Google+ Pages beating Twitter Pages, but Facebook still king

February 22, 2012 by admin
Filed under General Twitter Tips

By Georgina Prodhan
LONDON (Reuters) – Twitter and Russian search engine Yandex have agreed a partnership that will allow Yandex to show new tweets in its search results almost instantly, as Twitter becomes an increasingly important source of real-time information.
Twitter will give Yandex access to its so-called firehose of all public tweets, the two companies said on Tuesday, in an agreement similar to the one the social short-messaging site has with Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.
“We wanted to make sure that Twitter content can be where Twitter users are already going,” Twitter’s director of business development, April Underwood, told Reuters by phone. “Discovery through search is so important.”
Anton Pavlov, Yandex’s blog search manager, said in a statement: “People share news, exchange opinions and discuss all sorts of matters in real-time all the time. This kind of information will help us enhance our search results.”
Yandex has about 60 percent market share in Russia, ahead of Google with about a quarter of the market, although global leader Google has recently begun to erode its lead.
Google no longer partners with Twitter, favoring its own fledgling Google+ social network for social search results.
Asked about a possible renewal of a partnership with Google, Twitter’s Underwood said: “Anything’s possible, but there’s not really an update to provide there at this time.”
Twitter has more than 100 million active users and 400 million visitors per month. Its valuation tops $8 billion, even though it has not yet established a money-making model.
Google+, which is more akin to Facebook than Twitter, has 90 million users.
Twitter and Yandex declined to give financial details of their agreement. Microsoft has been reported to have paid $30 million for its deal with Twitter.
Yandex reaches about 2.8 percent of global Internet users, according to Web metrics firm Alexa, while Bing reaches about 3.4 percent.
(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Bernard Orr)
Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/21/twitter-yandex-search-engine_n_1289992.html

Tags: twitter, twitter blog, twitter business, twitter followers, twitter news, twitter posts, twitter universe

Twitter updates Android app to run on Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet

February 22, 2012 by admin
Filed under General Twitter Tips

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Twitter released revamped versions of its applications for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android, optimizing the latter for devices running the new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, as well as Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire tablet and Barnes Noble’s rival Nook Tablet.

The upgraded Twitter apps bring back the swipe shortcut feature, which enables users to swipe a tweet in their home timeline to reply to, retweet, favorite or share it, or view the Twitter user’s profile, all without leaving the timeline. The app also adds a confirmation alert when consumers select “Find Friends,” which enables them to more quickly identify friends on Twitter by uploading contacts’ email addresses and phone numbers.

The refreshed Twitter for iPhone additionally brings back copy and paste for texts of tweets and user profiles, as well as expanded sharing within tweets, direct messages and greater control over font size settings.

Twitter now boasts more than 100 million active users worldwide, 55 percent of whom are active on mobile devices. According to the Pew Internet Center, 13 percent of adult Americans who go online are on Twitter.

For more:
- read this Twitter Blog entry

Article source: http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/story/twitter-updates-android-app-run-kindle-fire-nook-tablet/2012-02-22

Tags: twitter, twitter blog, twitter business, twitter followers, twitter news, twitter posts, twitter universe

Twitter Fails At Satire, Bans Nicolas Sarkozy Parody Account

February 22, 2012 by admin
Filed under General Twitter Tips

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Twitter’s giving itself all kinds of new powers in 2012. Aside from revising their privacy policy wherein they enabled themselves to censor tweets on a country-by-country basis, they’ve now assumed the power to arbitrate the definition of satire. First up: Twitter apparently doesn’t like the way satire sounds in French so they’ve suspended a parody account of France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

According to a leaked email over at pastebin, the account parodying the French president, @_NicolasSarkozy, was found to be a “non-parody impersonation.” Twitter recycled the canned “we like freedom of expression – go us!” preamble before stating that the account has been temporarily suspended due to a violation of Twitter’s policy regarding parody accounts.

Twitter’s impersonation policy states that users are not permitted to impersonate another person or entity with the intent to deceive the public; doing so will result in suspension. To lawfully satirize a person or entity, Twitter requires that users employ distinguishing criteria to establish the fakey-ness of the parody accounts, such as using a qualifier like “not” or “fake” in the username or stating that the account is in fact a parody or fake account in the bio.

