Twitter to roll out labs for experimental features
Twitter is launching a Google Labs-like area where engineers can roll out add-ons and other experimental functions for the social network.
Britt Selvitelle, a Twitter engineer, made the announcement earlier today at the Future of Web Apps conference in London, but didn’t release further details. The move comes the same month that Facebook unveiled its own testing area called ‘Prototypes’.
As social networks have made it dirt cheap to launch features affecting millions of users instantaneously,… Continue Reading
Is Facebook speeding up while Twitter slows?
On the heels of Twitter’s latest fundraising round valuing it at a reported $1 billion, data suggests the site’s growth may be slowing. Twitter.com’s marketshare of visits peaked in June then declined into this month, according to analytics service HitWise.
The deceleration would also come as Facebook’s user growth speeds up — the rival saw 300 million users this month, accumulating 50 million users in two months’ time. After copying Twitter features like the site’s stream… Continue Reading
Facebook: Twitter is “in the rear-view mirror”
Twitter may still be the media darling of the day, getting all kinds of attention amid its huge user growth earlier this year. But Facebook, once considered Twitter’s most fierce competitor because it also wants to let users post bite-sized updates online about their thoughts, apparently no longer thinks of Twitter as a threat.
Facebook’s executives aren’t really thinking much about Twitter these days and see it as a niche site which is unlikely to grow… Continue Reading
Twitter co-founder Stone on tweet location: “Everyone should do this!”
Twitter is about to let you signal the exact location of where you’re tweeting from, inserting your latitude and longitude coordinates to tweets you select to carry such information.
Co-founder Biz Stone, in an interview with VentureBeat today, said that he welcomed other players, such as Facebook, Google and others, to do the same: “Everyone should do this!” He said it adds a valuable layer of context that makes messages more useful and interesting.
“We have a… Continue Reading
Justbought.it: A less tacky Facebook Beacon on iPhone, Twitter?
Mixing commercial and social elements in an online community is an extraordinarily delicate game.
It’s partly why Twitter has been careful about how it will monetize its business and why Facebook faced an uproar after it launched its controversial Beacon advertising program two years ago. People “friend” and “follow” to stay connected, not to be bombarded with advertising — and they certainly don’t want to be thrust into shilling products or services.
A Vancouver-based Twitter developer named… Continue Reading
SumtnSumtn connects Twitter with web comments
Twitter is a very natural extension of commenting on blog posts or video — and in some ways it’s better than a link stuck on a specific website or page, since it has the benefit of publicizing those pages through tweets.
A German company called SumtnSumtn hopes to capitalize on that by integrating Twitter into a bookmarklet that travels with you wherever you browse. When you pull it up, it hovers over the page, lets you… Continue Reading
Twitter augmented reality search: Tweetmondo and Layar team up
Less than a month ago, a fascinating, if slightly creepy, mobile app called Twittaround launched — overlaying nearby tweets onto a smartphone camera.
The concept was intriguing enough to spark immediate competition: SPRXMobile, the company behind the augmented reality browser Layar, is partnering with Tweetmondo, which handles local Twitter search, to build it.
The partners are offering slots for alpha testers on the Android phone and plan to release an iPhone version later this year.
The alliance makes… Continue Reading
SocialCord creates payment platform for Twitter; now what will people pay for?
Let the monetization begin: SocialCord has created a platform for musicians, writers and brands to build a “freemium” model delivered over Twitter or mobile phones. For example, bands wrestling with how to make a living from their music can send links to songs or videos of live performances to their most devoted fans first for a monthly charge. (”Freemium” is the business model of giving away basics for free while charging for special or advanced… Continue Reading
HootSuite helps you manage your brand on Twitter (hey, it works for the White House)
Twitter client HootSuite, which makes it easier for people and businesses to manage their brands on the microblogging network, opened up to public beta today. HootSuite seems well-tailored to companies that need to track conversations online and have multiple people manage a single Twitter account. It lets you add as many columns as you want for tracking search terms on Twitter and get detailed analytics on how many people have clicked on links you’ve shared.
“We’re… Continue Reading
Retweet.com removes offending code after Tweetmeme plagiarism accusations
A small tiff erupted over the weekend between two competitors seeking control over the retweeting space. Retweeting, a way of sharing content on Twitter, provides valuable data for surfacing the most popular content over a certain time.
