Twitter News - eINFO

Twitter Image URL Shortner Not So Short
I got a glimpse of Twitter's new native URL shortener for images. In a recent tweet by @dannysullivan he referenced an image of the home page for Bing with a Panda on it. As you can see from the below screenshot the image URL is pic.twitter.com/HowIUza (Not sure if this is truly the best shortened domain name for images shared on Twitter.) The image URL shortening service has not been released to

Study on Online Social Sharing
ShareThis recently releases a new study that looked at online social sharing behaviors. The study looked at ShareThis data which compromised of seven billion sharing signals from over 300 million users across the top 1000 publisher websites. The study found several interesting takeaways: Sharing produces an estimated 10% of Internet traffic Sharing produces an estimated 31% of referral traffic

Twitter Stats 2011 - Pew Internet Study
 Pew Internet released their latest study on Twitter usage called Twitter Update 2011. The study provides some great insight into the demographics of Twitter users. One of the bigger takeaways was that 13% of online adults use Twitter. This was a 16.5% increase over the previous study done in 2010. The study also found that over half of respondents (54%) accessed Twitter from their phone. The

How To Find Twitter RSS Feed
Twitter recently removed the RSS feed links on all of their account pages. The move is to push the use of their API instead of using RSS, which is more labor intensive to keep up. I for one was disappointed in this move because the RSS feed was much easier to code for versus the Twitter API. But Twitter did not officially kill the RSS feed for Twitter profiles. There is a little hack that will

Twitter Releases Follow Button
Twitter announced today the newest feature called, Follow Button. The Follow Button is a new way to instantly follow brands, celebrities, athletes, and other high profile individuals directly from any website via a single click. The Follow Button will allow you to see the latest company or individual profile and tweets once you click on the username. The launch of this new feature has started

90% of Twitter Users Use Official Twitter Apps...Maybe
Twitter reports that 90% of users use official Twitter apps on a monthly basis. Sysomos disputes this fact by analyzing over 25 million tweets posted on March 11, 2011. Their data reflects that official Twitter apps accounted for only 58% while non-official Twitter apps accounted for 42%. A breakdown of market share of non-official Twitter apps: Twitter Clients 16.4% Ubersocial  13.1% TweetDeck

Chrysler Drops The F-Bomb on Twitter
Apparently someone at Chrysler's social media company posted a personal tweet that included the F-Bomb to the official Chrysler Twitter account @ChryslerAutos. It looks like the individual selected the wrong account to post the status update to. I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f**king drive Chrysler released a statement on their company

Co-Tweeting Being Pushed Live on Twitter
Co-tweeting is when you have more than one person monitor and respond within a single Twitter account. Recently there have been sightings that Twitter is starting to push a new co-tweeting feature that will identify the author of the Tweet. Twitter is now adding a by-line to the post. So instead of "5:52 PM Mar 3rd via web" you will see "5:52 PM Mar 3rd via web by jennadawn". Some say that this

Library of Congress To Archive Drunk Tweets
The Library of Congress has partnered with Twitter to start archiving your drunken tweets as well as all others, starting from the first tweet in 2006. The Library of Congress announced the partnership on their blog yesterday. There are currently several billion tweets which account for about five terabytes of data. This will be on top of the current 167 terabytes that the Library of Congress has

Twitter News Roundup
Official Twitter Apps - Twitter recently acquired  the parent company of the Tweetie app, release a new Blackberry Twitter app, and is developing a official app for the Google Android. All of these apps were referenced as "Official Twitter Apps", but Twitter quickly retracted the "official" label due to backlash from the developer community. This anouncement worried third-party developers that

Twitter Filtering Out RT in Search Results
It looks as though Twitter has started to filter out Retweets (RT) from their search results. Now this algorithm change has only affected the "integrated search" algorithm according to @Charles (Twitter UX Supprt Team member). What is "integrated search" exactly? It looks to reference the search box within your profile page. I tested the home page search box as well as search.twitter.com, but

Twitter Moves One Step Closer To Business Accounts
Twitter recently announced the acquisition of Smallthough Systems. Smallthough had provided Twitter with two internal tools, Dabble DB (an online database tool) and Trendly (an Google Analytics tool to analyze trends). Some have speculated that the acquisition of this company brings Twitter one step closer to business accounts. The Trendly tool looks like it will help bubble up trending data