While this is directly stated on Twitter’s website, reports on ReadWriteWeb and TechDirt claim that the @_NicolasSarkozy account clearly indicated that it was a fake account. Twitter never states how much you must emphasize that the account is a parody just so long as you do it. Further, the timing of the suspension is a little suspect since the account owners received the notice the morning after Sarkozy announced his run for re-election.

The group that manages the parody account, Kaboul.fr, claims that Twitter revealed to them that the request for the suspension of @_NicolasSarkozy must have come from Sarkozy himself or someone affiliated with him. The same group also manages parody accounts of Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni, and former French president Jacques Chirac – both of which include the phrase “Compte parodique…” in their accounts’ bio, which Google Translate tells me means “parodic account.” I could be mistaken about this assumption, but I’m willing to guess that @_NicolasSarkozy likely had a similar disclaimer in its bio.

The parody policy stated on Twitter’s page doesn’t explicitly say that every aspect of an account – username, name, bio, and communication with others – must contain some notifier that the account is indeed a satire. The site merely offers those as suggestions for ways to avoid suspension for deceptively impersonating a real person.

Not only does the fake Sarkozy account not seem to be in violation of any of those policies, but several accounts run rampant on Twitter that are associated with American celebrities and politicians. Here is a small example of those:

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@ThePresObama
Barack ObamaOf course Rihanna had Chris Brown on her Cake remix. He likes to have his cake and beat it too. 16 hours ago via Echofon · Reply · Retweet · Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@theUSpresident
Barack ObamaGreat. Al Gore is already claiming he killed Osama Bin Laden. 295 days ago via web · Reply · Retweet · Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@RealGovWalker
ScooterSpoke w/Green Bay Mayor tonight. Boy do I love Jim’s ability to keep a job for more than 1 year. 68 days ago via web · Reply · Retweet · Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@MayorEmanuel
Rahm EmanuelI can see a thousand fucking skylines, and they are all as motherfucking glorious as the first, and I can feel the touch of my friends. 362 days ago via web · Reply · Retweet · Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@TheRealRomney
Mitt RomneyI recently discovered that Obama stole the slogan “Yes we can” from the Bob the Builder theme song. Look it up. 1 day ago via web · Reply · Retweet · Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@ceoMarkZuck
Mark ZuckerbergMadonna’s performance is like watching the Winklevi’s pistachio commercial over and over – only worse. #SuperBowl 15 days ago via web · Reply · Retweet · Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@HacksawJDuggan
Jim DugganTwo small children wearing blindfolds put Great Khali’s nipples on before every match. HooOooOoo! USA! USA! USA! 14 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone · Reply · Retweet · Favorite · powered by @socialditto

@PimpBillClinton
Bill ClintonBy the way, I’m an organ donor so if any of you hoes need an emergency penis, holla. 13 hours ago via web · Reply · Retweet · Favorite · powered by @socialditto

As you can see, not only do any of those include the words “not” or “fake” in the account name, some of the names fly directly in the face of Twitter’s parody policies by including usernames like @TheRealRomney or @ThePresObama. Some of these accounts don’t directly specify that they’re parody accounts in the bios, either. It’s just trusted that other Twitter users will have enough intelligence to know that, for example, the real Mitt Romney wouldn’t actually say something like, “I can’t pay you to vote for me, but if elected I’ll change that” (taken from the bio of @TheRealRomney).

Twitter, however, apparently doesn’t trust French people to be intelligent enough to discern parody from reality since the site is selectively enforcing the parody policy however it sees fit; or, rather, does so to curry favor with international luminaries like Sarkozy. Yes, it’s Twitter’s site so they can cry if they want to, but the trail of Twitter’s perplexing banning of Sarkozy-related accounts stretches beyond @_NicolasSarkozy. On the same day the account received notice of the suspension, Twitter also suspended three very non-satire accounts that have publicly expressed political opposition to President Sarkozy: @mafranceforte, @fortefrance and @SarkozyCaSuffit. The suspension of these three accounts obviously can’t be explained away by claims that they are misleading impersonations since these were legitimate accounts. Left without that excuse, Twitter’s decision starts to smell of outright politics.

