X (formerly Twitter) News & Updates

[Bapun]

Twitter bug affects many 'verified' accounts

Twitter has got a new bug that seems to be particularly celebrity bitten. According to a news report in Techcrunch that has been confirmed by Twitter, "Apparently, for some verified accounts, avatars were swapped out with other random users'." An account's verified status indicates that it belongs to the concerned celebrity rather than fans or impostors.

Responding to the bug report Twitter replied on its support forum, "We're investigating an issue with background images and profile photos on @verified accounts. We'll get this resolved ASAP." Adding, "We have temporarily disabled profile settings changes for all users. Our apologies for the inconvenience. Thank you for bearing with us."

The last tweet on Twitter's support forum, posted four hours ago, said: "We're actively looking into it and will fix this issue ASAP, very sorry for the trouble."

Greeted with the unexpectedly changed profile pictures and background images, the affected users were further shocked to find that the 'Verified' status of their Twitter accounts had been revoked as well.

This morning, we at TOI were surprised to find that our display image on our Twitter account had been changed. When we tried clicking on the 'View' my profile page link, we got this message: "Twitter is stressing out a bit right now, so this feature is temporarily disabled". Though The Times of India account is a verified account, we also saw a message asking us to get verified. Interestingly, we were able to send tweets.

Among Indian celebs, Shahrukh Khan, Gul Panag, Ken Ghosh and Shahid Kapur hold verified accounts, but their accounts have not been affected.

Source

 

[Bapun]

Dropbox for iOS updated with Facebook, Twitter, AirPrint support

Popular online cloud storage service just updated its iOS app to offer users content sharing to Facebook, Twitter and even add AirPrint support. Earlier the service allowed sharing only by e-mail or copy to clipboard.

But now users can share a photo directly to the social networks with additional options like Facebook Message, Post to Facebook and Tweet. AirPrint support will allow iOS users to print content directly from their device with a single tap. The update for the Android app of the service is yet to arrive.

Last month the company rolled out a two-factor authentication feature to assure users of the service's security, after a few accounts were compromised. There was also a new addition to the Security tab which now lists all active logins along with the devices linked to your account, that was already present.

The previous Dropbox update for iOS brought the ability to automatically upload photos shot from the device both over Wi-Fi and cellular networks. It also added a new Gallery view that displays the thumbnails of all the uploaded images. But the major part of the update included additional storage space in 500MB increments for auto-photo uploads, giving users the chance to earn up to 3GB of storage.

The company also offered more storage to its Pro users in July. Those paying $10 a month or $99 a year were given 100GB instead of 50, while others paying $20 a month or $199 a year were allowed 200GB instead of 100.

Dropbox (iOS, Free)

 

[Bapun]

Expand your experience: New Twitter for iPad

Today you can download the new Twitter for iPad. We’ve rebuilt the app from the ground up to make it fast, beautiful and easy to use. Twitter for iPad brings you closer to what’s happening all over the world, and makes it easy to keep up with the news you need to read, the photos you want to see and the people you follow.

Home
Tweets come alive in the new Twitter for iPad. Expand Tweets with a single touch to see beautiful photos, rich videos and web page summaries right in your timeline. Dive into the content with another tap to see the photo, play the video or read links from the web in fullscreen mode.

Connect
Keep conversations going by tracking your interactions with other people: See who has followed or mentioned you, retweeted or favorited your Tweets.

Discover
Tap into a stream of useful and entertaining information personalized for you. Read news stories that are popular within your network, see which Tweets and accounts are favorited and followed by the people you know, see what topics are trending, and find great new accounts to follow.

Me
Express yourself by adding a beautiful new header photo to your new profile. It appears consistently above your Tweets on iPad, mobile apps and twitter.com, and you can change it anytime. You can also remember the moments you’ve shared on Twitter by swiping through your photo stream on your profile or tapping photos to go fullscreen.

http://blog.twitter.com/2012/09/expand-your-experience-new-twitter-for.html

 

[Raviteja]

Twitter Update for Android

Official Twitter App Bumped To Version 3.4, Adds Profile Header Images And Photo Streams, More

Twitter continues its march towards being taken seriously as a social network with today's update to its mobile app that brings some interesting new profile additions. For starters, header images. With Facebook and Google+ starting the trend, it seems a social network can't have just a profile picture anymore. Everyone who's anyone has a profile picture, and a hero image.

