Tag Archives | Twitter

The Mysterious Case of the Random SMS Tweets

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 9, 2009 at 1:52 am

It started last Thursday. My iPhone vibrated, and I checked it and saw that I’d just received a tweet via SMS–even though I have Twitter set up so there’s not a single soul whose tweets are delivered to my phone. (I do get direct messages sent via SMS, but this wasn’t a DM, nor did it mention me…or seem to be addressed to me in any way.)

I didn’t think much of it. But then it happened again. And again. At an increasing rate, even–in the past 24 hours, I’ve received a dozen random mystery tweets. They all seem to be from people I’m following, but other than that, I detect no pattern.

When you think Twitter’s behaving weirdly, there’s an easy way to check if you’re right: Ask Twitter. I did, and found a surging sea of confused people wondering why they were getting random tweets via SMS.

San Francisco, we have a problem.

So far, I’ve found plenty of people noticing something odd is going on, but no theories about an explanation: There’s no reference to the situation on the Twitter blog or the Twitter status page, or in the Twitter forums.

I remain mystified, but I’ve contacted Twitter to see if anyone there can tell us what’s going on. If you have any hard knowledge or theories, please chime in…

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Google Search Goes Real Time

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 7, 2009 at 11:45 am

Google announced several interesting things at its press event today, including Google Goggles, a vision-assisted search app for Android phones that lets you snap a photo of a real-world item, then get information about it. But the big news turned out to be Google Real-Time Search, a new search feature that gives you the very latest results for your search queries. As in ones that are seconds old.

It’s not a replacement for Google search as we know it–in fact, it’ll be embedded within standard Google search results, in a scrolling window that updates automatically and lets you backtrack to see what you might have missed. You’ll also be able to view real-time results all by themselves, via a new “Latest” option in Google’s Search Options menu. That gets you a page that mashes up items from Twitter, news sites, blogs, and other sources–and Google announced today that it’s struck deals with Facebook and MySpace to bring public information from their users into Google Real-Time Search.

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New Ways for Local Businesses to Get Social

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 7, 2009 at 2:42 am

Google and Citysearch have made announcements that have very little in common except for one big thing: They both involve simple new ways for local businesses to interact with their customers via social sites.

First the Google news: The company is snail-mailing window decals to 100,000 restaurants, stores, and other local spots that are well-reviewed by real people on Google Maps. That’s no huge whoop–Yelp decals already fill the windows of interesting eateries and storefronts, at least here in the Bay Area. But Google’s stickers have QR codes–those square bar codes. Scan one with any phone app that can do the job, and you’ll go to that business’s Place Page on Google Maps, where you can read (and write) reviews, look for coupons, and more. (QR code apps are plentiful: Google recommends beetagg, neoreader, QuickMark and Barcode Scanner.)

Okay, now for Citysearch’s news. The granddaddy of local-information sites is working with Twitter to add tweets to the information it uses to help folks learn about local businesses. People who run such businesses can “claim” their page for free: Among the benefits of doing so are the ability to sign up for Twitter within CitySearch, a feature enabled using Twitter’s new sign-up API, which lets third-party sites enable their users to register as Twitter users. Makes sense for me: As trendy as Twitter is, is there any question that there are far more small business owners who aren’t on it yet than who are?

Citysearch’s Twitter integration also puts tweets about a business directly on its page, and lets visitors tweet about from that page, too. Which is also a logical addition, given that tapping out 140 characters about a business is a far smaller commitment than writing even a brief review.

Citysearch’s restaurant-centric sister site Urbanspoon will also begin pulling in tweets about the eating establishments it covers.

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ExecTweets: A New Place for IT Pros

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 7, 2009 at 1:55 am

I’m happy to report that I have a fun second job at the moment, and it involves helping to run a site you may be interested in. I’m the editor/curator/call-me-what-you-will at ExecTweets IT, an expansion of a popular existing site called ExecTweets. They’re both operated by my friends and business partners at Federated Media, and you may remember the splash that ExecTweets made when it debuted earlier this year.

ExecTweets’ original incarnation was aimed at business executives; ExecTweets IT is aimed at the IT pros who make technology work within those executives’ businesses. We’ve hand-picked a few hundred Twitter users of interest to IT pros–CTOs, CIOs, and tech experts of all sorts–and created a unified tweetstream. You can browse by topics (such as Virtualization or Security) or search on the IT-related keyword of your choosing.

We’ve also added some new features aimed at helping IT types share advice and opinions:

We also have an ExecTweets Twitter account that more than 1.1 million folks follow. Join ’em, and you’ll get links to worthwhile info at ExecTweets and elsewhere around the Web about IT and executive stuff.

If you’re an IT pro or other interested party, please check ExecTweets IT out and let me know what you think. We’re just getting started, and are itching to get feedback that can help us make the site even more useful. And here’s FM’s blog post with more information about the whole project.

