X (formerly Twitter) News & Updates

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More Tweets to discover

Last December, we introduced Discover to bring you essential information from the web. This May, we added stronger signals and a new design that made it more personal for you with better stories and Tweets from people you know.

Now we’re improving Discover again: when you visit the Discover tab on twitter.com, you’ll see a continuous stream of Tweets, which automatically expand to show you the most relevant stories and most engaging photos.

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We hope you enjoy this new way to discover what's happening now and find new people to follow in a rich stream of Tweets. The updated Discover is rolling out gradually to everyone.
 
Twitter Rolls Out Surveys — And Reminds Us Why It Cares About “Consistent User Experiences”

Here’s an interesting new feature for Twitter advertisers: The chance to survey users directly.
Twitter is rolling out the tool today, which it will provide for free to some of its biggest advertisers and will eventually offer more widely.
It’s a straightforward idea: Some users will see a tweet asking them to take a survey, and if they click on it, the message will expand within their timeline, and trigger a brief series of questions.
Nielsen will work with Twitter to audit/analyze the results. Twitter hopes that it will be able to use the feature to convince advertisers that they’re getting their money’s worth, and to help them tweak and optimize their campaigns.
For the rest of us, the tool is a good reminder of why Twitter is intent on controlling the way Tweets are displayed, and maintaining a “consistent user experience” throughout the service — even if it upsets some partners and developers.
That’s because the surveys are essentially small multimedia presentations, and Twitter can only deliver them through its own platforms. This will work on Twitter’s Web site, mobile sites, mobile apps, etc. But it wouldn’t work on, say, Flipboard.
And, while short, text-based surveys aren’t the most amazing things in the world, you can see how Twitter could use that same technology to present much more interesting experiences. Note, for instance, that the company has already shown its interest in e-commerce a few times, most recently via an American Express campaign.
Twitter started out constrained by a 140-character text limit. But it’s clearly set on augmenting those messages with lots of other bells and whistles.

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Twitter, Nielsen Offer Surveys - Peter Kafka - Media - AllThingsD
 
Twitter might build its own video hosting service

Twitter is reportedly mulling over creating its own video hosting service, unnamed sources have told AllThingsD. The addition of a home-grown video hosting solution would further cement Twitter as a content company as opposed to a channel for quick-fire communication. The social network has already moved to allowing photos to be immediately uploaded on its own servers, so allowing videos next would be a logical next step. The only difference between hosting photos and video is that the latter would require much more bandwidth, which could prove challenging if Twitter doesn’t have the proper infrastructure to support it.
AllThingsD notes that the leap to video hosting would be very attractive for advertisers, especially now that Twitter is aware at how valuable Tweetviews are as opposed to follower counts.
“Owning that rich video experience has monetization upside. One source says building a more effective video player could be a way of better enhancing the company’s existing advertising products, namely the promoted suite,” the publication writes.
The only services that stand to take a hit from Twitter-hosted videos would be third-party services such as YouTube and Vimeo. Although Twitter would still allow videos uploaded to other services to be linked, an in-house Twitter video hosting service could lead to a drop in video uploads from them.

Twitter might build its own video hosting service - Yahoo! News
 
How to use Twitter for more than just tweeting

Twitter may limit you to only 140 characters but the add-ons you can get for it are virtually unlimited. ET introduces you to 35 less-known ways that let you do a lot more with your Twitter account.

tweriod.com: Tweriod analyses your tweets and followers to let you know the best time to tweet. Tweeting then will get you more responses/retweets.

tweetwally.com: Here, you can see a page that collates tweets with a particular hashtag or keyword — makes it easy to track a topic on twitter.

twylah.com: Twylah aggregates your tweets and shows links/images tweeted by you on a single web page. Your followers can easily get a glimpse of topics that you tweet about. The service is currently in beta so you have to request an access code.

manageflitter.com: This tool categorises your followers — inactive, no profile pic, spam or by language. Use this information to unfollow the irrlevant ones. You can also schedule tweets.

tweetalarm.com: Get notified (by email) when someone mentions specific keywords on twitter — notifications can be instant, daily or weekly.

monitter.com: Here, you can search for a particular topic or keyword on twitter and sort the results based on the location of the tweeter.

nurph.com: At Nurph, you can create a virtual chat room where followers can tweet-chat with you. You also get a robot assistant that learns from the ongoing conversation and can reply on your behalf.

useqwitter.com: Sign in to Qwitter to find out who unfollowed you. The free version lets you track a single twitter account — it updates weekly.

futuretweets.com: Ever wanted to send automated tweets in the future? Here, you can schedule a tweet for later (day or time). Hint: use it as an alibi.

twit-twoo.net: Create an account & they'll tweet you with reminders for an event or happening. Use it to remind you of anniversaries or to-dos.

splitweet.com: Effortlessly manage multiple twitter accounts with this handy tool. Great for corporate use too.

flashtweet.com: Simply put, FlashTweet allows you to acquire targeted followers. You can also use it to mass follow based on a keyword or location.

twitchamp.com: Like a friendly competition? Compare how you're doing on twitter with your friends. You only need to enter the usernames.

tweetcube.com: Use this free service to share files (up to 10MB) on twitter. You can share any sort of file, but the catch is that it gets deleted in 30 days.

tweetstats.com: Just enter your username here to get detailed stats — tweet density, replies, retweets — it's all there.

tweetwrappr.com: Useless but funny, TweetWrappr lets you 'gift wrap' a tweet and send it to someone as a URL.

visibletweets.com: Just enter a keyword or hashtag and watch as everything gets animated for you in real time.

tweetrans.com: Want to be a global tweeter? Use this tool to send tweets in multiple languages in one step.

tweepsmap.com: Simply shows you where in the world your followers are.

