for the 1 million user rate limit for apps that are not accessing the actual streams of individual users for content creation as well as consumption purposes.

Here’s how Twitter views the third-party app industry:

Twitter wants innovation from others on the left side of the entire chart: business analytics tools like DataMinr, and business engagement apps like HootSuite. And it wants innovation from others on the bottom right quadrant: consumer analytics like Klout.

But consumer engagement — the quadrant where people interact with their interest graph — that is sacred Twitter territory. That is the public face of Twitter to its hundreds of millions of users, and that is Twitter’s brand. Venture there with caution, because Twitter claims that space:

That upper-right quadrant also includes, of course, “traditional” Twitter clients like Tweetbot and Echofon. Nearly 18 months ago, we gave developers guidance that they should not build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” And to reiterate what I wrote in my last post, that guidance continues to apply today.

Which all gives a pretty big clue to how Twitter is planning to monetize.

Data in the three green-light-go quadrants is metered and controlled and can easily be charged for per 1,000 API calls or whatever. And consumer attention will be monetized with native ads, promoted tweets, and the like.

It’s all in the map.

photo credits: CarbonNYC/Flickr,  ~Ilse via photo pin cc

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The United States is reunited with Mars again, and it feels so good. So good, in fact, everybody is chiming in on the landing, including President Barack Obama and a few tech heavyweights with an eye to the sky.

The Mars rover Curiosity touched down on Mars at 1:31 am Eastern Time today, completing what NASA refers to as the “seven minutes of terror.” That is, it takes seven minutes from the time the rover enters the atmosphere to the time it touches the surface of Mars. But the signal from the rover takes 14 minutes in total to make it back to earth. Meaning, when NASA first finds out that the rover has entered Mars’ atmosphere, it has already landed on the surface, but NASA won’t know for another seven minutes whether it was a successful landing or the rover was destroyed.

President Obama released a statement about the success of the landing today, saying:

Tonight, on the planet Mars, the United States of America made history.

The successful landing of Curiosity – the most sophisticated roving laboratory ever to land on another planet – marks an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future. It proves that even the longest of odds are no match for our unique blend of ingenuity and determination.

Tonight’s success, delivered by NASA, parallels our major steps forward towards a vision for a new partnership with American companies to send American astronauts into space on American spacecraft. That partnership will save taxpayer dollars while allowing NASA to do what it has always done best – push the very boundaries of human knowledge. And tonight’s success reminds us that our preeminence – not just in space, but here on Earth – depends on continuing to invest wisely in the innovation, technology, and basic research that has always made our economy the envy of the world.

I congratulate and thank all the men and women of NASA who made this remarkable accomplishment a reality – and I eagerly await what Curiosity has yet to discover.

Here are a few other well-known figures jumping into the conversation:

Wil Wheaton of Star Trek fame tweeted, “I got to see these pictures from inside @NSASJPL the same time the scientists did. That was so cool! pic.twitter.com/UaKrqE8U“

Buzz Aldrin tweeted, “@MarsCuriosity has successfully landed on Mars. I’m at JPL on this momentous evening. This is one of many stepping stones to manned missions”

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, a private company attempting to enter space tweeted, “Seven minutes of terror turns into joy as Rover successfully lands on Mars. Was there ever life on Mars? We should hopefully know soon.”

Virgin Galactic tweeted, “How about that @MarsCuriosity?!? The word ‘awesome’ gets over used these days… but that was awesome. Kudos, @NASA @NASAJPL and all others!”

William Shatner of all types of fame tweeted, “Olympics or @MarsCuriosity? I can’t decide which is more exciting tonight. My best, Bill”

SpaceX, the private company founded by Elon Musk that is also attempting consumer space travel said on Google+, “Success! Congrats to NASA on Curiosity!”

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of F-Secure tweeted some interesting stats: “Mars Curiosity rover on-board computer specs: CPU: 200MHz, RAM: 256MB, SSD: 2GB – iPhone specs: CPU: 800MHz, RAM: 512MB, SSD: 64GB #MSL”

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter tweeted, “There’s a universe inside every tweet: I watched @Mars Curiosity touchdown on Mars. Wow. #MCL  pic.twitter.com/AO9cwA6l“

Larry Page, co-founder of Google said on Google+, “Always good to see your shadow, especially when it is on MARS!  Congrats NASA.  Just watched part of the press conference and the excitement is contagious. I can’t imagine the feeling of relief after years and years of hard work and a lot of inherent risk. I hope we see a lot more missions like this. It would be amazing to see the other planets and moons up close and we would learn a lot, I’m sure.”

Last but not least, Aaron Levie, chief executive of Box had a number of hilarious things to say, but our favorite was, “The Mars Rover has to fly 350,000,000 miles to do its job. It turns out your commute isn’t so bad after all.”

Curiosity image via NASA

And while NBC might be tracking who’s winning in the arena, Socialbakers will be tracking who’s winning in the stands.

The social marketing company has created Cheer for London, a social media analytics tool that reveals what’s hot and and who’s cheering the loudest. The company calls it the CheerMeter, and it tracks Olympic-related tweets on an hourly basis, breaking them down into tweets per hour, per day, by language, and by sport.

“We’ve built the CheerMeter to act as a virtual stadium for all sports fans, supporters and critics to track the social media performance of individual sporting events, athletes, and associated brands in real time,” Socialbakers chief executive Jan Rezab said in a statement.

As you might expect with the opening ceremonies on, tweets are rising fast this morning:

The last hour saw over 40,000 tweets, already three times yesterday’s total. This will surely rise as the actual Olympic events begin and the signature sports take center stage.

Currently the top language is English, by a massive margin, and the top sport is rowing, probably due to the fact that rowing is one of the first sports off the mark, tomorrow. And, of course, the English love rowing.

