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The microblogging service rolled out a series of new features today that together make it more instantly visual and take it even further past 140 characters. With a flurry of new features unveiled this afternoon, Twitter appears to be aiming more than ever at mimicking some of the most visual elements of Instagram and Facebook.
The most interesting new feature is one that adds a palette of "top" photos and videos to search results. So, for example, if you search for "sunrise," you see a group of photos above the resulting column of tweets, as well as a row of video thumbnails off to the side.
Clearly, the idea here is that Twitter wants users to see more information than ever before, and far more than just the 140 characters of actual tweets. It's an acknowledgement by Twitter that, more than ever, the richest communications are visual, something that netted Instagram a high nine-figure payday (its acquisition by Facebook) and helps make Facebook so attractive to so many people. While a 140-character tweet can contain a wealth of information -- a new thought, a URL, a retweet -- Twitter is nodding to the fact that when someone is searching for something specific, there's a lot of value in giving them an instant visual treat, even one that dominates the screen....
[Early tests of the Twitter search tool showed inconsistency ~ Jeff]
As of next month I will have been on Twitter for five years. In social media terms, that’s an eternity. Of all the social web technologies out there, Twitter continues to astound (and confound). For many large companies and organisations,... Twitter still seems to be a source of worry and angst for senior executives. That’s generally because they’re not on it personally and haven’t got a practical knowledge of how it works and the nuances of the Twitter community in action. Indeed, late last year digital analytics firm comScore reported that “microblogging (ie the key platforms Twitter and Tumblr) had emerged as a disruptive new force in social networking”. That wasn’t news, of course, merely validation of what we all suspected. According to comScore, in October last year Twitter had reached one in 10 internet users worldwide, and had grown 59% in that year. In terms of Australia, SocialMediaNews.com.au estimates Twitter has about 2.11 million users. While this figure is dwarfed by Facebook’s user base of 11+ million Aussies, we need to remember that Twitter is public, real-time – and its users tend to be more connected and influential online than most. Here are some things I’ve learned from being on Twitter these past five years....
Late last week, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo discussed the company’s growing role not just in how people consume traditional media’s entertainment and news, but how they interact and share their experiences and opinions surrounding it. A number of commentators have advanced the themes touched on in the interview, suggesting that Twitter is fast becoming the de facto leader in the race to be television’s “second screen” -- a companion role that many hardware, software and Web services companies are currently chasing. While I don’t know if it was Costolo’s intention to lay claim to the second screen, I have to agree with observers that it’s certainly one of the roles that Twitter is growing into. As my wife and I watched the presidential debate Tuesday night, we simultaneously followed it on Twitter, like hundreds of thousands -- or millions? -- of others. Simultaneously reading what others were saying, whether friends, pundits or strangers, made the experience incredibly more robust and relevant to us. As Costolo described in his interview, Twitter lets people shift their media consumption “from a single point of view in a filtered way to a multi-perspective, inside-out, unfiltered view of what people think of the event.” I started working in online media more than 20 years ago, hoping to help newspaper companies extend their journalistic franchises and reinvent the Fourth Estate for the digital world. Unfortunately for most of them, they didn’t and couldn’t (though, I am super-excited to see what Larry Kramer does with his shake-up of USA Today). What Twitter is doing now, I believe, is showing us that a real-time social Web service can add value to an important live news event being passionately followed by millions of citizen journalists and millions more readers, viewers, reviewers and analysts. It gives me hope yet for the development of the kind of powerful digital Fourth Estate that many folks thought the Internet could support....
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says the most powerful feature of Twitter is the way it can show us what others watching the same event are thinking, and that the best use of this feature is as a companion to a televised event like the Olympics. As Twitter has been evolving over the past year or so — an evolution that has caused some upheaval in the company’s ecosystem of developers and power users, many of whom seem to feel slighted by Twitter’s behavior — it hasn’t always been clear what Twitter wanted to be when it grew up. Did it want to be the cool user-generated news network for revolutions in Egypt, or the handmaiden to traditional media players like CNN and NBC, driving Twitter users to their TV programs? In a recent interview with American Public Media’s Marketplace radio show, CEO Dick Costolo made it pretty clear what he sees as the company’s future, and it is as a complementary “second screen” for existing media.... [Interesting perspective by Twitter CEO on Twitter as complementary news channel ~ Jeff]
Inquiring minds want to know. You know you want to know the answer to this question...