Twitter was contacted for comment regarding the suspension of the three accounts but, as of writing this, has not replied. In the meantime, the rancid cloud of suspicion shall continue to hang around Twitter due to their decision to suspend four accounts for politically-driven purposes.

Way to exercise those new powers judiciously, Twitter.

Article source: http://www.webpronews.com/twitter-suspends-nicolas-sarkozy-parody-account-2012-02

Tags: twitter, twitter blog, twitter business, twitter followers, twitter news, twitter posts, twitter universe

Twitter is Predicting a 'Midnight in Paris' Upset at the Oscars

February 22, 2012 by admin
Filed under General Twitter Tips

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Could Woody Allen’s film win Best Picture?

The common wisdom around Hollywood is that The Artist is going to be the film to beat at this year’s Oscars. The silent, black-and-white movie may not have a lot of stars but it is critically beloved (earning a 97 out of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes), has earned a whopping ten nominations and already has a boatload of awards. Plus it’s the kind of feel-good but just-arty-enough movie that Oscar voters love.

Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is barely on the radar of any Oscar prognosticators. Entertainment Weekly ranks it fifth in the Best Picture race and bookies have the film at 100 to 1 to win. (Odds on The Artist are 1 to 16). But according to the group wisdom on Twitter, Midnight in Paris has a chance to win the big prize on Sunday night.

The smarties at the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab (which combines arts and engineering) have been analyzing Twitter for the past year to see if the social networking site can do a better job than box office analysts of predicting opening weekend box office. Professor Jonathan Taplin, who is the director there, says that so far, his analysis has been pretty good at finding upsets.

Take the Universal film Cowboys Aliens for example. The big-budget Hollywood film was expected to earn $43 million at the box office. Instead it opened to $36 million. Taplin says that by watching Twitter, he saw it coming.

“We knew that film was going to be a bomb two weeks before it opened,” says Taplin. “It’s amazingly accurate.”

Now his analysis is predicted the possibility of another upset. The “Senti-meter” measures Twitter sentiment about different films and actors. You can look at it here. On the chart you can see if people are saying good or bad things about each film and actor and how often people are tweeting about Meryl Streep or The Artist for example.

The latest results on the chart are from February 17th. It shows Midnight in Paris getting far and away the best buzz on Twitter. While people are tweeting more about the final Harry Potter film and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, they aren’t saying quite as glowing things as they are about Midnight.

Talpin says that sentiment is more important than tweet frequency in his study. In order to teach his computer program if a tweet is saying positive or negative things about film (or actor) he and his team had to teach it about sarcasm. He said that he often has students rate 5,000 tweets for sentiment just to test how well his program is doing and that the results have been good.

Of the nominated actors The Artist’s Jean Dujardin is getting the best buzz on Twitter. Viola Davis is tops in actresses which could bode well for her chances on Sunday.

Of course the vox populi and the voting members of the Academy don’t necessarily overlap. Just look at the nominated films this year. Under new rules the Academy could have nominated ten movies for Best Picture which gave the option of working more popular films into the category. Instead voters chose nine films. With $206 million in box office earnings, The Help is the highest-grossing of the bunch. A recent study by the L.A. Times shows that Oscar voters are by and large old, white and male. Twitter users tend to be about evenly split between men and women and most are younger than 35.

It will be interesting to see if Taplin’s study accurately predicts an Oscar but I’m not sure I’m convinced enough to bet any money on it.

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorothypomerantz/2012/02/21/twitter-is-predicting-a-midnight-in-paris-upset-at-the-oscars/

Tags: twitter, twitter blog, twitter business, twitter followers, twitter news, twitter posts, twitter universe

Google+ Pages beating Twitter Pages, but Facebook still king

The 360° Conversation around Cloud Computing

Twitter, Yandex Partnership Will Allow Russian Search Engine To Show Tweets In Search Results

Twitter updates Android app to run on Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet

Twitter Fails At Satire, Bans Nicolas Sarkozy Parody Account

Twitter is Predicting a 'Midnight in Paris' Upset at the Oscars

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