Link shortener Bitly today launched a major redesign and number of new features that all add up to what the company itself calls “a new bitly.” Among these new features are ‘bitmarks,’ bitly’s name for its new bookmarking features, the ability to search and find these bookmarks, a fast search functionality, as well as enhanced public profiles that give users more privacy control. Bitly is also rolling out new bookmarklets, a Chrome extension and its first iPhone app. → Read More
The legend goes something like this: as a child, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s father would relentlessly hound him to “Get better”, so Jack eventually banned the phrase from being tweeted. Go ahead and try it, the tweet won’t go through. But the legend? It’s a hoax.
Here’s the real story… → Read More
Google got the chance to buy Twitter, but the search giant passed, says Michael Arrington. “Google hasn’t been interested in buying Twitter since they committed themselves to Google+” says Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures founder and former Twitter board member, in his fireside chat this morning with Arrington at the TechCrunch Disrupt New York conference. [Update: To clarify, I believe Google missed the boat on buying Twitter, while Wilson simply said Google wasn't interested in such a purchase since it committed to Google+. Wilson did not make a value judgement on Google not buying Twitter, nor did he confirm that acquisition discussions ever took place.]
Now Google+ is widely seen as a ghost town, and not buying Twitter could be a mistake that haunts Mountain View for years to come. Wilson has one of the most envied portfolios in venture capital, with Union Square Ventures getting in early on Twitter, Zynga, Etsy, and Tumblr. But the future might not be as bright. “I don’t think I’m going to be very good at investing in the next big thing. I don’t come from it. I didn’t work in it. The next thing isn’t going to be evolutionary. It’s going to be something completely different.” → Read More
This is kind of handy – and just in time for TechCrunch Disrupt. The team at Lemon Labs just launched a new app called “Hashtag App,” which lets you follow Twitter hashtags on your iPhone or iPad. But there are a bunch of apps for that, including Twitter itself, you say? Very true. That’s why Hashtag App kicks things up a notch and supports Instagram hashtags as well. Fun!
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Another day, another example of a country making it harder for its people to use the web and some of its most effective channels of communication? There are reports coming in from Pakistan that it has become the latest country to ban the use of Twitter. Update: it’s now back up — new post explaining development here. Read below for full story.
According to the blog Dawn, the chairman of Pakistan’s telecommunications authority has today imposed the restriction because of blasphemous content: it reports that Chairman Mohammad Yaseen blocked the site today “because Twitter refused to remove material related to a competition on Facebook to post images of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.” Facebook, apparently, has complied with the request, says the blog. Others are now starting to report the same, and below the break we have a screenshot of how accessing the site looks from one of our readers in Lahore who says he “cannot access the site at all.”
Getting blocked in Pakistan, if true, is particularly ironic because the two, paired up, played a major role in one of the most important news events to be broken in recent history: the raid and demise of Osama bin Laden, which was tweeted by at least two people watching the raids as they happened in the mountains of the country.
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Facebook’s IPO was obviously the single most discussed topic on Twitter today. The good folks over at social media data platform DataSift monitored what Twitter users were saying about the IPO throughout the day and came up with some interesting conclusions. Turns out, the ups and downs of how Twitter’s users felt about the stock pretty much mirrored the price of Facebook’s stock as the day progressed. → Read More
Twitter does a lot of things right, but it still hasn’t solved the problem of turning its noise into signal. After joining Twitter, it can take a lot of following and unfollowing scores of accounts before you’ve curated a stream that makes sense for you. With its platform growing fast, Twitter is looking to make the onboarding process a little easier (and more personalized) for new users, which is why it announced today via its blog that it will begin serving users tailored suggestions of who they should follow. → Read More
We first wrote about Balloonduck back in March. At the time, the social network was accepting invite requests prior to a full launch, so as to avoid empty room syndrome. But today is the big day: Balloonduck has hit 1,500 invite requests and is now officially live.
If you perchance haven’t heard about the service, it’s basically a Pinterest-style Twitter, but with questions being the main content. Users can post a question about anything really — it can extend as far as curiosity will allow — along with a picture, at which point other users can perhaps share their expertise with an answer. → Read More
Mozilla’s Do Not Track feature, which allows users to tell websites that they would like to opt-out of being tracked by third parties, is starting to gain some traction among both users and publishers. According to new data shared by Mozilla today, 8.6% of Firefox desktop users and 19% of mobile users now turn this opt-in feature on. The latest company to announce that it will honor Do Not Track is Twitter. → Read More
Twitter has just finalized a deal to hire the team and buy the technology of RestEngine, a personalized email marketing service, which could help Twitter deliver email digests of great tweets you’ve missed. The deal fits well with Twitter’s recent talent acquisition of Summify, which creates these kinds of personal news digests. RestEngine had been powering re-engagement emails for social game companies like Crowdstarthat enticed users to start playing again by telling them what their in-game friends had been achieving.
