Articles about Twitter

Twitter is in the process of rolling out a new notification system designed to help users find interesting people to follow. It is not an entirely new system -- the micro blogging site is basing the feature on its @MagicRecs account, which started off as an experiment earlier in the year, making "magic recommendations" about who Twitter users might like to follow.

@MagicRecs monitors the activity of the people you follow and people in your network and sends out direct messages letting you know when several people you are connected to follow a particular user. The thinking is that if two or more people are interested in following someone else, there's a high chance that you will be too. In a blog post, Senior Software Engineer, Venu Satulur explains how the recommendation system has been tweaked and updated.

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When you use Facebook and Twitter, everyone's looking at the same website and has access to the same set of tools, right? Wrong. In the case of Twitter, users who have verified accounts have access to different tools and options and the same is true for different levels of users on other sites and social networks. But it seems that even two average Twitter users could find that they have a different experience from each other on the site.

In a blog post entitled "Experiments @ Twitter", Twitter's Vice President of Engineering, Alex Roetter, says that experimenting with new features and options may mean that two people see different versions of Twitter. Roetter explains "it’s rare for a day to go by when we’re not releasing at least one experiment", referring to both the website and mobile clients.

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Following in the footsteps of Facebook, fellow social-media site Twitter has filed for an IPO. In other words, the company wants to sell stock in itself by going public. However, Twitter probably hopes not to follow Facebook's initial performance which was utterly abysmal and caused investors to lose money.

Predictably, the company made the announcement with a tweet, "we’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale."

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AT&T finds itself on the receiving end of an internet backlash after tweeting an advertisement for the BlackBerry Z10 that used 9/11 imagery. On the anniversary of the tragedy that saw the Twin Towers fall, the US phone giant posted the ad on Twitter -- the tweet has since been removed -- which featured the Tribute in Light memorial under the heading Never Forget. A similar post was also made on Facebook -- this has too been removed.

The ill-advised marketing move has backfired however. The company's Twitter feed is now filled with vitriolic responses from those sickened by the imagery. Search Twitter for AT&T and there are tweets from thousands of users who can only be described as being seriously pissed and deeply offended. On the BetaNews team, New Yorker Brian said that it was horrible and that he hated it.

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In June of 2012 Apple officially shut down MobileMe, migrating customers to iCloud. With storage space now being downgraded, the market apparently seems right to Microsoft to take advantage of cloud customers by offering its own alternative, in the form of SkyDrive -- or the service soon to be formerly known as SkyDrive.

The only official announcement came from the service's official Twitter account, simply asking a question and offering a solution -- "did Apple cancel your extra MobileMe storage? Fwd the downgrade email to [email protected] for an extra 15GB of SkyDrive for 1 year".

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Popular social network Twitter just released a refreshed BlackBerry 10 app, which now finally brings support for traditional features, already available to those relying on the Android, iOS or Windows Phone counterpart, like multiple user accounts and the ability to save embedded images.

The latest update is designed to bring the BlackBerry 10 app closer, in terms of functionality, to Twitter's offerings from other platforms. It now "helps you connect more seamlessly to the people and topics you care about", according to the popular social network. Let's take a look at the complete changelog.

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Prolific Windows Phone developer Rudy Huyn (known for popular offerings like 9Gag, Fuse and Wikipedia) has finally released the much-awaited, third-party Vine client called 6Sec. The new app arrives in Store after a lengthy development and testing phase and, right from the get-go, is touted to provide complete functionality.

The odds, however, are against Huyn's client -- according to Finnish maker Nokia, an official Vine app will "soon" launch on Windows Phone 8. 6Sec will, therefore, face fierce competition and, in order to gain considerable traction, must offer unquestionable value straight from its first iterations.

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When I tweeted to legendary rapper Jay-Z on July 7th, I never expected to spark the Twitter insanity that was to follow. The tweet was simple enough -- I wrote the following: "@S_C_ Why do I care that you wear Tom Ford? I wear Hanes pocket t-shirts...should I write a song about it?". I was responding to the song "Tom Ford" in which Jay-Z boasts about wearing the fashion designer's expensive clothes. This song is from Jay-Z's new album, "Magna Carta Holy Grail".

