What would happen if you put Pinterest and Twitter in a blender? The result might look something like SeeSaw, the new visual content discovery and curation tool developed by New York-based Internet Media Labs. Read →
Last December, Twitter introduced a major redesign. One of the biggest features of that redesign was the new Discover tab, designed to position Twitter as a content discovery tool and make the platform more accessible for users who may be more interested in content consumption, as opposed to content creation. Just a few months later, Twitter has announced it is revamping the Discover feature to give users even more personalized recommendations. The company is also making some un-announced changes to its user interface. Read →
Gatwick Airport has been using Twitter to keep passengers informed with realtime updates during disruptive weather and flight delays, as well as updates on everyday airport activity. This week, the airport’s Twitter account, @gatwick_airport, became the first UK airport to be recognized by Twitter as a verified account, receiving, as a spokesperson put it, “Twitter’s ‘blue tick’ of authority.” Read →
Twitter has announced that it will be adding in-stream Promoted Tweets to its Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android mobile apps–an important step given that more than half of active Twitter users access the platform via their mobile device. To date, iPhone and Android mobile users have been exposed to Twitter’s Promoted Products only via the search function–search for a topic and a Promoted Tweet is likely to appear at the top of the search results. With the most recent app updates, however, Twitter now is including the ability to see Promoted Tweets as part of the user’s stream. Read →
Someone may be using your name and picture to create fake Yahoo email and Twitter accounts–at 5c each. Here are the details on how one such scam works. Read →
When Twitter announced that Promoted Tweets would be appearing near the top of your timeline, it specifically said that you would be served tweets from organizations and brands that you follow. Here’s the exact language from Twitter’s July 28 blog post: “Starting today, we’re introducing a way to ensure that the most important Tweets from the organizations you follow reach you directly, by placing them at or near the top of your timeline.” On September 13, Twitter quietly changed their policy, and started slowly rolling out promoted tweets in timelines for brands that you don’t follow. Read →
Like other advertisers, Toyota spent millions on its Superbowl commercial this weekend. But instead of enjoying positive word of mouth about the new Camry, the brand is dealing with backlash against a Twitter campaign that sent unsolicited @ reply messages to users who were tweeting with Superbowl-related hashtags, inviting them to enter a contest to win a 2012 Camry. What’s worse, the tweets were sent from a series of accounts that had been verified by Twitter, provoking additional backlash against Twitter for appearing to endorse the spam campaign. Read →
There’s a lot of talk about first-mover advantage among social media pioneers. But sometimes it’s better to take your time, according to the folks at Vestas, the big Danish wind energy company. Read →
It’s difficult to move quickly in social media when every post must first be vetted by an international bureaucracy and then translated into six languages. But that hasn’t fazed the United Nations, which maintains a very active presence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr and YouTube. The UN is committed to social media as a way of engaging its diverse constituencies and raising awareness and gaining support for a variety of causes. We outline a number of ways in which the organization is using social media to drive its business goals. Read →
Yesterday Twitter wrote an unsigned blog post. It said that in order to gain access to large markets, it will henceforth cooperate with governments to censor user content within those countries.
Alas, Twitter did not say it so succinctly as that. They started out with a bit of philosophical butter to salve the corporate conscience. Read →