Tweetmeme, an aggregator that finds popular content on Twitter, accused a still-unlaunched competitor called Retweet.com of copying its code verbatim. Although Retweet.com hasn’t yet opened to the public, Tweetmeme’s founder Nick Halstead discovered some code through a commenter, who left… Continue Reading
Twitter brings back full SMS capabilities to U.K. on O2 network
O2 is becoming the second mobile operator to revive full SMS text messaging capabilities in the United Kingdom after Twitter cut the service last fall because of costs. (Users can send updates viatext message to Twitter but, unlike in the U.S., can’t receive updates). Co-founder Biz Stone said there are no extra charges for this beyond standard texting rates. Users can activate the service in their account settings and the shortcode for texting in the… Continue Reading
Twitter culls spammers from follower lists overnight
If your follower list drops overnight, it’s not something you tweeted (hopefully…). Instead, Twitter is cleaning out spammers and other “data inconsistencies,” which have artificially inflated follower counts.
Twitter says, “Those with large followings may see significant changes as we correct for spam accounts and data inconsistencies. No legitimate followings should be affected—we’re just cleaning up artifacts in the system.”
Spam continues to be a problem from the nascent microblogging network as false accounts share links to… Continue Reading
Hints of many business models in Twitter 101’s case studies
Beyond the basics covered in the guide Twitter released last night, the most interesting part involves case studies showing how companies are using the microblogging network to build customer bases. As internal company documents released by a hacker last week show, the company is very much improvising its business model, but the case studies give an idea of where Twitter thinks its adds value.
Kill direct mail: NAKEDPizza wanted to find a way around direct mail, which… Continue Reading
Incorporating social media: There’s no magic bullet
Searching for help in determining how to incorporate social media into your business can be a frustrating process. A Google search for ‘social media consultant’ returns over 20 million results – and most of them offer very similar, one-size-fits-all suggestions based around the adoption of popular (and often faddish) tools and services.
Successful social marketing isn’t as simple as installing a set of apps and regular Facebook updates. There is no magic bullet. Determining the right… Continue Reading
Roundup: iPhone tethering, Michael Moritz on startups, robots with brains
AT&T to support iPhone tethering? Boy Genius reports that AT&T is rumored to be putting together an unlimited data and tethering plan for $70. SMS/MMS will be charged separately.
Wolfram Alpha may actually work now – An upgrade to Stephan Wolfram’s “computational knowledge engine” adds two dozen improvements and enhancements. It will now calculate planet-to-planet distances. But it still chokes on VentureBeat’s favorite test question, “Should I buy a Mac or a PC?”
WorldMate now on iPhone — Many… Continue Reading
Flock browser beefs up Twitter, Facebook support
Flock version 2.5, released on Tuesday by Redwood City, Calif.-based Flock, is designed to let social network addicts spend their entire day in a single browser window.
Flock, an enhanced version of the open-source Firefox browser, streams status updates from Twitter and Facebook in a sidebar that can be popped open or shut without shuffling windows around a computer screen.
The most impressive enhancement is drag-and-drop support for posting multimedia content to Facebook. The browser automatically handles… Continue Reading
TweetMeme’s latest Twitter search tools take on Scoopler, OneRiot
Hot on the heels of Scoopler’s Twitter search launch last week and Twitscoop’s relaunch this week, British competitor TweetMeme today launched a significantly enhanced set of Twitter search tools. TweetMeme is run by news aggregator Favorit.
The trick to using TweetMeme’s new features is to look at the right-hand side of the page, where your eyes are accustomed to avoiding ad banners. There are four tools for refining your search: Age, which will return results from… Continue Reading
Bay Area restaurant tweets up a good deal
Hip San Franciscan restaurant Luna Park has turned to Twitter to help promote its business. It’s initial promotion is the tweeting of a “password” to its followers, which they can then give to their waiter to get the employee discount — 50 percent off their bill. Pretty sweet deal.
Luna Park’s fare, according to its website, is “mostly French and Italian with a few American and Asian accents,” and it also offers cocktail service. It is… Continue Reading
Tinker: sanitized Twitter for advertisers, money-maker for micro-bloggers
Popular microblogging services like Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed will let you find and follow friends, celebrities, and anyone else who interests you. But Glam Media wants to let you follow events, too. It’s just launched Tinker.com, a micro-blogging platform that collects real-time conversations from Twitter Facebook and Friendfeed and sorts them by subject. Tinker users can select events that interest them from a predefined list — including options for sports events, TV shows, and breaking… Continue Reading
Sad news hits the airwaves: Layoffs at NPR
It’s a sad day. We saw Yahoo! go through its second mass layoff in under a year. And now it’s being reported that National Public Radio — of which shows including All Things Considered, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me and Car Talk have attracted a wide audience via iTunes — has eliminated 7 percent of its workforce, or 64 positions, and canceled two shows, News & Notes and Day to Day, in what is the organization’s first major… Continue Reading