CEOs are under pressure to appear accessible and authentic, but social media like Twitter, with its demands for quick, unscripted updates that can quickly go viral, poses legal and other risks for the executives and their firms. When General Electric Co. GE -0.94% Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt tweeted for the first time this month, his "Hello Twitter" was greeted with some snarky replies, including this one: "@JeffImmelt how come my grandfather got on twitter before you?" While arguably late to the game, Mr. Immelt's debut on the microblogging site makes him a rarity among chief executives, who have generally steered clear of social media even as their companies have embraced it to commune with customers and pursue new business.... [Give it time and a proper channel. An excellent read from WSJ - JD] [PHOTO: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer]
Twitter is starting to roll out revisions to its search functions, long considered by tech cognoscenti as a laggard element of the micro-blogging service. The San Francisco-based company announced several changes in a blog post on Friday, including a long-requested ability to search only within Twitter accounts that a user follows. For example, if Twitter users are looking for messages about the current Tour de France bicycle race, they can click a link to see tweets only from the people they follow, and not drown in tweets from the Twitterverse.... [They've got a long ways to go, but Twitter has made some good first steps to improve Twitter search - JD]
Would You Place A 911 Call On Twitter?... The Japanese government is considering taking steps to make Twitter and other social networks an official emergency call system. According to PCWorld, the national Fire and Disaster Management Agency hosted a panel in Tokyo to discuss allowing 911-type emergency calls to be sent via Twitter. Coinciding with this panel, Twitter Japan head James Kondo tweeted that he would like to see Twitter’s use as lifeline during emergencies strengthened, and the company’s Japan blog posted several tips on using Twitter during emergencies and natural disasters....
Twitter is a social media microblogging platform that encourages interaction in the form of 140 character exchanges. Twitter engagement abbreviates content through the use of links and attachments while expanding the conversation through the use of hashtags. As a result, Twitter enables one-to-many, one-to-one and many-to-many interactions. Yet, despite this ability to communicate, Twitter isn’t a conversation based on recent research by Dan Zarrella of Hubspot. Zarrella analyzed the percentage of Twitter participants who replied to tweets based on their follower counts. He found that the higher a person’s follower base, the less likely they were to reply to a tweet. If you think about this, it intuitively makes sense since people with high levels of Twitter followers tend to be celebrities and influencers. People follow these celebrities since they’ve got interesting commentary to share. Further, these followers will reply or retweet these tweets to attempt to get attention. Based on this analysis, Zarrella concluded that Twitter isn’t a conversation. Twitter is a media platform that helps amplify your voice....
C-level executives are often apprehensive about diving in to the social media space. For some, it’s a question of the time commitment involved, while others might be unsure of how to balance personal with professional – and of course there is always reluctance when it comes to the elusive ROI question. But Twitter and other social media platforms are ideal for communicating directly with partners, employees and customers in an informal and conversational way, especially when it comes to connecting with individuals located miles or countries away. By sharing personal anecdotes and industry expertise, as well as engaging with followers directly by responding to questions and commentary, executives have the opportunity to improve their perception as an industry expert and ultimately improve perception of their brand. Here are five handy tips for launching or maintaining a C-level Twitter handle...
Just under two weeks ago Twitter revealed a ‘tweaked’ redesign of their iconic bird logo (image 1). They rolled out some brand guidelines that included usage rules that stated that you should not ‘rotate or change the direction of the bird’ (image 2). Some eagle-eyed twitter users noticed that when you rotate the bird anti-clockwise by 90 degrees it looks oddly like Batman (image 3).... [Now this a branding challenge - JD]
A study shows that the more tweets a URL receives, the better its search ranking. PR professionals can (and should) benefit from this revelation. According to a study performed by U.K. digital agency Branded3, there is a strong positive correlation between the number of tweets of a URL, and its corresponding Google ranking. The study suggests that a Web page’s search rankings start to improve when its URL has received 50 tweets, but the real benefits start to accrue after it’s tweeted more than 1,000 times. Public relations teams are often responsible for the content organizations publish. As a result, it’s important to consider how they can build rank and visibility for their organizations’ websites by fine-tuning their Twitter strategy and working more closely with their Web marketing teams....
