March 13th, 2013

AudioTweets Is A Twitter Client That Lets You Earn $ By Listening To Your Twitter Stream

Screen Shot 2013-03-13 at 3.03.45 PM

With all kinds of content creation services out there, and numerous voice-enabled digital assistant apps sprouting up, TextAd is toying with ways to make your Twitter consumption more natural. That said, the company has developed a new mobile iOS Twitter client that reads your stream aloud, and pays you to listen — think Pandora. Of course, AudioTweets doesn’t pay per tweet, but rather per… → Read More

March 13th, 2013

To Drive More Sales, Twitter Updates Its Ads Dashboard With More Data On Performance, Analytics And Spend

Twitter Ads API

In the route to growing revenues, Twitter has been making a lot of upgrades to its advertising services — most notably through the release of an API — and today the social network added to that with the release of a new, upgraded dashboard for the Twitter Ads center. The new interface provides significantly more data to make it easier for brands to measure how ads are performing on the network… → Read More

March 13th, 2013

Twitter Reportedly Building Standalone iOS Music App Based On Recent Acquisition, As It Did With Vine For Video

Image (1) we-are-hunted.jpg for post 57237

Twitter is reportedly planning to release a standalone music app on iOS, possibly later this month, according to a new report from CNET. CNET has learned that Twitter acquired music discovery service We Are Hunted, and is using its tech to build the app, similar to the approach it took with Vine earlier this year. The difference here would be that Twitter’s music app would carry its own branding… → Read More

March 11th, 2013

Twitter Opens Tweet Archive Access To Users In 12 More Languages, Including Farsi, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Malay and Spanish

twitter-bird-callout

Today Twitter announced that it would be ramping up its archiving tool to cover people who use the service in 12 non-English languages: Dutch, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish and Spanish — giving the company one more way of engaging with its international audience, now 70% of its 200 million-monthly user base. The ability to access your own… → Read More

March 7th, 2013

Twitter Still Doesn’t Have A Patent On Pull-Down-To-Refresh, But It’s About To

Twitter-Logo-300x293

Over the past few years there has been a lot written by me and others about Twitter’s acquisition of the pull-down-to-refresh patent application with its purchase of Tweetie. According to Public PAIR (search for application number 2010-0199180), the USPTO has completed its examination of the patent application, and found allowable claims. Twitter has decided to take the allowable claims… → Read More

March 6th, 2013

Update For Twitter’s iOS, Android Apps And Mobile Site Includes Top Tweets From The Past And Better Web Browsing

3414271359_dfb8ec357b_z

Twitter has updated its iOS and Android apps today, as well as its mobile site, to include more interesting content to keep you tapping and exploring as you perform searches. As we noted last month, Twitter has started to surface older tweets in its search results. Today, that experience will become more prevalent in Twitter’s mobile experience. In addition to tweets that might have some age… → Read More

March 5th, 2013

Ev Williams: Medium Wants To Help Build A Sustainable Economic Model For Journalism

2118601809_4fb4b88e70_z1

At the Launch Conference in San Francisco today, Twitter co-founder Ev Williams took the stage to talk to conference founder Jason Calacanis about everything from his experience at Twitter and the rise of Vine to sharing his take on Google and Facebook as well as the latest from Medium, his latest effort to shape the future of digital publishing.

For those unfamiliar, a serial entrepreneur… → Read More

March 5th, 2013

Aviary’s Platform Has Been Used To Edit Over 3B Photos, And That Doesn’t Even Include Twitter

30404794_cd85c83d66_z

While developers scrambled to cash in on the photo-sharing gold rush while Instagram rose to prominence and then got sold to Facebook, Aviary took a different approach. Rather than build a consumer-facing app, the company decided to build a platform that allows other networks to include its photo-editing suite. It was a brilliant play and has paid off, as Aviary has announced that its platform has… → Read More

March 4th, 2013

Twitter Shuts Down TweetDeck For Android, iPhone And AIR, Discontinues TweetDeck’s Facebook Integration

img_screenshot_newlogo

TweetDeck, the feature-rich Twitter client that Twitter acquired in 2011, will soon mostly exist as a web-based service, and the native Mac and Windows apps will play second fiddle to the web and Chrome apps. The company is shutting down the AIR-based version of TweetDeck for desktop and will remove the Android and iPhone apps from their respective mobile stores in May. In addition, the TweetDeck… → Read More

March 3rd, 2013

Google Glass’ Women Problems

glass-model-logo-google-1

If you build it, they will come. Perhaps. And only if you don’t chase them away.