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A Much Better Mobile Twitter

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 4, 2009 at 12:04 am

Twitter launched a new version of its mobile site today at mobile.twitter.com, optimized for WebKit browsers such as those on the iPhone, and Palm WebOS devices, Android, and Nokia S60 phones. And it’s not just better than the old one (which lives on at m.twitter.com) but radically better, with an interface that nicely downscales to phone size while retaining Twitter’s personality and even offering the new, official Retweet feature (but not lists as of yet). I like how much it feels like full-strength Twitter in a more compact form–if Twitter were a Whopper, this would be a Slider.

When I tweet from my phone, I do so using Tweetie, the extraordinary piece of software that’s not only the best Twitter client for the iPhone but one of the best applications of any sort I’ve ever used on any platform, period.  (Tweetie author Loren Brichter is in my personal pantheon of interface geniuses.) But if I had a phone without a great Twitter client–and I haven’t found an Android one I like a tenth as much as Tweetie–I’d be all over the new mobile Web version.

Here’s Twitter’s blog post about the new version. And here’s (mostly favorable) chatter about it on Twitter.

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Microsoft Pats Its Back for New Xbox Live Features

Posted by Jared Newman on November 24, 2009 at 8:00 pm

Last week, Microsoft brought Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and the Zune Marketplace to Xbox Live. And it’s been a rousing success! According to Microsoft, at least.

The company says nearly two million people signed into Facebook from Xbox Live in less than a week since the feature launched on November 17. Almost one million people created Last.fm Internet radio profiles, and 1.7 million people checked out the Zune Marketplace, which is the Xbox 360’s new digital storefront for 1080p video. Microsoft suspiciously left out usage numbers for Twitter, saying only that the service “was abuzz” with Xbox-based tweets.

There is, of course, reason to be skeptical about these numbers and what they mean. Usually, Facebook and Twitter are only open to paid Xbox Live Gold subscribers, but from November 20 until yesterday, those services along with the rest of Xbox Live Gold were open to everyone in the United States, including non-paid Silver members. That means more of Xbox Live’s 20 million total active users may have tried the new services than usual.

And besides, trying doesn’t mean liking. I signed in to Facebook and sent a Tweet from Twitter, but didn’t particularly enjoy either experience. I fired up the Zune Marketplace but didn’t buy anything (and actually, I was sort of offended that music videos cost $1 to $2, when you can easily find them for free on YouTube). The only service I used in earnest was Last.fm, which came in handy for a party I happened be throwing over the weekend.

There was one statistic from Microsoft that was truly impressive: On November 10, launch day for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, more than 2.2 million people logged in to play. It’s proof that no matter how hard Microsoft tries to show the value in all of Xbox Live’s extra services, it’s still all about the games.

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Twitter’s Ad-Free Nirvana: Going, Going, Gone?

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 20, 2009 at 12:01 pm

I‘m at TechCrunch’s Real-Time CrunchUp, an interesting conference in San Francisco on the booming subject of Web sites and services that move just as fast as the rest of the world does–Twitter, some aspects of Facebook, and lots more. The first session this morning was a conversation between TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington and Twitter’s COO, Dick Costolo. And Costolo said that Twitter is gearing up to add advertising to the service.

We will have an advertising strategy. You will see that from us in the future. It will be fascinating, non-traditional, and people will love it.

[snip]

We want to do something that’s organic, like the way it happened with Google. It will work with the tweets. People will love the ads when they see it.

That would seem to be a significant shift in strategy for Twitter: In the past, its executives have famously dismissed advertising for not being sufficiently “interesting.” Now, Costolo is saying the company’s working on something that isn’t just interesting–it’s fascinating!

There are a million ways ads could go wrong on Twitter. (I’ve mocked up one of them in the fake screen shot to the right.) Costolo is presumably telling us that the advertising wont be anything as conventional as banner ads or Google-style text links, or the mere insertion of tweets that are controlled by marketers. You gotta think it’s something that involves leveraging what Twitter knows about your friends and interests to provide ads that are more theoretically relevant; other than that, I have no guesses about the details.

Facebook’s ill-fated Beacon ads remain a good case study in just how sensitive companies need to be when they meld personal information about their customers with an advertising message. But I’m not instinctively opposed to ads showing up on Twitter–hey, it would be hypocritical–and one way or another, I want the site to figure out a way to make enough dough to stay in business for the long haul.

Your gut reaction, please?

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Twitter No Longer Cares About What You’re Doing

Posted by Jared Newman on November 19, 2009 at 4:38 pm

Though not as noticeable as Retweets or Lists, Twitter has stopped asking users the completely uninteresting question, “What are you doing?”

Instead, the social messaging service now asks, “What’s happening?” It’s a simple alteration that could help point new users in a different, less mundane direction. Or, in the words of Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, “maybe it’ll make it easier to explain to your dad.”