Curiously, the header images can only be added via the mobile app itself. The background photo that you chose for your Twitter profile a billion years ago and promptly forgot is not used. Also, just going to app settings won't get you to the dialog to add one. You have to go to your profile, tap the Settings gear and edit it from there. (Update: Scratch that. It looks like the header images are rolling out to the site as well, so you can see and add the banner images from the desktop as well.) Once you've done that, though, scroll down a bit to see your shiny new photo stream. Swipe left to scroll through all the photos a person has shared. This only works on pictures shared via select services like Twitter's own uploads or Instagram, though. Twitter seems to be cultivating a very select version of the abbreviated web.
While the changes haven't spread to the site, it's pretty clear Twitter really wants to upgrade both its reputation and user experience. Whether ending third-party clients and adding hero images is the way to do that is yet to be seen, but in today's social networking world, good visuals are a necessity. This update moves the micro-blogging platform into a world where new users can easily see its good side.
Among the less groundbreaking features is the ability to pinch-to-zoom on photos (finally!), improved search suggestions, and better protected account management. For those of you who want to limit how social your social networking experience is.

Market Link

Official Twitter App Bumped To Version 3.4, Adds Profile Header Images And Photo Streams, More

 

[Bapun]

RE: Twitter Update for Android

Twitter for Android, iPhone and iPad updated with Photo streams, Profile header photos and more​

Twitter has finally released a new iPad app that has been built from ground-up. Twitter for Android and iPhone got a new UI back in December 2011. The iPhone and Android apps has also been updated with new features. These apps come with a new profile that lets you add header photos and Photo streams on profiles that shows images people have shared on Twitter and more new features.

New features in Twitter for Android, iPhone and iPad

New design with Home, Connect, Discover and Me (for iPad)
New profiles with header photos
Photo streams for profiles that displays shared on Twitter
Pinch-to-zoom on photos (for Android)
Search suggestions for people, topics and hashtags (for Android)
Improved protected account management including the ability to accept or deny follower requests (for Android)
It also includes other improvements and fixes. You can upload header photo on mobile apps for iPad, iPhone and Android or twitter.com. The header photo feature would be rolled out gradually for the web users.
Download Twitter for iPhone and iPad from the Apple iTunes store and for Android phones from the Google Play Store.

Twitter for Android, iPhone and iPad updated with Photo streams, Profile header photos and more

 

[Bapun]

Twitter launches A new lifeline in Japan​

This week our Tokyo team launched Lifeline. It’s a new feature for Japanese users that helps people there find critical information when they need it most: during moments of crisis like natural disasters, or when other communications services are difficult to reach.

To find and follow essential local accounts in Japan, people simply search their postal code on twitter.com. If there’s an earthquake in the Aobadai district of Yokohama, for instance, people can use Lifeline to find a variety of timely accounts — those tweeting about the earthquake and sharing updates from the district (Aobada), city (Yokohama), and prefecture (Kanagawa) governments; they can also find accounts from local media and utility companies providing information about gas, water or electricity. Of course, Japanese users can also set up notifications to receive Tweets from these accounts on their mobile devices.

Lifeline is currently available only in Japan, where we have joined the Prime Minister’s Lifeline Commission and worked with local and regional governments to surface the best, most relevant accounts for several postal codes. Since Twitter often becomes a de facto lifeline during crises everywhere, we hope to eventually expand this functionality to more locations around the world.

Via Twitter blog

 

[Bapun]

Twitter CEO promises interactive tweets, defends curbs​

Twitter will soon roll out a free tool for users to handpick and publish selections of tweets, reflecting the company's commitment to remain a neutral, interactive platform rather than become a media company, CEO d*ck Costolo said Friday.
The new tool will allow users, including journalists, to manually curate and display tweets to accompany breaking news events.

"We've known for a long time that for events in the real world, the shared experience is on Twitter," Costolo said at the Online News Association conference in San Francisco. "We want to create an ability to curate those events."

Costolo dismissed speculation that Twitter had plans to operate like a traditional media company, following a recent move to restrict access to tweets only through its website or official app. Previously, many users could read tweets through third-party applications with extra features.

Observers had widely predicted that Twitter, founded in 2006, is intent on treating its stream of published tweets much like a traditional media product that it has full control over, and which it can charge for advertising.

"It's not about being a destination," Costolo said. "I'm a huge believer in syndication. Platform companies always outflank and outlast point solutions and individual products."

The decision to tighten control over tweets came after the company realized it had invested significant resources in its service, but other companies were making money off of it without adding "accretive value," Costolo said.

"We were spending all this money" eliminate fake accounts and improve the Twitter experience, Costolo said, but users still had a "choice" of "experiences." Fake accounts may be created by spammers or impersonators.

But the company has promised to unlock Twitter's full interactive potential once it has regained control over how users access Twitter across desktop computers and mobile devices.

Soon, users will see tweet boxes, known as cards, include live features that will look nothing like the 140 character messages units that they evolved in the early days of the service.

Costolo offered examples of interactive features, such as live polls for the NBA All Star game showing real-time results directly within a tweet box.

"We want to migrate to a world in which the 140 characters can serve as a caption for additional functionality," Costolo said. "We'd like that to include things like real-time data, even an application functionality."

