Will Twitter Roll Out an Advertising Platform?
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Twitter’s long-awaited advertising platform was the subject of much speculation among bloggers on Tuesday. Twitter will roll out an official advertising platform, likely within the next month or so, one of the company’s executives told an advertising-industry conference, according to a report in Media Post.
Declining to confirm exactly when Twitter would release the platform, Anamitra Banerji, head of product management and monetization at Twitter, told MediaPost ...that "we are working on an ad platform, but it's only in the test phase." When asked how it would work, Banerji says it will be "explicitly clear that a sponsor paid for the ad," and it will be "relevant and useful, so the user doesn’t think of it as an ad."
As reported on tuesday, the company says they receive and distribute about 50 million tweets a day,, or about 600 Tweets every second, reaching a popularity almost as high as Facebook. With that kind of growth, it makes sense that the company would want to take advantage of that user base and provide advertisers with a way to reach and target them. What remains to be seen is how the service implements ads, and whether or not users revolt against the commercialization of their social network.
Declining to confirm exactly when Twitter would release the platform, Anamitra Banerji, head of product management and monetization at Twitter, told MediaPost ...that "we are working on an ad platform, but it's only in the test phase." When asked how it would work, Banerji says it will be "explicitly clear that a sponsor paid for the ad," and it will be "relevant and useful, so the user doesn’t think of it as an ad."
As reported on tuesday, the company says they receive and distribute about 50 million tweets a day,, or about 600 Tweets every second, reaching a popularity almost as high as Facebook. With that kind of growth, it makes sense that the company would want to take advantage of that user base and provide advertisers with a way to reach and target them. What remains to be seen is how the service implements ads, and whether or not users revolt against the commercialization of their social network.
Labels: A-1 Technology, Social media, Social media marketing, Social Media News, Twitter, Twitter news
Twitter: Local Trends Go Live!
Thursday, January 28, 2010
More and more people around the world are signing up to Twitter. The service is constantly updating and releasing new features. ‘Lists’ which launched towards the end of 2009 hasn’t really taken off that much but I think Local Trends might just.
Basically, you have the option to take the current trending topics and make it more localised. So if there’s something happening in America which is of no relevance to your area, it won’t be displayed in your Trending Topics because people from your area won’t be tweeting about it. Obviously, big global events such as the Haiti disaster or G8 meetings will attract attention from all over the world, but localised Trending topics can get quite annoying.
Twitter sums it up as follows:
Source: http://www.mediapost.com
Basically, you have the option to take the current trending topics and make it more localised. So if there’s something happening in America which is of no relevance to your area, it won’t be displayed in your Trending Topics because people from your area won’t be tweeting about it. Obviously, big global events such as the Haiti disaster or G8 meetings will attract attention from all over the world, but localised Trending topics can get quite annoying.
Twitter sums it up as follows:
“Twitter trends began as a way to shed light on popular conversations. It’s interesting to know that one topic can now spread across the world in real-time, and Trends help us discover which of those topics are paramount on a global scale.”
“The big events that come up around the world will always become a global conversation, but what about the big events that only happen in your world that only matter to those around you?
Source: http://www.mediapost.com
Labels: Twitter Apps, Twitter Local Trends, Twitter news
Twitter Buys Geolocation Startup Mixer Labs
Friday, December 25, 2009
Twitter is putting some of its recent big funding round to work; the company has purchased Mixer Labs, which provides services to developers who want to make their products location-aware. In late August, Twitter said it would introduce an opt-in feature that would make it easier for users to add their location to their Tweets and in a blog post Twitter CEO Evan Williams links the acquisition to that initiative. “We want to know, What’s happening?, and more precisely, Where is it happening?” he writes. “As a dramatic example, twittering “Earthquake!” alone is not as informative as ‘Earthquake!’ coupled with your current location.”
MixerLabs’ services include a ‘reverse geocoder,’ which takes coordinates and returns the nearest intersection, a ‘places finder,’ which compares specific locations to its database of 16 million businesses and points of interest, as well as a way to search for a specific type of media by location (Interestingly, this is an example Mixer Labs gives: “Want to get back all the Tweets within a specific neighborhood? No problem.”) The company also owns TownMe, a wiki site that lets users edit pages about their home towns.