Twitter is catching up to its users, who in large part abandoned the literal description of their activities long ago. My feed might not be an indication of everyone else’s, but looking at the last 40 tweets in my timeline, only six are descriptions of what the person is up to. Stone has noticed the same thing. “Between those cups of coffee, people are witnessing accidents, organizing events, sharing links, breaking news, reporting stuff their dad says, and so much more,” he writes.

I wish Twitter had picked up on this shift sooner, because I think a lot of people missed the point of the service during its rise to the mainstream this year. After Twitter traffic ramped up sharply from February to April, it took an 8 percent dive in October, according to comscore. Anecdotally, I’ve got a lot of professional contacts and colleagues using Twitter in cool ways, but my actual friends tend to broadcast their activities a few times, get bored, and quit.

Some companies have missed the boat, too. Look at the integration of Twitter into Xbox Live and the launch of TwitterPeek, a bare-bones tweeting device. Neither are well-suited to what Twitter has become, because you can’t upload photos or look at videos, and TwitterPeek has a minimal Web browser while the Xbox 360 doesn’t have one at all. Users of these tools are pushed towards a “What are you doing?” mentality, and they’ll get tired of it.

Harry has said there’s no right or wrong way to use Twitter, but hopefully this small change in wording will steer people towards a usage that they’ll actually enjoy.

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Xbox Live, Facebook and Twitter: Incompatible

Posted by Jared Newman on November 17, 2009 at 5:10 pm

Here’s a telling moment from my first experiences with social networking on Xbox Live: While rifling through status updates on Facebook, I spotted a comment that seemed worthy of a response, which would’ve taken forever to type on my controller. Also, there was a Web link which the Xbox 360 couldn’t access. So I got off the couch, walked into the next room, and typed out a response on my computer, then spent the next five minutes looking at the Web site in question.

That’s a failure, and it carries over to Xbox Live’s Twitter implementation as well. Both features went live on the Xbox 360 today along with Last.fm’s Internet radio service and the Zune Marketplace, a facelift for the console’s existing video storefront that includes 1080p video and online movie-watching parties.

Of all the new features, I’m mostly interested in how the Xbox 360 does social networking. With Sony readying Facebook support on the Playstation 3, and the PS3 blockbuster Uncharted 2 allowing you to post in-game progress to Twitter, the games industry seems to be latching on to social networking.

Input is the obvious problem. Unless you spring for a $30 Xbox 360 Messenger Kit (which you’re cheerily reminded about when starting up Facebook), both networks feel trapped behind glass. You can read what other people are doing, but participating is a chore.

However, the feeling of looking-but-no-touching goes beyond input. On Twitter, you can’t visit Web pages because the console doesn’t have a Web browser. That’s too bad, because external links are as much a part of Twitter as the things people say. Facebook suffers from the same problem, and more: You can’t add friends, you can’t use apps and you can’t modify your profile. You can’t even poke people.

The major problem is that Facebook and Twitter are made for the open Internet, while the Xbox 360 is a walled garden. Looking at full-screen photo albums in Facebook is a redeeming quality, but ultimately social networking is incompatible with the closed system of consoles. I don’t expect to use Facebook or Twitter on the Xbox 360 too often, and when Facebook comes to the Playstation 3, I’m not expecting a markedly better experience.

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TypePad Takes on Tumblr With Free Microblogging Feature

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 17, 2009 at 12:16 pm

Six Apart’s TypePad blogging service has long been aimed at bloggers who were serious enough about what they were doing to fork over money for a blogging platform. But today Six Apart is announcing TypePad Micro, a new level of TypePad service that’s meant for extremely casual blogging–and which is the first version of the service that’s free.

Six Apart CEO Chris Alden told me that TypePad Micro is meant for quick, brief, informal blogging and photoblogging–the kind of stuff that feels like a cross between traditional blogging and status updates a la Twitter. It’s a hybrid that’s associated with Tumblr, the service that popularized microblogging, and TypePad Micro’s most obvious rival. Alden said that he thinks Micro will appeal both to paying TypePad customers who’d like a home for a microblog, and to people who are currently part of TypePad blog communities but who don’t blog themselves.

Micro is a reduced-feature version of TypePad Pro: For instance, it currently offers only one theme, called Chroma (you can customize its colors). Alden said that Six Apart might add more themes later, and that it doesn’t plan to place ads on Micro blogs. But it does see the new service as a good stepping stone to full, paid TypePad Pro accounts.

TypePad supports the concept of Twitter-like followers, and any followers a Micro blogger has are prominently displayed in the Chroma theme. So a Micro blog does, indeed, feel like a richer, semi-standalone version of a Twitter account.

A few TypePad Micro blogs:

•      Microdogging
•      Cute Funny Sexy Awful
•      Dollarshort (this one’s by Six Apart cofounder Mena Trott)
•      Awesome

And here’s Chris Alden’s own Micro blog. And Alden’s post about TypePad Micro on the official TypePad blog.

If you give the new service a try, let us know what you think…

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