How to use Twitter for more than just tweeting - The Economic Times
 
Twitter to remove anti-Semitic posts: French Jewish union

Twitter has agreed to remove French-language anti-Semitic messages that have flooded the micro-blogging site in recent days, after threats of legal action, a Jewish student union said Friday.
The US firm agreed to apply French law and remove offensive messages it is alerted to, said a lawyer for the UEJF union. Such tweets have been proliferating in France in recent days with the hashtag #unbonjuif (#AGoodJew).

The UEJF on Thursday threatened to seek an injunction against Twitter to try to make it remove the offending tweets.

UEJF lawyer Stephane Lilti told AFP that his client had scored an "important victory" over Twitter, which did not immediately react to his statement.

Twitter on Thursday said it had blocked a neo-Nazi group's account at the request of German police.

The move was the first time that the US firm had applied a policy known as "country-withheld content" which allows it to block an account at the request of state authorities.

Twitter to remove anti-Semitic posts: French Jewish union | NDTV Gadgets
 
Twitter unveils email sharing feature

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Twitter on Thursday introduced a new feature to the globally popular one-to-many text messaging service - the ability to email "Tweets" directly from the message stream.
The new feature made its debut as the San Francisco-based firm rolled out improved applications for using the service on iPhones or smartphones powered by Google-backed Android software.

"You can retweet any (Twitter messages) to your Twitter followers, but sometimes you want to share with another group, like your college roommates or your parents or a friend who isn't yet on Twitter," engineer Stefan Filip said in a blog post.

"That's why we're introducing the ability to email a Tweet directly from twitter.com."

The feature will be rolled out to all users of Twitter - which allows its members to post brief comments, links or pictures - in the coming weeks, according to Filip.

Updates to Twitter applications for iPhone and Android were designed to improve search results and highlight photos, videos and news shared at the service.

Twitter unveils email sharing feature | NDTV Gadgets
 
Country branding on Twitter

MUMBAI: There is scope for country branding on Twitter. Only nine governments out of the 193 UN member states own their country name Twitter handle.

@GreatBritain, @Israel, and @Sweden are notable examples of nations promoting themselves on Twitter. @GreatBritain is part of the ‘Britain is Great’ campaign launched in March 2012 to highlight everything that is great about the UK. The country marketing campaign, led by a central team at Number10 involves UK Trade & Investment, VisitBritain,
the national tourism agency, Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the British Council.

The @GreatBritain account, which only has 4,021 followers, is just one small part of the overall campaign which ran in 17 cities around the world and which has attracted more than 835,000 likes on its 13 different Facebook pages.


The account tweets about everything that is great about Britain, from Team GB’s success at the London Olympics, to investment in the UK and great sites to visit in the UK. Its most popular tweet was about Prime Minister David Cameron’s favourite music, sent on 14 May 2012 and retweeted 166 times: “The Prime Minister has chosen his favourite album of all time. It’s The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd! #Music is #GREATBritain”.
@Israel is the country’s official Twitter channel, maintained by the Foreign Ministry’s Digital Diplomacy Team. The account is one of the most followed country accounts with more than 66,000 followers and serves as the focal point for Israel’s government Twitter activity.

The Swedish government has given its official Twitter handle to the people. Every week another Swede is in charge of the @Sweden account sharing recommendations, opinions and facts about life in Sweden with over 65,000 followers. The Curators of Sweden project was launched in December 2011 and, despite some unfortunate tweets, has been copied
with varying success by @Ireland and @NewZealand. The project has also inspired volunteer groups in over 20 countries to engage in what has become known as the rotation-curation movement.

The Twitter accounts of @AntiguaBarbuda, @Barbados, @Lithuania, the @Maldives, @SouthAfrica, and @Spain are run by their respective official tourism organisations to promote tourism in each country.


However, three out of five country accounts are either protected, dormant, inactive, or suspended and almost half of the 71 remaining active accounts are tweeting an automated news feed broadcasting news about the country.

These details were provided by Burson-Marsteller in the second installment of its Twiplomacy study (Twiplomacy | Mutual relations on Twitter), looking specifically at country branding on Twitter.

Burson-Marsteller EMEA Digital Practice head Matthias Lüfkens said, “Looking at the findings it becomes clear that few governments and tourism organisations have understood the power of country branding and marketing on Twitter. There is a huge opportunity for countries to use Twitter as part of their communications to engage with a large and
growing audience.”

Data used was taken in November 2012 looking at the Twitter handles of the 193 UN member countries. Burson-Marsteller used Twitonomy (Twitonomy: Twitter #analytics and much more...) to analyze tweeting patterns and the Twitter history of each account.

Indiantelevision.com's > Digital Edge> Country branding on Twitter
 
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