Recently Google co-founder Sergey Brin took to the stage at the TEDIdeas Worth Spreading” conference. His idea worth spreading? That cellphones are “emasculating.” → Read More

February 28th, 2013

What I See In Your Future, Vine (Voiceover, Android, And Front-Facing Camera)

dearvine

Dear Vine,

We’ve grown close over the last month. We’ve had so many great times together. You’ve helped me break news, have some LOLs, get creative, and even crowdsource information thanks to your awesome integration with Twitter. → Read More

February 25th, 2013

Twitter Announces App For Firefox OS

twitter logo

Twitter has announced that Twitter for Firefox OS will be available in the Firefox Marketplace when devices powered by Mozilla’s new operating system start to ship. → Read More

February 21st, 2013

Zendesk Hacking Affects Tumblr, Pinterest and Twitter Users

zendesk logo

Customer service software provider Zendesk announced a security breach that affects users of Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. Zendesk said that the hacker downloaded email addresses of users who have contacted those three websites for support, as well as support email subject lines. Tumblr and Twitter have notified affected users (see below), while Pinterest is expected to the same. A report on→ Read More

February 21st, 2013

Ev’s 3 Reasons To Sell Your Startup: Upside, Threat And Choice. Twitter Didn’t Qualify

url-9

Do you cash out or stick to your guns? Twitter co-founder Ev Williams says you should only sell your company if the offer captures the upside, there’s an imminent threat or you personally want to. “Any of them will suffice,” but Twitter didn’t have any, says Williams. → Read More

February 21st, 2013

Twitter Adds DMARC Email Authentication To Curb Login-Jacking Attempts Via Impostor Messages

twitter-bird-callout

Twitter announced via its blog today that it has begun using DMARC, a security protocol designed to cut down the number of fake emails that users receive from companies pretending to be Twitter itself. The move should help cut down on phishing scams, where third parties try to get users to give up their login details via false requests for password verification or other personal info. → Read More

February 20th, 2013

In Exchange For Help Juicing Sales, Twitter And LinkedIn’s Ads APIs Share The Wealth

Twitter Ads API

Tech companies try to stay lean. They don’t want to hire too many sales people, and they can’t build the perfect advertising tool for every buyer. So following in Google and Facebook’s footsteps, today Twitter and in November LinkedIn launched ads APIs. They set up a powerful value exchange: “Help us sell more ads, and we’ll give you a cut.” → Read More

February 20th, 2013

Twitter Launches Ads API, So Marketers Can Run Campaigns Through Adobe, Salesforce, Others

twitter advertising

Twitter just announced via blog post that it has launched an advertising API, which will allow brands to run ad campaigns through the company’s API partners, rather than having to buy them through Twitter itself.

This confirms a report by TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden saying that Twitter would launch its ads API sometime in the first quarter of this year. At the time, Ingrid noted that Twitter’s… → Read More

February 19th, 2013

Vine Is Hiring Engineers In NYC, Including One Android Developer

Screen Shot 2013-02-19 at 2.42.25 PM

Vine has just opened up a few new positions for the NY-based engineering team, as tweeted by co-founder Colin Kroll.

As it would appear, there are six positions available to work alongside the three-man team currently developing for Vine. Notably, one of the positions is for an Android developer, which could mean that we’ll see the video-sharing app on Google’s platform relatively soon. → Read More

February 19th, 2013

Twitter Is Testing A New Advertising Card For Lead Generation

twitter advertising card

Twitter is testing a new ad unit that gives direct marketers a way to generate leads directly from tweets.

You can see an example of the unit in this tweet promoting Twitter’s small business guide. Not only is there a small image promoting the guide, but if you’re logged in, it also shows a “Get it now” button. When you hit the button, you don’t get asked for a phone number or email address —… → Read More

February 18th, 2013

Hackers Turn Burger King’s Tweet Stream Into A Whopper Of A Mess

Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 12.39.51 PM

About 40 minutes ago hackers took over the official Burger King Twitter account, changing the branding to feature McDonald’s fish nuggets prominently on the top and noting that Burger King “just got sold to McDonalds because the whopper flopped =[ FREDOM IS FAILURE℠.” → Read More

