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Twitter for Android: Robots like to share too
Friday, April 30, 2010
When we tweet what’s happening around us, we share not only our thoughts, but also web pages, photos, videos, location...anything. Mobile phones are increasingly part of our lives, and we seem to be doing everything but making phone calls. Reading the news, watching a YouTube video, and taking photos at events like the World Cup are things we expect to do on mobile phones – sharing our experiences on these little screens should be just as easy and fast as on big ones.
When apps work well with each other, sharing becomes as second nature on machines as it does in person. The Android platform is really good at that, and we’ve worked with the Android team to make it super easy to share what’s happening. Today we are excited to announce that Twitter for Android is available in Android Market!
Twitter for Android is a fantastic application to use, and sharing any link or photo is super simple too – just look for the share button in your favorite application and choose Twitter.
Reading tweets is easy in a bunch of places on your phone. Quickly access your timeline with the home screen widget, view a tweet location on a map, and see your friend’s latest tweet in your phonebook, GoogleTalk list or any application that uses Android’s QuickContact bar.
Check out the screenshots to see it in action.
We had a great time working with the Android team and are thrilled that Google will be open sourcing the code used in this app in the near future. We look forward to the amazing experiences developers will create using Twitter APIs in their upcoming Android apps.
This is just the beginning. We’ll be creating more great ways to read, find, and share what's happening on your Android phone soon!
(The Twitter for Android app is available for phones running Android 2.1 and above - just scan the barcode to the right. Don't forget, you can always visit http://mobile.twitter.com/ on your phone to use Twitter)
Posted by @ Leland at 1:15 PM
Take Me Out To The Tweetup
Monday, April 26, 2010
This Friday April 30th it's Giants vs Rockies at San Francisco and we're throwing our first ever official baseball tweetup together with the Giants at AT&T Park. Lots of us from Twitter HQ are going to walk over to the stadium to meet before the game and we would love for you to join us! Tickets for the tweetup plus the game are less expensive than the regular game tickets, and $2 from each ticket purchased will be donated to one of our local partners, Room to Read.
Posted by @ jennadawn at 1:00 PM
Tweets vs Mosquitos: Let's #endmalaria
Friday, April 23, 2010
Malaria threatens one half of the world's population, resulting in 350 million cases each year and nearly one million deaths on an annual basis—many of them children. World Malaria day is this Sunday, and the impact of organizations devoted to the cause has already begun. In partnership with Malaria No More and The Case Foundation, Twitter is offering a way to help put an end to this disease. You can help starting today with just one tweet.
A worker in Tanzania inspects mosquito nets before delivery.
When you send a tweet about Malaria and pledge your donation of $10, you are providing a life-saving bed net to protect against this mosquito-borne infections disease. Your generous donation will be matched by The Case Foundation, providing the opportunity to double the impact of each tweet. For more information about Twitter and the fight against Malaria, visit our Hope140 site dedicated to helping all of us become a force for good.Posted by @ Biz at 12:03 PM
Cloudhopping
Twitter was inspired by SMS and we continue to embrace this simple but ubiquitous technology. In fact, Twitter's 140 character limit was designed specifically to allow for any tweet to be read in its entirety whether you're using a rudimentary mobile phone, or a more sophisticated Internet enabled device.
Over the last eight months we have been working with a startup called Cloudhopper to become one of the highest volume SMS programs in the world—Twitter processes close to a billion SMS tweets per month and that number is growing around the world from Indonesia to Australia, the UK, the US, and beyond.
To help us further grow and scale our SMS service, we are happy to announce the acquisition of Cloudhopper, a messaging infrastructure company that enables Twitter to connect directly to mobile carrier networks in countries all over the planet. Please join us in welcoming both Joe and Kristin to Twitter's mobile team.
Local businesses use the power of Twitter SMSPosted by @ kevinthau at 9:49 AM
It's Alive!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Last month we previewed an incredibly simple set of web tools which enable partner websites to easily integrate Twitter functionality into their site experience called @anywhere. The idea is that web users will be able to engage with existing Twitter features from all of their favorite sites. Today, we're happy to announce this service is live and ready for anyone who wants to build a little Twitter into their online experience.
Our friends at Foursquare call @anywhere "aggressively simple." Other partners like Amazon are excited that customers can "conveniently follow suggested Twitter accounts without ever leaving" the shopping experience. Bing implements the new tools so users can "seamlessly interact with Twitter." HuffPo already went all-out and built a Twitter edition and the WSJ.com told us, they hope @anywhere "will help us connect readers with the broader story."