Journalists can be their own worst enemies when they try to interact with their audience online. If you think that the online medium somehow fundamentally changes the way that people interact, and that you need to adopt a new set of principles for interviewing and interacting with people online, you're just setting yourself up for failure.... Last week, I decided to get more active on Twitter by hosting an afternoon "Twitter chat" each weekday. (Okay, I hear people freaking out now. "You said this didn't require any special online skills, Robert!" Chill. Stay with me.)...
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With over a billion tweets sent every 72 hours, it’s hard to be noticed on Twitter. Unless you’re a celebrity, you’ve got to work hard to get your profound thoughts in front of more than a handful of tweeps. So how do you do it? This infographic from SocialNomics explores six keys to standing out on social media.... [Six practical tips to get you more attention on Twitter ~ Jeff]
I read the news today oh boy. Well actually, I didn’t. In a realtime Twitter world where everything looks like news, none of it is. The Steve Jobs anniversary stories are just one measure of this logjam, but something deeper than his tragic demise is troubling the technology business. What news is and why we crave it are being disrespected by Twitter’s recent moves, and the result may be a Twitter spring with unintended consequences. The fact that Twitter needs to make enough money to justify its venture investment is not news either. Today’s post-Facebook IPO climate is seen as a watershed not unlike the aftermath of the AOL/Time Warner collapse. But history is no guide to the about-to-be-invented, which is what Twitter is. Attempts to rein Twitter in, to close the borders and declare dividends, to capture and bottle the spirit of the times, these are all understandable and yet fundamentally misguided attempts to change the course of biochemical inevitability. Take @mentions, which is what these guys are trying to do. By shutting down alternative clients in favor of in-house products, the Twitter brain trust is flaunting their misunderstanding of the power of their network. Make no mistake: it is their network, not ours. We only ratify that fact by contributing to it, by repetitively going to the well like some lab rats in search of pellets of insight in a sea of emotional backwash. The amazing and durable fact is that we continue to find what we are looking for, no matter what the latest board or market cap shuffle suggests.... [Steve Gillmor rants over changes by Twits ~ Jeff]
The Small Business Social Media Roundup [INFOGRAPHIC]... Did you know that a recent study showed that 36 percent of business leaders over the age of 50 cited lack of knowledge in social media as the greatest barrier that they face? Furthermore, one in ten say that staff shortages prevent them from pursuing any kind of campaign, and almost half (49 percent) believe that their company doesn’t need social media, largely because they feel it doesn’t fit within their industry. They’re way off the mark, of course. With very few exceptions, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook can play an important role in the business model of almost every brand type.... [Infographic shows a discouraging lack of knowledge and sophistication on social media in the C-suite ~ Jeff]
Unless you're Lady Gaga, it’s difficult to amass lots of Twitter followers without actively engaging. To build a Twitter following and related reputation, you must provide information on a regular basis that your target audience finds interesting and useful. So how do you do this? Here are twelve tips to help you tweet around the clock.... [Heidi Cohen's Twitter tips are practical and easy to put into action ~ Jeff]
A couple weeks ago, Twitter unveiled its new “header” functionality. Very similar to the header image on Facebook’s Timeline. So, relatively (I stress “relatively”) big news for brands, right?
But since that unveiling we really haven’t seen a lot of examples of which brands are using the header image. I mean, I’ve see the Ryan Seacrest example about 4 million times in the last two weeks–we get it, Ryan Seacrest is creative. Enough already.
So today I thought I’d share 25 examples of what other brands (NOT named Ryan Seacrest) are doing with the new Twitter header....
