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One should be able to access Twitter anywhere, on any platform, and the interface should be instantly usable. So said Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in outlining the company’s vision for its future at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, going as far as to compare the service to running water. “It needs to be water. […]
There are three companies that we know are interested in or “hungry” for Twitter: Microsoft, Google and Facebook. In an article on bubbly valuations, the Wall Street Journal says that Twitter is again in “low-level” acquisition talks: Executives at both Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., among other companies, have held low-level talks with those at […]
Fans watching the final few moments of the Super Bowl last weekend set a new record for Tweets-per-second (TPS) for a sporting event: 4,064 Tweets were sent at 10:07:16 p.m. EST, according to Twitter. The previous TPS record, of 3,283, was set during Japan’s 3-1 win over Denmark during the World Cup soccer tournament last […]
What do I mean by that headline? A study from Stanford University, summarized by the NY Times, found “that bloggers, over time, had more influence than mainstream publications in areas like technology or entertainment.” In other words a mention or write up in a top publication will generate a “sugar rush” of interest and activity […]
Back in October 2010, Twitter announced that then-CEO and co-founder Evan (@ev) Williams would step down to focus on product. According to a report in the Business Insider, that hasn’t really materialized. Says the Business Insider report by Nicholas Carlson: The truth is, right now, a few months after Williams wrote a blog post saying […]
There are plenty of social analytics tools, but the most full-featured ones are often too expensive (i.e., geared towards enterprise-level users) and the inexpensive ones usually offer limited functionality. And then there’s Topsy Social Analytics, which was just launched this morning and immediately becomes one of the best free Twitter analytics tools I’ve seen. There […]
That self-serve advertising platform that MediaPost got a look at? Well, Twitter is denying that it’s the self-service platform it plans to roll out this year for long-tail advertisers, according to a report in ReadWrite Web. “Reports that Twitter is testing a self-serve ad platform are inaccurate,” the company’s PR folks tweeted this afternoon. “We […]
A new report from Experian Simmons says US-based Twitter users are spending more time on the Twitter.com website than ever before. But the report also cautions that overall visits to Twitter are down. Experian says the number of US adults that visited Twitter.com at least once a month fell 14% between November 2009 and November […]
Google has acquired fflick, according to TechCrunch. The price is reportedly $10 million. Is it a talent acquisition, a tool acquisition or both? It’s both. Using Twitter, the fflick service analyzes and organizes comments about movies: overall, most recent, positive, what your friends have said and so on. This is a very interesting service and […]
Will celebrity “influencers” like Kim Kardashian or Chelsea Handler soon have to disclose when they’re being paid to promote a product or service on Twitter? This past weekend The Guardian reported that the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) “has begun a crackdown on Twitter users and bloggers using their online presence to endorse products […]
Twitter started 2011 with a new record: 6,939 tweets were sent at four seconds after midnight in Japan. Twitter says that TPS rate (tweets per second) is more than double the previous high of 3,283 TPS during Japan’s World Cup soccer/football win over Denmark last summer. In a blog post detailing the new record, Twitter […]
Twitter has just launched an expanded version of its online guide for business users, which opens up its previously limited/closed advertising products and lets anyone put in a request to buy ads on the service. At the same time, it also represents a significant step for the company in terms of offering a formal and […]
Twitter released their top Twitter trends of 2010. They have a nice reviews page of trends at yearinreview.twitter.com/trends/. Here is the break down: OVERALL TOP TRENDS Gulf Oil Spill FIFA World Cup Inception Haiti Earthquake Vuvuzela Apple iPad Google Android Justin Bieber Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Pulpo Paul NEWS EVENTS Gulf Oil Spill […]
Eight percent of Internet users in the US are Twitter users, and the service is more popular among African-Americans and Latinos than white Internet users. Those are some of the findings from a new Pew Research Center report. Pew surveyed more than 2,200 US adult web users during November and asked, “Do you use Twitter?” […]
Twitter is rolling out a directory to share suggestions for new users to follow, but it’s not a traditional A-to-Z directory of user listings. There is, however, a prominent search box atop the who-to-follow directory, and … just our luck … it accepts single-character searches. An alphabetical user directory wouldn’t really tell us anything, would […]
If you’re a Twitter user, you have a TweepRank. Or perhaps a TwitRank. Or maybe an AtRank. Whatever it’s called, it’s a personal reputation score that Twitter has given you based on your Twitter activity. And Twitter isn’t about to reveal it in the form of a little blue bar on your home page. Twitter […]
Twitter is working on an analytics tool, but the company tells Search Engine Land that there’s no estimate when it’ll be widely available. Earlier today, Mashable shared a couple screenshots of the tool. A Twitter spokesperson tells us that there’s “a strong corporate demand for better monitoring and analytics tools,” and explained the analytics tool’s […]
Twitter’s business plan has taken another step today: Twitter and Gnip, a social data provider, have partnered to offer up to half of the Twitter “firehose” of tweets for sale with a couple conditions: Companies buying the tweets can’t display them, nor can they resell them; they’re for analysis only. According to Gnip’s announcement, the […]
It looks like one of the early adopters of Twitter’s “Promoted Accounts” advertising program is … Google. I took the screenshot at left just moments ago when I visited my Twitter home page. Right at the top, under the “Who to follow” heading, is an ad encouraging me to follow Google Mobile’s Twitter account, @GoogleMobile. […]