Citysearch says that @anywhere "will help our users get a complete real-time snapshot of a merchant and, when they'd like, engage that merchant via Twitter directly from our site. And, in the UK, The Guardian is using @anywhere to innovatively connect readers with those running for public office: "Now, from within our pages you can ask questions your prospective parliamentary candidates and of our journalists. This is a clear indication of how we're trying to lower barriers between our audience and those who hold power or seek to hold office, and between our readers and our journalists."
The full list of sites who have been working on @anywhere implementations pre-public launch include AdAge, Amazon, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, Disqus, eBay, Foursquare, Gawker, Google, Gowalla, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Hunch, Mashable, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, WSJ.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube.
We'll soon be highlighting their integrations here and at media.twitter.com. Let's see what you can do with @anywhere. We can't wait.Posted by @ Biz at 2:12 PM
Tweet Preservation
The Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States and it is the largest library in the world. The Library's primary mission is research and it receives copies of every book, pamphlet, map, print, and piece of music registered in the United States. Recently, the Library of Congress signaled to us that the public tweets we have all been creating over the years are important and worthy of preservation.
Since Twitter began, billions of tweets have been created. Today, fifty-five million tweets a day are sent to Twitter and that number is climbing sharply. A tiny percentage of accounts are protected but most of these tweets are created with the intent that they will be publicly available. Over the years, tweets have become part of significant global events around the world—from historic elections to devastating disasters.
It is our pleasure to donate access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research. It's very exciting that tweets are becoming part of history. It should be noted that there are some specifics regarding this arrangement. Only after a six-month delay can the Tweets be used for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation.
The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact. This is something we firmly believe and it has driven many of our decisions regarding openness. Today we are also excited to share the news that Google has created a wonderful new way to revisit tweets related to historic events. They call it Google Replay because it lets you relive a real time search from specific moments in time.
Google Replay currently only goes back a few months but eventually it will reach back to the very first Tweets ever created. Feel free to give Replay a try—if you want to understand the popular contemporaneous reaction to the retirement of Justice Stevens, the health care bill, or Justin Bieber's latest album, you can virtually time travel and replay the Tweets. The future seems bright for innovation on the Twitter platform and so it seems, does the past!Posted by @ Biz at 11:56 AM
Hello World
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Although our services extend beyond the Web, Twitter ranks as one of the most popular sites on the Internet. Over the years, we've resisted introducing a traditional Web advertising model because we wanted to optimize for value before profit. The open exchange of information creates opportunities for individuals, organizations, and businesses alike. We recognized value in this exchange and planned to amplify it in a meaningful and relevant manner.
Stubborn insistence on a slow and thoughtful approach to monetization—one which puts users first, amplifies existing value, and generates profit has frustrated some Twitter watchers. Believe me, when your name is Biz and you're a co-founder of Twitter, it also means putting yourself at the mercy of folks like Stephen Colbert who hit home runs with lines like, "So, I assume that 'Biz' in 'Biz Stone' does not stand for 'Business Model'."
We hope you'll share in our enthusiasm as today we unveil a simple service we're calling Promoted Tweets. It's non-traditional, it's easy, and it makes a ton of sense for Twitter. Our COO Dick Costolo will be talking about this much anticipated offering in detail today at the AdAge Digital conference. Tomorrow at Chirp, both Dick and our fearless leader Evan Williams will further discuss this program and what it means for the Twitter ecosystem.
This announcement is a long time coming and we're thrilled to finally be able to share it with you. As this project matures, there will be more to talk about. We will learn a lot as the program grows. In the meantime, if you have questions about Promoted Tweets, please read through this Q&A provided by the small but incredibly hard-working team behind Promoted Tweets. Hopefully, you'll get a good idea of what we're working to achieve.
Q: What are you launching? What are Promoted Tweets?
A: We are launching the first phase of our Promoted Tweets platform with a handful of innovative advertising partners that include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America—with more to come. Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users.
Q. What will users see?
A. You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. We'll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don't resonate.
Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted" when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.
Q. You said, “first phase"; what else do you have planned?
A. Before we roll out more phases, we want to get a better understanding of the resonance of Promoted Tweets, user experience and advertiser value. Once this is done, we plan to allow Promoted Tweets to be shown by Twitter clients and other ecosystem partners and to expand beyond Twitter search, including displaying relevant Promoted Tweets in your timelines in a way that is useful to you.
Q: Is this what you said we would love and would be awesome?