Williams says that the Mixer Labs team—which includes CEO Elad Gil, who co-founded Google’s mobile team, and president Othman Laraki, who managed products at Google, including Google Toolbar—will now be joining Twitter. He says that they will be “looking at how to integrate the work Mixer Labs has done with the Twitter API.”
As for the terms of the deal, none were disclosed. Mixer Labs does not appear to have raised any venture capital funding, however.
This is not Twitter’s first acquisition; the company bought search startup Summize in July 2008 for a reported $15 million in cash and stock. More acquisitions are likely on the way. Co-founder Biz Stone told a news conference last month that the Summize purchase “was outstandingly good” and that the company was interested in buying up more firms.
Source:http://paidcontent.org/article/419-twitter-buys-mixer-labs/
MixerLabs’ services include a ‘reverse geocoder,’ which takes coordinates and returns the nearest intersection, a ‘places finder,’ which compares specific locations to its database of 16 million businesses and points of interest, as well as a way to search for a specific type of media by location (Interestingly, this is an example Mixer Labs gives: “Want to get back all the Tweets within a specific neighborhood? No problem.”) The company also owns TownMe, a wiki site that lets users edit pages about their home towns.
Williams says that the Mixer Labs team—which includes CEO Elad Gil, who co-founded Google’s mobile team, and president Othman Laraki, who managed products at Google, including Google Toolbar—will now be joining Twitter. He says that they will be “looking at how to integrate the work Mixer Labs has done with the Twitter API.”
As for the terms of the deal, none were disclosed. Mixer Labs does not appear to have raised any venture capital funding, however.
This is not Twitter’s first acquisition; the company bought search startup Summize in July 2008 for a reported $15 million in cash and stock. More acquisitions are likely on the way. Co-founder Biz Stone told a news conference last month that the Summize purchase “was outstandingly good” and that the company was interested in buying up more firms.
Source:http://paidcontent.org/article/419-twitter-buys-mixer-labs/
Labels: Mixer Labs, Twitter, Twitter news, Twitter Top Trends
Most popular topics on Twitter in 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Here's a list of the top 10 trending topics in several categories tweeted about on Twitter in 2009. The most popular topic overall was the Iran elections. It's interesting to take a look back at 2009 through the filter of Twitter to see what was important (or at least what we tweeted about most.)
Here are the lists from Twitter blog:
News Events
1. #iranelection
2. Swine Flu
3. Gaza
4. Iran
5. Tehran
6. #swineflu
7. AIG
8. #uksnow
9. Earth Hour
10. #inaug09
People
1. Michael Jackson
2. Susan Boyle
3. Adam Lambert
4. Kobe (Bryant)
5. Chris Brown
6. Chuck Norris
7. Joe Wilson
8. Tiger Woods
9. Christian Bale
10. A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez)
Movies
1. Harry Potter
2. New Moon
3. District 9
4. Paranormal Activity
5. Star Trek
6. True Blood
7. Transformers 2
8. Watchmen
9. Slumdog Millionaire
10. G.I. Joe
Story:http://www.gather.com/
Main source:http://blog.twitter.com/2009/12/top-twitter-trends-of-2009.html
Here are the lists from Twitter blog:
News Events
1. #iranelection
2. Swine Flu
3. Gaza
4. Iran
5. Tehran
6. #swineflu
7. AIG
8. #uksnow
9. Earth Hour
10. #inaug09
People
1. Michael Jackson
2. Susan Boyle
3. Adam Lambert
4. Kobe (Bryant)
5. Chris Brown
6. Chuck Norris
7. Joe Wilson
8. Tiger Woods
9. Christian Bale
10. A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez)
Movies
1. Harry Potter
2. New Moon
3. District 9
4. Paranormal Activity
5. Star Trek
6. True Blood
7. Transformers 2
8. Watchmen
9. Slumdog Millionaire
10. G.I. Joe
Story:http://www.gather.com/
Main source:http://blog.twitter.com/2009/12/top-twitter-trends-of-2009.html
Labels: Twitter Apps, Twitter news, Twitter Top Trends
FeedBurner Socialize: Add Your Feed to Twitter
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
If you've used TwitterFeed to post updates from a blog to your Twitter account, you'll like FeedBurner Socialize.It's a new FeedBurner feature that distributes the content from a feed on Twitter.