[Thanks to @ArikHanson for compiling this list ~ Jeff]
Last week I was reading one of my industry news sources and an article caught my attention. I wanted to let my friends know about the piece so, as usual, I went to tweet about it. And that’s when I noticed this: There were more people posting the article to LinkedIn than there were people tweeting about it. And that’s when the sledgehammer hit me. Twitter has a huge new competitor with the potential to swamp them, particularly in one critical area. And, it is all of their own making. Back in July Twitter announced that it was no longer going to allow users to post tweets automatically to LinkedIn. Twitter gave us the usual gumpf about wanting to “provide the core Twitter user experience through a consistent set of products and tools”. What Twitter really meant to say was, “We don’t want anyone reading tweets where we can’t put ads”.... [Valuable insight for social media managers - JD]
By Amy Gahran
News outlets of all kinds increasingly have been aggregating or curating Twitter content to augment news coverage and liveblogs—but Twitter is changing the rules. As Twitter gets more serious about its search for a long-term business model, it’s started limiting how third parties are able to access and use Twitter content. On Aug. 16 Twitter announced upcoming changes to its application programming interface (API), the “firehose” which supplies Twitter content to third-party tools such as Storify.
In particular, Twitter’s existing guidelines for how Tweets can be displayed will become requirements.
They sound pretty serious about it. According to Twitter: “If your application displays Tweets to users, and it doesn’t adhere to our display requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your [API access].” Yes, they can do that. This would be more likely to directly affect popular Twitter-powered tools (applications) and perhaps large media outlets, but indirectly it would affect any news publisher using these tools.... [Curators, bloggers and content prod take note - JD]
...There’s no better way to find out fast what, if anything, is happening in the world, from your backyard to the other side of the Earth. If you want to go deeper, now or later, Twitter facilitates the process nicely via its mobile and desktop platforms as well as extensions such as TweetDeck. As with any other service of its type, Twitter also entertains. And, if you choose to accept the opportunity, Twitter can help you act in your own self-promoting interest. Twitter will never die. It doesn’t have to evolve — cosmetically, stylistically, etc. — as much as Facebook does because the content that fuels Twitter always changes. In fact, it can and usually does change in an instant.... [Twitter rocks - JD]
Planned upgrades for Twitter's iPhone app have leaked from Apple's i0S 6 App Store. i0S 6, the newest mobile operating system from Apple due out this fall, promises to breathe new life into Apple devices, and will include Facebook integration and a completely revamped maps system. Additionally, a leak in the redesigned i0S 6 App Store, which will house all the iPhone's apps, has revealed details about Twitter's planned iPhone app updates. 9to5mac found leaked release notes for the next version of Twitter for iPhone in the i0S 6 App Store. Twitter for iPhone 4.3 will bring several new features focusing on interactivity, enhanced notifications and searching. PR pros are still likely handling most of their brand's Twitter activity from their computers and not from their phone, but these new features may help in managing their company's handle while on the go. Here are five of the leaked release notes that are most relevant for communicators... [Really valuable social media insight - JD]
According to a ground-breaking study (“Revolutionary study: We prove that tweets do affect rankings”) performed by UK digital agency Branded3, there is a strong positive correlation between the... number of tweets of a URL, and its corresponding Google ranking. The study suggests that a web page’s search rankings start to improve when its URL has received 50 tweets, but the real benefits start to accrue after a web site is tweeted more than 1,000 times. Because much of the content an organization publishes originates with the public relations team, it’s important for communications pros to pause for a minute and consider how they can build rank and visibility for their organizations’ web sites by fine-tuning their Twitter strategy and integrating more strongly with their web marketing teams....
The deal that Twitter announced on Thursday with NASCAR will see an editor employed by the network curating and highlighting tweets and other content, a deal that takes Twitter even further into the realm of being a media entity. ...the real-time information network has created a kind of portal for the Pocono 400 race this weekend. The site looks like a fairly normal Twitter feed, with one important difference: in addition to highlighting tweets using an algorithm, an editor hired by Twitter will also be selecting or “curating” the stream. If that sounds like the kind of thing a media company might do, it’s probably because it is the kind of thing a media company would do — the NASCAR deal takes Twitter even further into the realm of being a media entity. Should traditional media players be concerned?
What do you use as your daily Social Media dashboard every day?Most likely not Twitter.com I am guessing.Yet, in recent months, there were a great number of browser extensions released, specifically for Twitter.com.... So here are my top 5 finds you can use to make Twitter.com a truly powerful Social Media tool for you...
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![Twitter Is Not A Conversation [Research & Charts] | Heidi Cohen | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/kwyIYMhcVYBelmBBx5_gOzl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