I'm a Jay-Z fan but the song caused me to have a moment of clarity. I began to wonder why he was rapping about a trendy clothes designer and more importantly -- why was I listening to it? I am by no means a wealthy person and generally wear plain pocket t-shirts -- I was not relating to Jay-Z on this song. I happened to be at my computer and on Twitter, so I googled Jay-Z's Twitter handle and sent the tweet -- playfully mocking the rapper's bragging. I never expected him to read it or respond to it. And so, I went to bed expecting nothing. How wrong I was.

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Twitter has updated both its iOS and Mac apps with the release of Twitter 5.8 for iPhone and iPad, and Twitter 2.3 for Mac. Both apps now correctly synchronize the read status of Direct Messages, which means when a DM is read on one platform, it will automatically be marked as read on others too, including TweetDeck 3.0.5 for Windows and Twitter 4.0.2 for Android.

Both updates also come with the promise of minor improvements and tweaks too, such as making it easier to join conversations via the iPhone app and richer search results that alert the user to new tweets matching their search terms.

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Vine, the popular Twitter-owned video-sharing service, just released an update for its iPhone app, which is designed to increase user engagement and provide beefed up sharing options.

"This is our biggest, most exciting update yet -- and we've got even more coming soon", says Vine cofounder and CTO Colin Kroll. The iPhone app now offers access to 15 channels, including Arts & Experimental, Cats, Comedy, Dogs, Family and others, which users can browse and post to straight from Explore. Each channel comes with a custom theme and Popular feed.

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With privacy higher than ever on the news agenda, it is not surprising people are starting to wake up to the fact they have happily allowed all kinds of personal information about themselves to appear online. It might be too late to stem the tide, but if you are thinking about reviewing your personal privacy, one place to start might be with the apps added to various social networks.

If this idea appeals, then desktop users should install one of MyPermissions Cleaner for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari, while iPhone and Android users can go with Online Privacy Shield -- once done, you are ready to start taking action to tighten privacy settings.

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Microsoft just released the second major iteration of its Blink Windows Phone 8 app which now introduces GIF (the pronunciation is still open for debate) support, new features and improved functionality.

The app, which is built by Microsoft Research (the software giant's research arm), allows users to take advantage of its burst shot feature to combine multiple pictures (the number is user-selectable) into a GIF image. The GIF can be viewed directly after creating it and can be shared via email and three social networks -- Facebook, Microsoft's Socl and Twitter. (It's time to test this with the help of your pet and post the results, for posterity's sake of course.)

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Twitter has released TweetDeck 3.0.2 for Windows, a major new build of its desktop Twitter client. The new release adds support for minimizing the application to the Taskbar Notification area, plus unveils a new layout, followers column and additional search filters.

TweetDeck is designed to make it easier to track real-time conversations as well as monitor specific Twitter feeds or hashtags through the use of a multi-columned layout. Users can also access TweetDeck via their browser using its web-based app, which also recently gained a redesign.

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Undoubtedly, Twitter deems Windows Phone 8 as a second-class citizen. The popular social network introduced filters for its Android and iOS apps nearly six months ago but only late-yesterday did the feature finally arrive on the tiled mobile operating system.

Similar to its Android and iOS counterparts, Twitter for Windows Phone 8 introduces eight filters -- Vignette, Warm, Cool, 1963, 1972, Golden Hour, Antique and Black & White -- which can be applied to new pictures or already existing ones from the Photos gallery. Adding filters is straightforward -- select the picture and either scroll to the right or hit the "filters" button to choose the desired effect.

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British libel law is a veritable minefield and the difficulty of policing many aspects of the internet mean that websites and social networks have often been treated rather differently to newspapers and magazines. But a court ruling means that this is set to change. A judge has ruled that a 46 character tweet made by Sally Bercow, wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, is indeed libellous.

The tweet read "Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *Innocent face*". For the uninitiated, Lord McAlpine is the former Deputy Chairman and Party Treasurer of the Conservative Party and he denied claims that he was involved in alleged sexual abuse at a Welsh foster care home in the 70s and 80s.

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