Tag Archive: Twitter

24 May
Introducing Seesmic for iPhone

Seesmic for iPhone is now available for download in the App Store. The application allows you to post to Twitter, Facebook and Ping.fm (which in turn gives you the option to update platforms like MySpace, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Flickr and Blogger).

With Seesmic for iPhone, you can:

  • see your mentions, direct messages, and friends’ timelines
  • customise your dashboard by adding multiple pages of “spaces” showing accounts, searches, trending topics, lists and so on

Dashboard

  • easily switch between accounts on different social networks

Account list

  • post to multiple social networks at the same time

Multiple accounts

  • read your live Facebook feed

Live feed on Facebook

  • like and comment on friends’ Facebook posts

Facebook comments

  • save messages and updates to Evernote

Save to Evernote

  • add geolocation information to your updates
  • search through tweets, user profiles and trending topics, and save searches to your dashboard

Search function

  • configure your dashboard to include Twitter Lists

Twitter lists

  • choose the format you’d prefer to use for retweets – use the Quote feature to add comments to retweets

Retweet format

  • post a photo from your gallery or capture a new one directly through the app

Post images

Get the new Seesmic for iPhone free in the App Store. Seesmic is also available for Android, BlackBerry and desktop.

21 May
New features in TweetDeck for Desktop v0.34

TweetDeck has just released a new version of its popular desktop client, complete with Google Buzz and Foursquare integration, simpler video uploading, scheduled updates and global filters.

Here’s a closer look at the new features:

1. Google Buzz integration: TweetDeck is one of the first desktop clients to offer this functionality, which allows you to post to Buzz with no character limits, to comment on and like friends’ posts, and to mute the conversations you don’t want to follow.

2. Foursquare integration: TweetDeck is now location-aware. You can check in using your Foursquare account, find your friends, and see tips and current visitors on venue profile pages. If you don’t have a Foursquare account, you’ll be able to find your location on a popup map and add location information to your normal tweets.

3. Scheduled updates: Twitter updates, wall posts and Foursquare check-ins can all be scheduled to be sent at a later date and time. A dedicated Scheduled Updates column allows you to view, edit, reschedule or cancel the updates you’ve already queued.

4. Simpler video uploading: You can now upload a video file in the same way as you’d upload an image file. Videos can also be recorded through your webcam, and posted directly to any of your accounts.

5. Global filters: TweetDeck v0.34 allows you to hide updates based on sender, source or keyword, using multiple global filters.

Watch this video to see the new features in action:

10 May
Twitter Facts & Figures infographic

A few weeks back we brought you a Facebook Facts & Figures infographic that had been put together by the team over at website-monitoring.com. They’ve just released a similar infographic, this time for Twitter.

The infographic gives a timeline of developments at Twitter (can you believe that the 140-character limit was introduced just three years ago?), as well as a wealth of statistics relating to user numbers, traffic, user demographics, and more.

Twitter timeline

Here are a few facts gleaned from the infographic:

  • There are more than 106 million accounts on Twitter
  • 81% of Twitter users are following fewer than 100 people
  • 55 million tweets are sent each day
  • Only 20% of Twitter users have tweeted 10 or more times
  • Portuguese is the second-most popular language on Twitter
  • Ashton Kutcher is still the user with the most followers (4.8 million), whilst Oprah Winfrey has made it into 7th spot with a meagre 116 updates

Twitter message types

View the full Twitter infographic at website-monitoring.com – it’s certainly worth a look.

30 April
So how popular is Twitter in SA?

How many Twitter users are there in South Africa? Fuseware just made available their latest SA Twitter report, which has some very interesting facts:

  • Number of Active* SA Twitter users: 55000
  • Monthly tweets from SA: 1.5 million
  • Twitter web penetration: 4.5% of SA sites reference Twitter
  • Twitter SA site popularity: 7th most visited website in SA
  • Average Twitter followers for SA: 115
  • Average friends for SA: 122
  • Average total tweets per user for SA: 346
  • Percent of protected accounts: 0.38%
  • Percent of geo-location enabled accounts: 12.96%
  • Percent of Twitter verified accounts: 0.014%
  • People hardly use Twitter.com directly for posting tweets, with only 26% logging into the site to post updates.
  • The most popular Twitter client is TweetDeck, with 10% of all SA tweeters using it.
  • People hardly use Twitter.com directly for posting tweets, with only 26% logging into the site to post updates.The most popular Twitter client is TweetDeck, with 10% of all SA tweeters using it.
  • SA mostly tweets at night, between 7 and 8 pm. Many also tweet first thing in the morning, and over lunch.
  • Cape Town and Johannesburg are the most busy tweeters.

This is a pretty great report by the guys at Fuseware, with lots more info – so go download it here.

06 April
Twitter now includes “most popular tweets” in search results

Towards the end of last week Twitter quietly implemented a small tweak to the way it displays search results. The three “most popular” recent tweets containing the search term are now displayed above the rest of the chronological results, with a note to indicate how many times each has been retweeted.