About five months ago Twitter launched Twitter Places to provide tweets with more “context.” Matt covered it with enthusiasm and imagined its potential: the marriage of location and real-time communication. But nothing much has really happened since that time. There have been lots of geotagged tweets but Twitter still isn’t all that useful as a […]
In a first ever move, Google is now carrying ads from someone else’s ad network — Twitter’s, as Google integrates Twitter’s new Promoted Tweets into Google Realtime Search. It’s quite a coup for Twitter. Not only did the company get Google to pay it for its data last year ($15 million, it’s rumored), something relatively […]
Watching Twitter roll out its ad-related products is almost like watching paint dry; it’s a very slooooow process. That’s to Twitter’s credit, perhaps, as the company is obviously being painstakingly delicate about introducing advertising into the service’s ecosystem. Today, another small step: Twitter says it’s testing Promoted Tweets in the main Twitter timeline. But, of […]
Missing some of your tweets? Yeah, you’re not going crazy. Others appear to be missing them, as well, and Twitter confirms there’s a temporary problem. Earlier today, Jill Whalen — one of the moderators at our sister-site Sphinn — noticed that our Sphinn account only had three tweets when she looked at it, all from […]
Google is testing a new feature that lets you connect your Twitter account to Google News. Some people are seeing a “Friends” box on the right hand side of Google News inviting them to do this. The friends box asks you to enter your Twitter username and click “Save.” When you click save, Google News […]
If Twitter were like an old-style McDonald’s, the sign outside would have changed to “1 Billion Queries Served” today. And to keep serving up those queries to humans and machines alike, Twitter is now using a new underlying search technology. The news was announced in a post on Twitter’s Engineering blog today. Let’s take the […]
As was rumored last week, Twitter has formally introduced its latest advertising option: Promoted Accounts. Promoted Accounts will show up in the “Who to follow” section of a Twitter home page, and is fully algorithmic in deciding when and which promoted accounts to display. According to the company’s announcement, what and when you might see […]
Evan Williams (@ev), the founder and CEO of Twitter has announced he is stepping down as the CEO. Dick Costolo, Twitter’s current Chief Operating Office, and the former CEO of Feedburner (which was acquired by Google) and former Group Product Manager at Google is now Twitter’s CEO. Ev said he will be “completely focused on […]
If you’re looking to grow your Twitter following, it might help to have your name and avatar show up when Twitter shows logged in users “Who to follow” on Twitter.com. And sometime soon, you’ll be able to pay for that exposure. It’s the latest offering in Twitter’s ongoing efforts to help users find new accounts […]
Do a search for politics on Bing Social Search, and its new “who to follow on Twitter” feature offer exactly one person: Sarah Palin.
Who’s an expert in a particular topic that you might want to follow on Twitter? Bing Social Search has a new feature offering these types of recommendations.
Talk about eating your own dogfood! Today, Twitter CEO Evan Williams took questions for an hour on Twitter, about Twitter, replying from his own account. What was he asked? Many questions about how the new Twitter works, from people who don’t yet have it. And if he likes cats (yes). I’ve compiled a transcript, below. […]
Teenagers have been grappling with a tough question lately: What do I do when mom tries to friend me on Facebook? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet, whippersnappers. There’s a new dilemma you better start thinking about: What do you do when grandma sends a friend request? That’s more and more likely according to a […]
Google Realtime Search has finally gained its own home page, as well as some new tools including “conversations view,” Google Alerts for real time content and the ability to see tweets filtered by geography. New Home Page Back in June, my Can Google Real Time Search Have Its Own Home Page Now? covered how frustrating […]
Looking for old tweets? Look to Topsy. The service has just expanded to have what it claims to be the largest searchable collection of past tweets, over 5 billion of them, stretching back to at least May 2008. That makes it more comprehensive than Google’s Twitter search or even Twitter’s own Twitter Search. Topsy will […]
Twitter is rolling out a couple new features this week that expands its ability to show and help you develop your social network. The new features — “Followed by” and “You both follow” — are on their way to 100% availability, a Twitter spokesperson tells us. Both features show up when looking at another user’s […]
As rumored yesterday, Twitter has launched an official “Tweet” button that’s available to all web site owners. You can see it in action already right here on Search Engine Land — look how well it plays with others in the sharing options for our Tweet button story from yesterday: The Tweet button builder has some […]
Twitter usage is growing rapidly around the world, with most regions experiencing triple-digit growth between June 2009 and June 2010. That’s according to a new comScore report out today. Nearly 93 million Internet users worldwide visited Twitter.com in June, comScore says — that’s up 109% over the previous June. The growth was even more dramatic […]
Twitter is planning to launch an official “Tweet” button this week, according to Mashable. The button will come in three forms, according to internal Twitter documents that Mashable has published. When asked to confirm Mashable’s report and the authenticity of the internal documents, a Twitter spokesperson would only tell us, “Stay tuned.” The button will […]
As Twitter continues to take steps to execute on its business plan, the company has announced two important hires today: Dan Coughlin as Director of Sales for the Eastern Region, and Amanda Levy as Director of Sales for the Western Region. Coughlin comes to Twitter from Facebook, where he worked for four years and was […]
Twitter is launching a new tool called “Suggestions for You” in the hopes of making it easier for users to find the right accounts to follow. The tool is rolling out today; I don’t have it on my main @mattmcgee account, but it does appear on the home page of my @atu2 account. (atu2.com is […]