For Twitter, it appears that the microblogging service's new relationship with Apple is paying off.
The company saw a huge boost in user sign-ups on the first day of iOS 5 being live, thanks to an especially tight integration between the service and Apple's ever-popular mobile operating system. Last Wednesday, when iOS 5 was officially released, Twitter had three times the new user sign-ups it normally sees in a typical day, CEO Dick Costolo told the crowd at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday.
The effect Twitter and the social Web have begun to have on entertainment, journalism and other media-related industries is by now well known and much-discussed. Its impact on other areas of human culture and knowledge, however, is still emerging. For example, how does the microblogging service impact academics and scholarly communication?
That's exactly what researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are hoping to figure out. The team has selected a sample of faculty and non-faculty scholars at five US and UK-based universities and used Twitter's search API to find their Twitter usernames, filtering out those whose profiles did not clearly identify them and using scripts to positively identify 230 scholars.
In a study of 300 hiring managers and recruiters, Palo Alto-based social networking monitoring service Reppler reports that 76% of hiring managers look at applicants' Facebook profiles. An additional 56% are looking at Twitter, and 48% check out LinkedIn - which seems ironic, considering that LinkedIn is where you're supposed to present your professional self.
"We're not a social network, we're an information network." That's what Twitter's vice president of engineering, Michael Abbott, told the crowd at Mobilize 2011 this week. That isn't new branding, Twitter has been denying it's a social network since at least a year ago. It all dates back to November 2009, when Twitter changed the question it asked users for status updates from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?".
The trouble is, Twitter's main rivals Facebook and Google+ are not sticking to their knitting like Twitter is. Last week, Facebook widely expanded the range of information it tracks: read, listen, watch, 5 types of "life events" and more. Meanwhile Google+ has become known as a place for people to discuss common interests. This is all bad news for Twitter.
The folks at Veracode put together this infographic that describes some of the more notable Twitter hacks, or "twacks," over the recent past. With the news that even venerable USAToday's account wasn't safe, it is interesting to see that Twitter has banned the most popular or obvious password combinations (including the evergreen '123456') from use. And yes, you can get even, as Justin Bieber did after his account was compromised, sending 26,000 texts to his tormentor. Shakira and Taylor Swift better watch their own passwords too!
The two Twitter users who were arrested in Mexico for "terrorism" have been freed and the charges against them dropped.
34-year-old Maria de Jesus Bravo Pagola (@maruchibravo) and 48-year-old Gilberto Martinez Vera (@gilius_22) were two of many who retweeted a rumor that narco gangsters were killing children at a school. They were subsequently taken into custody by security forces and charged with "terrorism."
Overwhelmed by new features? Tickers? Open Graphs? What about Hangouts and Circles? Well, Twitter doesn't have those things. Twitter still exists because it's not going bananas with new features all the time. There's no room. Hell, it only got photo albums a month ago. Everyone's always worried about how Twitter has only 140 characters. Well, Facebook allows 5,000 now. Isn't that a little worrisome, too? Facebook keeps track of your whole life now. Tweets fall off a cliff after a couple days. Doesn't that sound nice at this point?
Today is Friday, and on Twitter that means it's #FollowFriday. It's a hashtag holiday that's all about sharing people. There are no algorithms, no "People You May Know" (well, those are in the sidebar, but ignore them). It's just a real social gathering on the Web at the end of every week. #FollowFriday is a much maligned phenomenon, but it's just misunderstood. Read on to find out how #FollowFriday really works.
Julpan, a New York-based social search startup founded by former Google scientist Ori Allon, announced today that it has been acquired by Twitter. Julpan algorithmically analyzes social Web activity to make search results personally relevant.
With hundreds of millions of tweets per day, Twitter needs smart personalization algorithms to make sure its search results are relevant far beyond simple keyword matches. This acquisition will help Twitter keep the value of search inside its own properties.
Twitter just announced that users can now post photos by attaching them to simple SMS messages. The feature is available on many popular carriers, and the post says they're working to bring on more.
SMS has always been an important part of Twitter's platform, especially in places with low smartphone penetration. It's possible to follow, tweet and view account info using only SMS. Adding photo sharing via SMS lets mobile-only users in on another part of the full Twitter experience.
BitDefender announced its Twitter malware protection service Safego is now an open beta and users can sign up here for the free service. It is similar to the service that they have had for Facebook that we last wrote about here. Once you authorize it to use your Twitter account, it begins to process all your tweets, DMs and embedded links to see what is going on.