London 2012 is 16 days, 200 nations, and 300 events. Perhaps in a couple of weeks the cheer meter will also be able to reveal how many tweets this Olympics will generate.

For updates — the tool is live and does update in real-time — check Cheer for London.

Image credits: Socialbakers

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Twitter has taken the most obvious next step in its quest to become an attractive destination for advertisers: It’s just released targeted tweets, the latest enhancement to its Promoted Tweets ad product that lets brands pay to place tweets in front of select audiences.

Promoted Tweets is the Twitter ad product that gives advertisers a for-charge way to gain additional exposure for their tweets in Twitter search or as part of the stream.

Targeted tweets, available today to all advertisers that use the Promoted Tweets product, gives companies a way to push these promotional messages out just to the Twitter users they want to reach in specific geographic regions or on a particular device. Promoted Tweets can be targeted at the country level or at the regional level in the U.S., according to Twitter’s website.

“Now global brands that have different launch dates for several countries can send tailored messages at different times, customized for the users in each country,” product manager Kevin Well said in a blog post. “Mobile app providers who only want to reach customers on one device can do so without also sending the message to desktop users.”

The geographic and mobile targeting options were already available to advertisers, though previously they had to first publish the tweet to all of their followers.

The enhanced targeting options, which have been tested by partners British Airways and Coca Cola in recent weeks, come just as new research has surfaced to suggest that Twitter’s mobile click-through rate of 0.226 percent is one-fourth that of Facebook’s mobile click-through rate of 1.1 percent. Twitter may be able to up its CTR with these additional targeting options, which should help advertisers reach audiences more likely to engage with their tweets.

Update: TBG Global, the company behind the research cited in this story, revised its findings. The company now says Twitter Promoted Tweets see 1 percent to 3 percent engagement rates on desktop, and even higher rates on mobile.

Photo credit: id-iom/Flickr

Twitter isn’t happily handing over one Occupy Wall Street protester’s tweets. The company appealed a ruling today that forces Twitter to package the protester’s tweets for use in a lawsuit against him.

Twitter’s legal counsel Benjamin Lee announced the appeal in a, you guessed it, tweet today.

A New York judge ruled earlier this month that Twitter would have to give the courts the tweets of alleged Occupy Wall Street protester Malcolm Harris. The tweets would be examined for his involvement with the protest, particularly around an incident at the Brooklyn Bridge in October, as All Things D notes. The judge, Matthew Sciarrino Jr. stated that Twitter would have to comply because tweets are public and “what you give to the public belongs to the public.”

“At Twitter, we are committed to fighting for our users,” Twitter stated in its appeal. “Accordingly, we are appealing this decision which, in our view, doesn’t strike the right balance between the rights of our users and the interests of law enforcement.”

Twitter argues that tweets belong to the user, as per its terms of service, and thus are protected content. Should Twitter’s appeal be overthrown, the ruling stands to set a precedent for how much of our online content really is ours, and how compliant social media sites will have to be with requests to reveal that content. Currently, Twitter promises to inform users when their information is requested and recently began publishing transparency reports – that is, reports revealing how many requests for information the social network receives from governments or law enforcement entities.

hat tip All Things D; Annoyed bird image via Shutterstock

What’s a big executive hire like Yahoo tapping Google’s Marissa Mayer without a look at what Silicon Valley has to say on Twitter? Mayer, who was Google’s 20th employee, started us off with her own 140-character announcement:

“I’m incredibly excited to start my new role at Yahoo! tomorrow,” she tweeted with a link to the official Yahoo press release. Her Twitter bio officially reads, “@ Yahoo!”

Mayer, who was also Google’s first female employee, resigned from the company Monday and is said to start work as Yahoo’s president and chief executive Tuesday. Yahoo, who has been in desperate need of the right leadership, may have just gotten the person it needs to turn itself around. The company recently let go of over 2,000 employees and fired its last CEO, Scott Thompson, for lying about his education.

The Twittersphere seems to agree that Mayer is the right choice for the job. Here are a few of our Silicon Valley favorites chatting about Mayer’s lastest move on Twitter:

Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, tweets: ” Yeah yeah yeah new Microsoft Office. HOLY SHIT Marissa Mayer running Yahoo.”

• Followed by: “That awkward moment when Yahoo starts being able to retain and hire engineering talent.”

Chris Sacca, an investor and former Google employee, tweets: “Holy shit, yes! @MarissaMayer as CEO of Yahoo! Loved working with her at Google. If anyone can pull it off, she can.”

Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter, tweets: “@MarissaMayer congratulations on the new role for one of the valley’s brightest minds.”

Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post tweets: “Great news for women… congrats to new Yahoo CEO @MarissaMayer!”

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, tweets: “OMG this is so awesome. Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief”

Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square, tweets: “THRILLED that @MarissaMayer is now running @Yahoo. It’s the perfect fit. Congrats Marissa!”

Emily Chang of Bloomberg West tweets: “On Charlie Rose, @marissamayer once said her childhood dream was to be either a neurosurgeon or CEO…of Disney”

Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand tweets: “Wow. @MarissaMayer to head Yahoo? There may be hope. That puts ex-Googlers running AOL, Facebook, too”

Stephen Lau, a project engineer working on Google Glass, tweets: “What the. I don’t even.”

Gavin Newsom, former San Francisco mayor, tweets: “Congrats @MarissaMayer ! Will be fascinating to watch the direction Yahoo takes now.”

Robert Scoble tweets: “Wow, HUGE news for Yahoo AND Silicon Valley… Marissa Mayer is a coder and now is CEO of Yahoo.”

We will be updating this page as tweets come out. Please refresh the page for more.