2012's Year on Twitter - the essence of what mattered most to users
On Tuesday, Twitter released a recap of the most important moments shared by users in less than 140 characters throughout the year. Titled "2012 Year On Twitter", it provides an insight into what matters most to users of the social network: from top tweets filled with meaning, to trends and new significant members, such as the Pope.
"Four more years" is what United States President Barack Obama tweeted after he was recently reelected. The three famous words received almost 300,000 favorites and more than 816,000 retweets since November 7, claiming the top spot in the 2012 Golden Tweets. It should be noted, however, that the social network exaggerated slightly when it comes to the number of favorites, which is less than the 300,000+ it claimed. Sure, the president will get there shortly, but why rush it?
Twitter takes on Instagram, introduces photo filters
Just days after Instagram said it would no longer allow the micro-blogging site to display its photos, Twitter has responded by giving users the ability to apply colored filters to pictures they upload.
There are eight Aviary-powered filters to choose from -- Vignette, Black & White, Warm, Cool, Vintage, Cinematic, Happy, and Gritty. A grid view shows how each of the filters will affect your image, and you can tap any of the choices and then scroll left or right to view the alternatives.
Hail Mary! The Pope tweets
Pope Benedict XVI sent his first tweet last year via the Vatican's official Twitter account but now he's got his own personal account and plans to start telling followers what he had for dinner, posting communion wafer recipes, and retweeting comments from the likes of Ricky Gervais and Kayne West.
Well, maybe not. His account @pontifex (meaning both pontiff and "builder of bridges") will actually be used to send spiritual messages translated into eight languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, and Arabic), and he'll likely be agreeing with the message rather than composing it himself.
TweetDeck 2.1 brings new features to Windows and Chrome, Mac has to wait
Twitter has updated its desktop and web app, TweetDeck 2.1.0. The multi-columned Twitter client gains four notable improvements with this new release, including search, lists, expanded Tweets and keyboard shortcuts.
At the present time, the updates apply only to the Windows version of the desktop client -- the Mac build remains at version 2.0.3. However, these changes have also been implemented in its Google Chrome web app as well as the Tweetdeck.com website itself.
MIT predicts trending topics on Twitter
Associate Professor Devavrat Shah and his student Stanislav Nikolov will unveil a new algorithm in November at the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Information and Decision in Social Networks. With a 95 percent accuracy it is reported to predict which topics will trend on Twitter by an average of an hour-and-a-half advance. MIT says that the social network could make use of the algorithim and even charge extra for ads that are linked to the future popular topic. At the same time, it can be implemented to determine ticket sales for movies, duration of bus rides and possibly stock prices.
The latter might gather some interest from Wall Street, but judging by the presentation that MIT made so far it is not at the top of the list. The idea behind the algorithm is to find meaningful patterns from a sample set, which in Twitter's case is represented by topics that were not popular as well as previously trending ones.
Facebook and Twitter will soon feel the 'MySpace Effect'
If you still have a MySpace you likely fit into one of three groups: You forgot to formally delete your account; you are trying to advertise your small-time band to a couple dozen hardcore leftover users; you log into MySpace right after you finish signing into AOL Desktop merely as a matter of old habit.
But I'm not interested in singling out those still using the service, as the droves of users who have dumped the website outright far outnumber the faithful by now. I'm outlining something I'd call the "MySpace Effect".
Twitter admits it acted inappropriately in suspending journalist's account
The controversy over the suspension of a Twitter account belonging to a journalist critical of NBC's Olympics coverage deepened Tuesday. UK daily The Telegraph reports that NBC officials say Twitter alerted the network first about The Independent correspondent's tweets, which Twitter later confirmed.
Twitter's move will likely upset those already complaining that Twitter's actions were an affront to free speech even more: the social network actually informed NBC's social media department how to use its complaint system, which resulted in the suspension.
Twitter: 500 million accounts, billions of tweets, and less than one percent use their location
Twitter day. That’s how the past 24 hours can be characterized, and analysis of Twitter accounts and tweets by Semiocast only underscores it.
Semiocast's study reveals that the social network has 500 million accounts with 140 million of them in the U.S. alone in the first half of 2012.
Making a bad joke on Twitter shouldn’t be a criminal offense
I like to make jokes. In fact so deep is my love of comedy I’ve co-authored a couple of non-fiction humor books. I can see the funny side in most things, but I’m also able to self-censor. That is, if I think up a joke that someone may find genuinely offensive or upsetting, I will choose very carefully whether or not to say it or post it. I’ve learned over the years to think before speaking, although that doesn’t mean I’ll always do it.
Twitter is full of would-be comedians posting jokes and irreverent observations. Sometimes they’ll score a hit, other times a miss. When a joke occurs, they’ll rush to post it in an effort to impress their peers, and score retweets. The speed that Twitter operates at means people often don’t think before they post. When someone tweets something in bad taste, followers will pick up on it, and the sheer weight of disapproval will frequently lead to the removal of the offending missive and a swift apology.
Twitter was wrong to suspend Guy Adams' account
Will you be next?
If you missed the controversy, read colleague Ed Oswald's "NBC pressures Twitter to shutter account of journalist critical of Olympics coverage", then come back for my reasons why Twitter cocked up. Royally. His headline says it all, if you'd like to keep reading here. For a service often praised for supporting free speech, Twitter suppresses Guy Adams', presumably to protect a media giant and business partner. The suspension should matter to anyone using cloud services or supporting online free speech.
NBC pressures Twitter to shutter account of journalist critical of Olympics coverage
As criticism over NBC's coverage of the 2012 Olympics in London grows, the network now finds itself at the center of a controversy surrounding its apparent involvement in the suspension of the Twitter account of an American journalist.
Guy Adams, the Independent's Los Angeles bureau chief, has been extremely critical of NBC's coverage of the games. In a series of tweets, Adams takes on NBC's decision to run almost no major event live, and Matt Lauer's sometimes inane banter during the Opening Ceremony coverage. Adams even went so far as to criticize NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel.
Olympics fans asked not to tweet during events
London 2012 has been described as the first true “social media games”, with sports fans tweeting, texting and sending photos and videos live from events. But on Sunday it became clear that all this activity placed a strain on the networks when a deluge of messages sent by fans lining the streets to watch the men’s cycling road race prevented TV commentators from telling how far ahead the leaders were.
The problem, apparently with one so-far unidentified provider, stopped data from the cyclists’ GPS satellite navigation system getting through to the studios, leading to confusion. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was forced to ask enthusiastic tweeters to limit the sending of non-vital messages -- at least until more network capacity could be arranged.
Yes, Twitter was down (And Google Talk was too).
It has not been a good day for messaging services.
Both Twitter and Google Talk experienced service problems Thursday, with Google Talk down for much of the morning and Twitter until early this afternoon. As of press time, neither Twitter nor Google had given specific reasons for the downtime.
Twitter updates policies, will censor tweets on demand
World-famous microblogging service Twitter has changed its policies and will "reactively withhold" (read: censor) tweets deemed illegal or harmful in countries with laws concerning such things.
On Thursday, the policy change was announced in the official Twitter blog, where it said:
New Yorkers saw DC quake tweets before the ground shook
It is said by some that Twitter is the fastest way to get the word out about the news -- and in the case of the 5.8 tremblor that struck central Virginia on Tuesday afternoon, for some that may actually have been the case.
Shock waves from quakes travel at a high rate of speed, however not fast enough that there may be a delay in the ground shaking actually occurring.
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