Twitter Rolling Out Official URL Shortner
It looks as if Twitter will be rolling out their new URL shortner service this summer. It is currently being tested with Twitter employee accounts and will take the structure of http://t.co. Twitter is currently integrating their own URL shortner (http://twt.tl) within Direct Messages (see Twitter Quietly Rolls Out Own URL Shortner). Twitter also goes on to state that there will be some sort of

Where Do People Go After They Visit Twitter.com?
Hitwise recently posted, Twitter and News and Media Websites, that took a look at where Twitters go after they visit Twitter.com. The report found that almost sixty percent of them visit another social network (appx. 30%) or an entertainment site (appx. 30%). This was followed by search engines (appx. 7%), lifestyle sites (appx. 5%), news and media sites (appx. 4.5%), portal frontpages (appx. 4%)

Twitter To Have Major Redesign
Doug Bowman @stop (I like this handle), the head of Twitter's design team released a sneek peek into an upcoming site redesign for the Twitter web interface. The picture shows some additional stats and a more rounded layout. See the Twitter redesign picture. 

Obessed Twitter Users Check in Day and Night
Retrevo Gadgetology's latest blog post, Is Social Media a New Addiction?, reports some interesting findings from their latest study on how people spend their time on social networks. Some of the highlights of the report: 48% of respondents check/update Facebook or Twitter whenever they wake up during the night or as soon as they wake up 42% check/update Facebook or Twitter first thing in the

Twitter To Offer Official Tweet Button
Twitter is rumored to be launching a new Tweet Button potentially this month. The Tweet Button would provide the same functionality that we are accustom to with the Tweetmeme buttons. Since Twitter will be aggregating the data, you should be able to see a more comprehensive look into the sharing stats for links being shared. The new Tweet Button will allow web site owners to easily insert a

Charlie Sheen Joins Twitter and the Mayhem Follows
It was the next logical step in the "Crack is Whack" tour for Charlie Sheen to hop aboard Twitter. For those outside the US, Charlie Sheen has been publicly going through detox and hitting every news medium to get his story out. Only problem is he has been a bit crazy in his rants. Any ways I would suggest that you start to follow @charliesheen and grab some popcorn as he unravels on Twitter. I

The End of Paid Tweets
The latest Twitter blog post, The Twitter Platform, discusses Twitter's long term strategy for their advertising business model. Buried within the middle of this post is a reference to paid tweets. "...we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API. We are updating our Terms of Service to articulate clearly what we mean by

Stwickers - Personlaized Decals for Twitter
Stwickers is a small company that is providing personalized vinyl decals of your Twitter name. The Stwitcker comes in a variety of colors and sizes. They currently offer 1 inch, 2 inch, 3 inch, and 5 inch stickers. These Stwitckers could be a great promotional item to draw potential clients / customer to your Twitter profile. The site has a couple of examples of the Stwitckers on laptops and car

Toolkits - Twitter Lists for Twitter Apps
The web site, OneForty.com, is a well known repository of the best Twitter tools and Twitter apps. They recently announced a new featured called Toolkits. Toolkits are a way to create lists of your favorite Twitter tools and apps. These Toolkits are community driven and allow their members to bundle the best tools and apps for particular business or social functions. OneForty.com has highlighted

KFC Scholarship Contest via Twitter
The restaurant chain KFC is giving away a $20,000 scholarship via Twitter. KFC wants students to write in 129 characters or less why they exemplify Colonel Sanders' commitment to education and enriching their community, and why think they deserve a college scholarship. The contest runs through November 26 and KFC ask that the #KFCScholar hashtag be used for all submissions.

Twttr Old Skool
Techcrunch points to there very very first post about Twitter back in 2006. Michael Arrington wrote: I imagine most users are not going to want to have all of their Twttr messages published on a public website. That statement is quite funny now. But the other historical item noted in the article is that Twitter was actuall Twttr. They have a old green logo of Twitter on the post as well.

Twitter iPhone Integration with Next IOS Update
It has been speculated that the next iPhone update will have better Twitter integration. With the soon-to-launch Twitter's own photo sharing service, some are speculating that we will see a "Post to Twitter" for photos. It looks like Apple may add a shortcut menu item to the camera that will allow the user to easily share their photos on Twitter right from their own iPhone. There is even more

Google's Twitter Directory
Google ventured into tweeting in 2009 from the @google account. They soon grew to over 129 Twitter accounts as of today. Google has now created a Google Twitter Directory to help you to navigate this huge list of Twitter accounts that they manage. The Google Twitter Directory allows you to narrow the list by category, language, and region. From this page you can also find a list of Google Blogs,


7483788