Doug October 15th, 2009
People who want to both help children and get tipsy have, until now, usually needed to keep those interests separate. But Twitter’s lending a hand, as it intends to sell branded wines and donate the proceeds to Room to Read. According to Maya Baratz, bottles will cost $20 each ($5 of which will go the charity), and you can reserve them starting today. Or you can just buy a six-pack of good old Guinness and send some money wherever you like, of course.
Doug October 8th, 2009
A new rumor indicates that Twitter may be attempting to acquire or partner with a company called Oneforty. Oneforty calls itself a “Twitter outfitter,” or, if you like more straightforward descriptions, “a better way to discover Twitter apps.” It’s pretty obvious that having an official Twitter app store would benefit both Twitter users and developers, so even if you shouldn’t hold your breath for this to occur – official confirmation is definitely lacking – keep your fingers crossed.
Doug September 24th, 2009
People who still think Twitter’s just for a few geeks in Silicon Valley would have been shocked to see the Twitter Conference in L.A. About 400 people showed up to talk about Twitter, including celebrities like LeVar Burton, Dr. Drew Pinsky, and Tony Hawk. The ways in which businesses can use the site were also discussed. All in all, the conference proved to be a nice affirmation of Twitter’s ever-increasing reach and importance.
Doug September 17th, 2009
It’s time today to cover another Twitter-related legal development. As with the last one, though, there’s no cause for anybody to panic. Twitter was sued by natural gas distributor Oneok because someone other than the corporation had taken control of the “Oneok” handle on Twitter. But Twitter transferred control of the account to the gas distributor and suspended a couple of related accounts, as well. So everybody’s favorite microblogging service won’t have to face down an army of lawyers right now.
Doug August 20th, 2009
Fear not, Twitter users – it’s doesn’t look like you’ll have to alter your vocabulary for the sake of the microblogging site’s lawyers. Although Twitter applied to trademark the term “tweet,” the application has been refused, and so all manner of sites, apps, or indeed, tweets, can freely incorporate the five-letter word. This isn’t, perhaps, a huge deal – Twitter wasn’t actually threatening a lot of folks with lawsuits – but it’s made more than a few onlookers feel satisfied.
Doug August 6th, 2009
There’s good news and bad news about Twitter this morning. The good news: some downtime problems aren’t its fault. The bad: well, Twitter has suffered from outages and slowness, and the site’s actually under attack. As we’ve said before, Twitter will have trouble growing if it can’t be reliable, and if it proves to be a favorite target of hackers, marketers are liable to take their time (and cash, if Twitter would ever monetize) elsewhere.
Doug July 30th, 2009
The average Facebook or Twitter user may soon be seeing – or producing – a lot more stuff about shooting zombies or aliens. A new Nintendo DSi update has introduced Facebook photo uploading, and Twitter and Facebook applications for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 are supposed to be out before Christmas. This may go a long ways towards making social networks an even more regular and accepted part of daily life.
Doug July 9th, 2009
Firefox users who haven’t been fast to upgrade to the latest version are getting a reminder courtesy of Twitter. Jason Kincaid writes that Twitter’s showing some people banners promoting Firefox 3.5. Apparently these aren’t paid-for ads – think of them more as PSAs – but they may represent a step in that direction. Twitter’s going to have to make money sooner or later, after all, so its execs could be using the Firefox promo to test users’ reactions.
Doug July 2nd, 2009
Early adopters often view Microsoft as being a huge, slow, dinosaur of a corporation. But then, those same early adopters may be thrilled by Microsoft’s latest move, as it’s established an official Twitter account, perhaps proving the microblogging site’s importance. This is an official account for the main company, mind you, not its various branches, and if you’re interested in following Microsoft, you can find it here.
Admin June 29th, 2009
A search for “Barack Obama” on Twitter turns up who-knows-how-many imposters posing as the President. Most of them are easy to spot. And that’s to be expected-unfortunate though it may be. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn-all the networks have the same predicament. Twitter, thankfully, has been able to shut down most fakers, although the problem still creeps up now and then.
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Doug June 11th, 2009
Conan O’Brien has, in your humble author’s opinion, been one of the funniest men on TV for many years. But now he’s in a more accessible timeslot, and he’s directed a nod to the tech crowd in the form of a segment called “Twitter TRACKER.” Two sketches that involve teasing celebrity users and murdering cartoon birds have generated a lot of laughs, and video clips of them are spreading in a viral manner. All hail CoCo (although it’s a shame he’s up against the also-great Letterman.)
Doug May 28th, 2009
Twitter may grow considerably more interesting in the near future. Frederic Lardinois wrote yesterday, “At the 140 Twitter Conference yesterday, Alex Payne, Twitter’s API lead told Robert Scoble that Twitter might soon add location-based information to every tweet.” Comments might be on the way, too. So Twitter users would be more easily able to associate conversations on the site with real-world places, and at the same time, Twitter would sort of copy something from Facebook (whereas things have usually moved in the other direction).
Doug February 19th, 2009
Anyone who loves Twitter’s fail whale may want to take a screenshot and say goodbye. Believe it or not, Twitter received $35 million in funding late last week, which means the site will soon have no excuses for being anything less than completely stable. This also means that users probably don’t have to worry about getting bombarded with ads or bugged about premium memberships, since Twitter won’t need to land on a business model in the near future.
Doug January 23rd, 2009
Well, had the White House chosen to send out all sorts of info through Twitter, it would have been a rather impressive thing for the service. Unfortunately, the White House didn’t – or at least not through the @thewhitehouse account – and so another minor embarrassment occurred. Twitter’s CEO recently stepped in and altered the @thewhitehouse profile so that its lack of official standing was clear, perhaps simultaneously raising a question or two about safety and security.
Doug January 7th, 2009
Here’s the good news: everybody’s favorite microblogging service is about to get a little bit safer. The bad news, though, is that it took some attacks to incentivize its leaders. Ordinary users were attacked by a phishing scam this weekend, while some celebrities’ accounts uttered strange tweets due to a hack at a much higher level. Now might be a good time to go change your Twitter password and make sure your account hasn’t done anything unauthorized lately.