"To get started, go to the Socialize service on FeedBurner's Publicize tab and add the Twitter account to which you would like to post items from your feed. You can take the default settings and click [Save] to start socializing immediately, or use the options we offer to customize exactly which feed items are sent to Twitter and how exactly you would like them to look. The next time you post a new item to your feed it will be sent to Twitter," mentions FeedBurner's blog.
Socialize uses Google's new URL shortener and it adds a parameter that helps you track Twitter traffic in Google Analytics.
Source: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/12/feedburner-socialize-add-your-feed-to.html
"To get started, go to the Socialize service on FeedBurner's Publicize tab and add the Twitter account to which you would like to post items from your feed. You can take the default settings and click [Save] to start socializing immediately, or use the options we offer to customize exactly which feed items are sent to Twitter and how exactly you would like them to look. The next time you post a new item to your feed it will be sent to Twitter," mentions FeedBurner's blog.
Socialize uses Google's new URL shortener and it adds a parameter that helps you track Twitter traffic in Google Analytics.
Source: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/12/feedburner-socialize-add-your-feed-to.html
Labels: FeedBurner News, Google Social Search, Twitter news
Twitter Releases New Mobile Interface
Friday, December 04, 2009
For the first time, Twitter has entered the ring to battle against various twitter clients. We’ve seen a lot of apps available or twitter, too many to even name infact. But this is the first we’ve seen of something similar that is actually created by Twitter themselves. Twitter has always had a slimmed-down mobile client while the new preview at mobile.twitter.com, will come with almost all the features and graphics of the main site.
Although it doesn’t have as much to offer as the Apps available in the AppStore, it’s a definite improvement from the other mobile version, and the official blog on the subject says that they still have lots of visitors, despite all the other third-party clients out there.
In order to try out the new version, it’s best to use a WebKit browser such as Safari on the iPhone. The new mobile interface will not replace the m.twitter.com experience for the time being, but you can look for that switch to happen in the coming months.
Source: http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/iphone-news/twitter-releases-new-mobile-interface/
Although it doesn’t have as much to offer as the Apps available in the AppStore, it’s a definite improvement from the other mobile version, and the official blog on the subject says that they still have lots of visitors, despite all the other third-party clients out there.
In order to try out the new version, it’s best to use a WebKit browser such as Safari on the iPhone. The new mobile interface will not replace the m.twitter.com experience for the time being, but you can look for that switch to happen in the coming months.
- Leland Rechis of the User Experience team writes:
What may be a less known fact is: Lots of people access Twitter on their phones via our good ol’ mobile website, and trusty ‘m’ has been delivering tweets faithfully. However, ‘m’ doesn’t fully feel like Twitter, and could probably do a bit more things for you.
‘M’ should also be fantastically innovative — naturally the best way to do that is use our own APIs. So, the mobile team here built a brand new mobile web client from scratch, using only Twitter APIs, and we’d like to share the results with you.
Source: http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/iphone-news/twitter-releases-new-mobile-interface/
Labels: Twitter Apps, Twitter Mobile Site, Twitter news
Twitter to introduce live video-tweeting
Monday, October 12, 2009
Twitter users may soon be posting real-time video tweets in addition to text tweets under plans to modernise the site.
The upgrade, which is being discussed by Twitter's founders, will enable Twitter users to upload brief video snippets to their profiles directly from mobile phones, laptops and other devices.
Third party sites Twiddeo and Tweetube already allow Twitter users to post video tweets but only by creating links to their sites.
Both Twideo and Tweetube have so far failed to gain as much popularity as similar external service Twitpic.
Twitter's founders hope by adding live video-tweeting it will help boost its prominence as a fashionable social-networking tool again.
In recent weeks both British singer Lily Allen and Hannah Montana actress Miley Cyrus have snubbed the site by closing their Twitter accounts.
Allen's last tweet read: "I am a neo-Luddite, goodbye."