February 18th, 2013

Appealing To Our Egos Worked – Over 80,000 People Bragged On Twitter About Having One Of The Most-Viewed Profiles On LinkedIn

very-important

Did you happen to get an email from LinkedIn recently, which congratulated you on having one of the most popular profiles on the site? Then, good news – you’re special. Just like millions of others. The campaign, which ran this month in celebration of LinkedIn’s 200-million-users milestone, involved these ego-boosting emails sent to the network’s “top” users, which urged them to share the good… → Read More

February 15th, 2013

Posterous Will Shut Down On April 30th, Co-Founder Garry Tan Launches Posthaven To Save Your Sites

3739276191_6fbc525b75

It was just a matter of time before Twitter shut the blogging platform Posterous down, after acquiring the company last March. The team had already been folded into the flock, but this means that nobody has to worry about pesky service interruptions of keeping the service’s diminishing number of users happy. The site will be shutting down on April 30th, but it’s not a completely sad… → Read More

February 14th, 2013

You Think You Know What You Want Out Of Twitter Search, But It’s Not What You Really Need

6941676850_846d67f527_z

Twitter and search sound like two peas in a pod, but it’s actually not the marriage made in heaven that you’d think it is. When you think of search, you think of a search engine, like Google, where the world’s information is seemingly at your fingertips. You feel confident that when you Google something, you won’t miss the important information. The secret is that… → Read More

February 13th, 2013

Twitter’s Crashlytics Enterprise Features Are Now Available To All Developers For Free

665300179_f10e561d50_z

Twitter surprised some folks when it acquired a mobile analytics firm called Crashlytics, but it’s clear that Twitter has an idea of what it would like to do with the firm. Step one since acquiring the company is opening up all of its enterprise features to developers for free, with no limits. Here’s what the company posted on its developer blog: You may know that a couple weeks ago… → Read More

February 12th, 2013

Amex Launches Pay By Tweet, Turns Purchases Into Adverts

Amex Sync on Twitter

Amex has extended its Twitter sync feature to enable customers who have synced their Amex account information with Twitter to also pay for certain products by tweeting purchase hashtags. Amex launched its original Twitter Sync feature last March — to allow customers get discount deals by tweeting offer hashtags. Now the card company has gone a step further by integrating payment into Twitter. → Read More

February 11th, 2013

Twitter Study Shows Its Mobile-First Users Are Younger, More Engaged And Easier To Market To

Mobile Blog Post #2

Twitter released the details of a new study about its “primary mobile users,” or those who engage with Twitter more on mobile devices and on the mobile web than on the desktop. The study, commissioned by Twitter from Kantar Media’s Compete, revealed that Twitter’s mobile-first users are more engaged than mobile users in more ways than one, skew younger, and tend to be more receptive to branded… → Read More

February 11th, 2013

Facebook Counted 43M Grammy-Related Likes, Comments — Oh, And 26M Related To Super Bowl Ads Last Week

grammys facebook page

After this year’s Super Bowl, there were a number of articles proclaiming that Twitter had “won” the event thanks to the general explosion in usage, as well as the prominent use of hashtags in many of the TV ads. But today Facebook is sharing some numbers of its own — and yes, it’s still an enormous source of conversation around big events. → Read More

February 8th, 2013

Twitter Allows You To View Your Profile In LOLcats In Preparation For 2014 IPO

loltwitter

In an obvious move to position the company towards a planned 2014 IPO, Twitter has today enabled LOLcats translation capabilities for its user profiles.

The translation of the sometimes obtuse service into the tired but still kind of funny LOLcats meme is meant to serve as a stepping stone in the startup’s efforts to eventually please the fickle financial markets. This is the latest in a… → Read More

February 6th, 2013

Super Bowl Ad-Related Hashtags Were Used 300K Times On Sunday, Up 273 Percent

twitter ads

Going into the Super Bowl, folks who care about such things probably knew it was not only going to be the Most Social! Super Bowl! Ever!, but also a big win for Twitter on the ad side. Now the company has published a blog post quantifying some of the ad-related activity that it saw.

Twitter says that of the 52 national ads that ran during the game, 50 percent included hashtags (to give credit… → Read More

February 6th, 2013

Twitter Redesigns Its Search Experience For iOS, Android And Mobile Web To Help You Find Relevant Tweets And People

560079597_12b29c3a6a_z

Twitter has announced a much-needed update to its search product today, which will be available on all mobile devices: iOS, Android and mobile web. The company boasts that the update will help you find relevant tweets, trends and people to follow in a single stream. This is very similar to the experience that we’re starting to see make its way to the website. The update allows you to search… → Read More