Three of four founders will be joining the flock, and the company’s technology will come along with them. RestEngine’s founder Joe Waltman called this is an acquisition since Twitter’s gaining both employees and tech, though Twitter views it as an acqui-hire. Co-founder Joe Waltman won’t be moving to Twitter as he tells me his entrepreneurial spirit is too strong and he’ll be working on new projects after a vacation.
It looks like Twitter’s got a plan to get more of its inactive users tweeting again… → Read More
Twitpic was once the de facto standard for photo sharing on Twitter. Before Instagram and Twitter’s own photo-sharing solution, the service worked a treat, allowing us to compress our photos and share them in the twinkle of an eye.
The app resided as sort of a symbiotic pilot fish near Twitter’s gaping maw. Now, however, it’s angling for center stage. → Read More
Twitter just announced an update to its mobile site that is meant to bring it up to par with the new version of Twitter the company introduced in December. According to Twitter, the idea behind this update is to “give every person on the planet a consistent Twitter experience.” Because of this, the company says, the new version of the mobile site now uses one-third less bandwidth than the previous iteration and should work significantly better on feature phones, older browsers and low-bandwidth connections. → Read More
Earlier today, GlobalGrind broke the news that Adam “MCA” Yauch, a founding member of New York’s pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, had died of cancer at the age of 47.
While the loss of Yauch will be felt for decades to come, it’s no more evident just how big an impact the Beastie Boys and Yauch have had over their 25+ year career than by checking Twitter’s local and global trends.
He is survived by his wife and daughter. → Read More
One of the core features of Twitter’s redesign last year was the addition of the Discover tab in the web and mobile interface. Today, the company is launching the first major update to this feature. The new and improved Discover tab, says Twitter, will now begin to surface more personalized content. Starting today, the algorithm that populates this feature with stories will now also look at which tweets are popular among the people you follow and their friends. This should make for a more personalized experience and highlight content that is more relevant to the individual user. → Read More
This is a few days old but it’s well worth revisiting if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s by English rapper Dan Bull and it’s about everyone’s favorite time-waster, TheFacebook. The best part?
He also does a Twitter one. Give it a listen and then download it for free to help Bull hit the record books.
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Twitter just announced the latest updates to its mobile apps for Android and iOS. With these updates, these apps get a number of much-needed new features, including an improved Discover tab, better support for search and support for push notifications for interactions. These new push notifications now let you know whenever somebody retweets you, favorites one of your tweets or when somebody new follows you. With this update, Twitter is apparently trying to address some of the criticism it faced when it launched its radically redesigned mobile apps last December. → Read More
Twitter co-founder, and Square CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey sat down with Charlie Rose yesterday to talk about the two companies he’s developed as well as Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram and the “digital revolution.” The entire interview is just under 18 minutes, and is worth a watch, but here are some of the highlights:
As Square revealed yesterday, the payments company is now processing $5 billion in annual payments (or around $416 million in payments per month), which is up from $4 billion in annual payments in March. Dorsey says that Square is moving fast, and this year will be expanding internationally, both to local shops and larger merchants. “We want to be the point of sale for every merchant,” he tells Rose. → Read More
In February, Chirpify rebranded from SellSimp.ly and launched a Twitter commerce platform that allowed brands and consumers to buy, sell, donate and transact through tweets without leaving the comfort of Twitter. Since launch, Chirpify has seen growing traction, thanks in part to a promotional campaign launched at SXSW, called “Tweet-a-Beer,” which resulted in a huge boost of traffic for Chirpify, with two new users signing up every second.
Today, the startup’s direct sales model for Twitter is officially getting further validation — this time in the form of capital — as the startup announced that it has secured $1.3 million in Series A financing. The new round of investment, which adds to the $50K in seed it raised from its incubator Upstart Labs, was led by Voyager Capital, with participation from Geoff Entress, BuddyTV CEO Andy Liu, former Facebook exec Rudy Gadre, Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes, and TiE Oregon Angels. → Read More
In late 2010, Sun Microsystems Co-founder Scott McNealy and finance veteran Scott Johnston, launched WayIn, a mobile Q&A and polling service designed to let individuals and brands quickly create and respond to polls on anything their hearts desire. Thanks to the managerial clout behind it, the Silicon Valley-based startup has gone on to raise $20 million in venture funding. Now WayIn is extending its functionality with a new service called Twitpolls, which enables users and brands to engage with (and gather) realtime feedback from their Twitter followers — without requiring users to leave the comfort of their tweet stream. → Read More
Now this is a pretty nifty use of a corporate Twitter account. Smart Car’s Argentinian division has filled practically its entire Twitter stream — which is currently 456 tweets long — with ASCII art images that turn into a stop-action movie when you scroll through them.
Check it out for yourself: While on the @SmartArg Twitter page, hit the letter “J”, which is the hot key for scrolling to the next tweet. You’ll see a simple motion picture depicting a car driving down a street. You can also play it in reverse by pressing the “K” button. Most of the tweets were written in late March, but the account just seems to be catching some viral popularity right now. → Read More
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