Taylor Singletary, Developer Advocate at Twitter, explains a little of the thinking behind the new feature: “With this new project, we want to make real-time search even more valuable by surfacing the best tweets about a particular topic, by considering recency, but also the interactions on a tweet. This means analyzing the author’s profile, as well as the number times the tweet has been retweeted, favorited, replied, and more. It’s an evolving algorithm that we’ll be iterating on & tuning until practically the end of time.”

Here’s a screenshot of a search for the term “easter”, illustrating the new feature:

New Twitter search feature

The “most popular tweets” feature is currently opt-in for developers, so don’t expect to see it in your favourite third-party app just yet.

30 March
Tweet your way to uncapped MWEB internet!

MWEB shook up the local broadband market last week when they announced their uncapped ADSL offering. Competitors like Afrihost and Axxess DSL quickly reacted announcing similar uncapped packages of their own. Finally, the South African broadband market is seeing good competition and giving some affordable choice to consumers.

With all this choice which uncapped offering is the best? Well, there’s only one way to find out – test ‘em!

Bandwidth blog is giving you the opportunity to get your hands on two months of uncapped MWEB bandwidth. All you need to do to enter the competition and stand a chance of winning the uncapped account is tweet the below message and follow @bandwidthblog on Twitter.

RT @bandwidthblog: Win uncapped MWEB ADSL for 2 months! To enter RETWEET this tweet! Winners announced by Friday http://mzan.si/MWaC

(click here for an easy retweet)

We will contact the winners by Friday via Twitter with the ADSL login details. You will need a Telkom ADSL enabled telephone line to take advantage of the uncapped account. Ask your followers to retweet your tweet as this will better your chances of winning the uncapped account. Good luck!

Disclaimer: Bandwidthblog is not affiliated with Mweb for this competition. We received a test uncapped account and decided to give it away.

30 March
Google starts rolling out real time search in South Africa

Search is a natural starting point for discovering the world’s information, and Google strives to bring you the freshest, most comprehensive and relevant search results. Google has gone unchallenged for years with their dominant position in search. With the emergence of real-time information flow from companies like Twitter and Facebook, the Google search results have seemed out dated at times.

Back in December, Google introduced a string of new search innovations to combat this issue on Google.com bringing their results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. Google has now announced that this feature will be available in South African search results.

Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter, MySpace and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news reports and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, Google will rank these latest results to show the freshest information on the search results page.

Try searching for a celebrity currently in the news, your favourite sports team or the latest political development.  Whether it’s an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google straight after it’s published on the web.

Additionally, by clicking on “Latest results” or selecting “Latest” from the search options menu, users can get view a full page of live tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling on Google’s results page. You can also filter your results to see only “Updates” from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku (Google acquired service) and others.

Google’s real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable them to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day.  Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of their real-time partners including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.cah.

Latest results and the new search options are also designed for iPhone and Android devices when you need them on the go, be it a quick glance at changing information like ski conditions or opening night chatter about a new movie — right when you’re in line to buy tickets.

17 November
Twitter’s new office – photos

Twitter is one of the internet’s hottest startups at the moment and with any internet business you need flashy creative offices to retrain and inspire top talent. Twitter’s new space, which was previously Bebo’s SF office, is right around the corner from their old one.

A few members of the Twitter team spent much of the weekend decorating the new digs with a number of Twitter-themed elements like birds and @ symbols. Check out some of the pictures being posted to the web by Twitter employees below.

via TC

11 September
Should Twitter Turn the Revenue On?

It was long back when Google denied Yahoo’s financing in its pre-revenue stages, but taking the risk paid off and Google is, what it is today.

twitter

Twitter, today, faces the same dilemma with suitors building up the pressure with every passing day, but investors are aware of this situation (although they do not discuss it openly). The big decision, however, needs to be taken and is if the company should turn the revenue on or ignore the takeover bids and take a risk just like Google.

Given the fact that Twitter has a high potential for the future, taking such a decision is a hard thing to do in the jittery world of the Internet. But reporting no revenue is also a problem, because experts cannot exactly estimate — which means that Twitter could say “bye bye” to any takeovers. Big public houses need a valuation spreadsheet to go ahead with the acquisitions. However, once the revenue is on, the valuation of a company like Twitter can also go down since a long-term growth rate is also furnished and that can never be relied upon — no matter who made the evaluation.

Twitter is at a stage where it has to make a brave decision and this decision could be the turning point for the brand in all senses.

What would you do, if you’d own Twitter?

04 September
Twitter Ropes in Dick Costolo as Their new COO

dick-costoloInstead of getting themselves someone who’s experience enogh to build scalable infrastructures, Twitter has been struggling to please the user with more and more new features. Hence why newly-hired Dick Costolo, the cofounder/CEO of RSS service Feedburner, is going to take over as the Chief Operating Office (COO) from Santosh Jayaram — the current head of operations.

Costolo — who has been an early Twitter investor — left Google back in July and there were reports that he was starting a new company, Twitter, however, managed to rope him just in time.

Although we know the answer to the “what’s going to happen with Feedburner now?” question (as many call it Google’s worst investment so far), what we’re more interested in is if Costelo’s experience is enough to actually help Twitter reach the next level.

What do you guys think?

[via TechCrunch]

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