One of the services available on third-party clients but not from Twitter itself the ability for a user to download the full archive of his or her tweets will be available by the end of the year, Costolo predicted.

In the hour-long talk, Costolo also revealed the scorching pace of expansion at his company. Twitter, which relocated into new offices in central San Francisco in July, now boasts 1,300 employees, more than three times its headcount just 18 months.

Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012

 

[Bapun]

Former Twitter CEO Says Network Needs a Better Metric Than Follower Count​

Twitter users may obsess over their follower count, but its co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams believes there needs to be a better way to measure one's reach and influence on the social network.
[More from Mashable: Social Good Summit Day 3: Highlights and Pics]
During a discussion with Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti and Branch co-founder Josh Miller at the site's headquarters in New York, Williams was asked whether he thinks Twitter should highlight the number of active followers users have rather than just the total follower count.
"I would endorse that," said Williams, who remains on the network's board of directors. "I think that's a great idea."
[More from Mashable: ‘Gangnam Style’ Poised to Pass ‘Call Me Maybe’ for Viral YouTube Supremacy]
But he went on to note that even active followers wouldn't be the ideal metric to represent one's distribution power on the social network. Instead, he suggested that tallying the number of times a tweet has been viewed and reweeted would be the ultimate measurement -- not unlike what services like Klout and Crowdbooster offer.
"The dream metric is really how many people see your tweet, which is not even active followers," he said. "It's some different metric."
To date, Williams said, Twitter has been limited in its ability to capture this kind of information for its users, but he hinted that the company might be able to pull more accurate data on whether a tweet in a timeline was actually read, as more users rely on its apps rather than on third-party applications.
"If they control the clients, there's better data," he said. Perhaps this is part of the reason why Twitter has been so aggressive in restricting access to its API in recent weeks.
During the discussion, Williams opened up about the surprising part of being a serial entrepreneur ("It's still hard."), his thoughts on Twitter's latest competitor App.net ("I haven't looked at it to tell you the truth.") and how much power advertisers have over his companies ("Advertisers have very little power over Twitter.")
Most of the talk, though, focused on Medium, the new digital publishing platform that Williams and his Twitter co-founder Biz Stone unveiled last month. At the moment, Williams said, there are still just a "couple hundred" people with access to post on the site, but he is already thinking about a similar problem of how best to measure engagement on the site.
"What we want is provide meaningful metrics," he said.
Similar to Twitter, Williams hopes to emphasize what people are actually reading -- in this case, by highlighting how long people stay on a given post. He admits that Medium's users won't necessarily have a "vanity metric" like Twitter follower counts to incentivize them to post. Then again, if Williams has his way, Twitter might not have that metric much longer either.

Via Yahoo

 

[Bapun]

Now get weekly suggestion mails on people you may know>

Following the people you know makes Twitter a more personal way to discover essential information. That’s why we’re introducing a new email that makes it easier to connect with your friends, classmates and co-workers on Twitter.

This weekly email highlights a handful of people you may know who use Twitter. You can choose to follow any of the suggested people and you can find more people you may know on twitter.com. Suggestions are based on signals like who your friends follow and the contact information imported by people you know. For example, if several people you know follow someone, you may also know them and want to follow them too. There’s no telling who you might find on Twitter, so open this weekly message for an ongoing source of great accounts to follow.

Of course, you can choose whether or not to receive new messages from Twitter in your email notification settings. Since your inbox is a doorway to information you want, we aim to make it as easy as possible for you to manage your Twitter email.

http://blog.twitter.com/2012/09/people-you-may-know.html

 

[Bapun]

Twitter has no immediate plans to go public: CEO

Twitter is not readying a public offering nor is it seeking to be sold to another group, chief executive d*ck Costolo said Wednesday.
An initial public offering (IPO) "is not something we're focused on right now," Costolo said in an interview with the financial network CNBC.

"There will come a time when we need to start talking about what's the best way to finance the future growth of the company and then we'll have that conversation."

Costolo said the disastrous IPOs of other social media firms like Facebook, whose stock has fallen as much as 50 percent since May, is not a factor in considering whether or when to go public.

"Nothing external to the company has had any bearing on how I think about when to take Twitter a public company or not to," he said.

Asked whether Twitter might be sold to another firm, Costolo commented: "We have every belief that we are going to be an independent company, and that we've got the engine that we need to be a successful independent company."

He said the company is executing its strategy of getting revenues from the mobile space.

"Our mobile ads are going pretty well," he said, adding that the ads begun earlier this year have produced days where revenue from mobile exceeds non-mobile revenues.

Twitter, which allows its members to post brief comments, links or pictures, claims to have more than 140 million active users, with the largest number being in the United States.

A recent survey found one in seven Americans who go online use Twitter and eight percent do so every day.

Twitter has no immediate plans to go public: CEO | NDTV Gadgets