A: While we are excited about the platform in general, there are several specific aspects of the launch that we are delighted to highlight. Since all Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is not a single “ad" in our Promoted Tweets platform that isn't already an organic part of Twitter. This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising. Promoted Tweets will also be timely. Like any other Tweet, the connection between you and a Promoted Tweet in real-time provides a powerful means of delivering information relevant to you at the moment.
There is one big difference between a Promoted Tweet and a regular Tweet. Promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar—they must resonate with users. That means if users don't interact with a Promoted Tweet to allow us to know that the Promoted Tweet is resonating with them, such as replying to it, favoriting it, or Retweeting it, the Promoted Tweet will disappear.
Q. Anything else to say?
A. This is a new thing and we expect to iterate to make it better. We're really excited to get it out to you and look forward to getting your feedback.Posted by @ Biz at 12:01 AM
Twitter for iPhone
Friday, April 09, 2010
Twitter has been growing by leaps and bounds around the world. Mobile has always been a focus for us—starting with SMS which lead to the 140 character limit. People everywhere should be able to access Twitter without friction or confusion. Careful analysis of the Twitter user experience in the iTunes AppStore revealed massive room for improvement. People are looking for an app from Twitter, and they're not finding one. So, they get confused and give up. It's important that we optimize for user benefit and create an awesome experience.
We're thrilled to announce that we've entered into an agreement with Atebits (aka Loren Brichter) to acquire Tweetie, a leading iPhone Twitter client. Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (currently $2.99) in the iTunes AppStore in the coming weeks. Loren will become a key member of our mobile team that is already having huge impact with device makers and service providers around the world. Loren's work won the 2009 Apple Design Award and we will eventually launch Twitter for iPad with his help.
As we work to provide the best possible Twitter experience on all of the major mobile platforms, momentum will increase dramatically. Millions more active, engaged, mobile users means more opportunities for all of us. Developers, services, and publishers will be able to leverage the Twitter iPhone and iPad applications to create additional innovative tools and integrations for users. We'll have more specific information on this once Loren is officially on board. In the meantime, please join us in welcoming Loren to the Twitter team.Posted by @ Ev at 6:15 PM
Growing Around the World
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Hi, my name is Matt Sanford and I'm the lead engineer for Twitter's International team. I spend a great deal of time thinking about Twitter's users outside of the US. Twitter's first users were the early employees and their friends, largely based around our offices in San Francisco. Today we are a global information network, with a robust developer ecosystem and a website available in six languages. Our users on Twitter are even more geographically diverse — we're proud to report that over 60% of registered Twitter accounts come from outside the US. There are Twitter users in the large countries you'd expect, some smaller countries you might not expect (like the Vatican City) and even one in outer space.
We've seen growth in every country and we'd like to share a few of their stories. The international team is small but we're dedicated to making Twitter easier to use all over the world.
We made Twitter.com available in Spanish in November of 2009, and saw an immediate 50% boost in signups from Spanish-speaking countries. In the days following the tragic Chilean earthquake people turned to Twitter to establish much-needed lines of communication. Signups spiked 1200% and nearly all of those were using Spanish as their language. In Colombia, signups are up 300% after politicians like Piedad Córdoba Ruíz began using Twitter as a platform to speak to constituents. Signups in India have increased nearly 100% since the beginning of 2010 due in part to politicians like Shashi Tharoor and Bollywood mega-stars Sharukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Abhishek Bachchan. We partnered with Bharti Airtel, India's largest carrier, to ensure that a large portion of India's 550 million cell phone users can send and receive tweets via SMS at standard rates. We've also been partnering with carriers in countries like Indonesia and Haiti to bring Twitter to as many people in as many places as possible.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Twitter's realtime information network gets more useful as our users grow more diverse and we're continually impressed with the results. We continue to work hard to enable new languages and new partnerships around the globe and we look forward to seeing what happens as we make it easier for the whole world to communicate over Twitter.
Posted by @ mzsanford at 11:23 AM
Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Spring has sprung and we've freed up a bunch of tickets for our first ever official Twitter conference, Chirp. The event will take place on April 14th and 15th in San Francisco. On the first day, we'll gather at The Palace of Fine Arts—an historic building originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. When you buy a two day pass, you get access to both days of the conference plus the party we're throwing after.
On Day Two, we're moving to a former US Army post alongside San Francisco Bay called Fort Mason. This space is huge and it's where we plan to host a collaborative day for developers and enthusiasts who want to spend time coding alongside Twitter engineers, talking in depth with Twitter employees, meeting with investors, and in general talking shop. If you want to buy a ticket exclusively for Day Two, it only costs $140.Posted by @ Biz at 4:22 PM
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