Some of Britain's biggest tweeters include Stephen Fry with 810,000 followers, Sarah Brown, the prime minister's wife, with 840,000 followers, and rock group Coldplay who have more than two million followers. Sarah Brown's Twitter following is already believed to be five times larger than the entire membership of the Labour party.
Although many tweets describe mundane activities, the site has played a role in news events. Twitter was an active platform for protesters during the Iranian elections and in January, a ferry passenger was the first person to post pictures of people being rescued from an airliner in New York's Hudson River.
Twitter has also been used as a campaign tool by Barack Obama and British politicians in support of the NHS.
The site has yet to make a profit or find a way of making money but has been valued at £603m. Twitter has 54 million users around the world every month.
Source for this:http://www.telegraph.co.uk
Labels: Tweetube, Twiddeo, Twitter, Twitter Apps, Twitter news
Twitter Raising Money At $1 BILLION Valuation!
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Huge: Twitter will raise around $50 million at a $1 billion valuation, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington reports, citing "multiple sources." Twitter CEO Evan Williams reportedly disclosed the round at a recent employee meeting.
Twitter raised $35 million earlier this year, led by Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners.
The company has no material revenue at the moment. But it has huge plans for growth. And when you can raise money at a $1 billion valuation, you do it.
Source:http://www.businessinsider.com/
Twitter raised $35 million earlier this year, led by Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners.
The company has no material revenue at the moment. But it has huge plans for growth. And when you can raise money at a $1 billion valuation, you do it.
Source:http://www.businessinsider.com/
Labels: Twitter, Twitter Apps, Twitter news
Twitter Ensures Safety by Filtering Malicious Links
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Security firm F-Secure discovered that Twitter has begun blocking links to malicious sites when users try to post them on this free social networking service. Malicious links spread more quickly on Twitter's lightening fast communications platform.
With numerous incidents having taken place already, Twitter is cracking down by filtering URLs to known malicious sites. Try posting a link to such a site, and you’ll receive the warning: “Your Tweet contained a URL to a known malware site!”
The popular micro-blogging service has quietly started using the Google Safe Browsing API to block links to known malicious Web sites. The blocking of malicious URLs shows that the company is not ignoring security concerns though.
Although, it is odd that they have not addressed this in a blog post or anything as Twitter hasn’t announced this initiative and didn’t respond to a request for comment about it.
With numerous incidents having taken place already, Twitter is cracking down by filtering URLs to known malicious sites. Try posting a link to such a site, and you’ll receive the warning: “Your Tweet contained a URL to a known malware site!”
The popular micro-blogging service has quietly started using the Google Safe Browsing API to block links to known malicious Web sites. The blocking of malicious URLs shows that the company is not ignoring security concerns though.
Although, it is odd that they have not addressed this in a blog post or anything as Twitter hasn’t announced this initiative and didn’t respond to a request for comment about it.
Labels: Twitter, Twitter news
Flickr2Twitter : A New Lease of Life
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Flickr has released the long awaited feature for posting photos to Twitter. The built-in feature lets members tweet their photos. And also explains how to post photos from your phone, and how to tweet from Flickr. Users can also upload directly to Flickr and Twitter simultaneously, or tweet a photo already on Flickr, using a special short Flickr Url.
It is different from other photo tweeting services like TwitPic which lets you sign-in using your Twitter account. To use Flickr2Twitter, you first need to sign-in to Flickr, and then authorize the service to post to your Twitter account, which can be done from your settings page. Flickr2Twitter creates a shortened URL for your photos and post these as Tweet to your Twitter account.
To use this feature, you just need to authorize Flickr to access their Twitter account once. After you’ve allowed Flickr to use your Twitter credential, a new option in Twitter’s “Blog This” option will now include your Twitter account.Flickr would also give you the chance to compose the 140 character Tweet then append the URL of your photo.
Such an interesting combination, Flickr2Twitter, will surely benefit both Twitter and Flickr, but more so for Flickr, as Twitter’s popularity will bounce back to Yahoo’s photo uploading service. And moreover, this in a way adds a new lease of life to Flickr.
Labels: Flickr News, Twitter news
