• #OnlyOnTwitter: Curiosity

    Monday, August 06, 2012

    We often say “You never know where Twitter will take you,” but here’s one that (almost) defies imagination. Last night, we saw that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (@NASAJPL) was live-tweeting the journey to Mars. As Curiosity, the car-sized rover, made its descent onto the Red Planet, the #JPL team shared Twitter updates directly from the command center. And that stream reveals a truly remarkable and historic sequence of events:

    And then, after the "seven minutes of terror", in the words (and through the eyes) of the Curiosity rover itself:

    This monumental scientific achievement quickly inspired an Twitter outpouring of awe, pride, and even a dash of levity:

    The @MarsCuriosity account will continue to share updates from the rover’s explorations, including photos from the surface of Mars. As Buzz Aldrin (@TheRealBuzz) once said, “Mars is there, waiting to be reached”. Thanks for taking us there, @NASAJPL team.

    Posted by Adam Sharp, Head of Government, News and Social Innovation (@AdamS)

    Posted by @ at 5:24 PM

  • #OnlyOnTwitter: The road to gold

    Friday, August 03, 2012

    We’ve been keeping an eye on the data to see which #Olympics moments have really inspired conversation on Twitter, and sharing that along the way. Yesterday, the peak of conversation came when Gabby Douglas earned herself the women’s all-around gymnastics gold medal, with 38,000 Tweets per minute related to the event. The Phelps-Lochte showdown was another huge moment, with 25,000 Tweets per minute about the end of their race.

    What’s been so special about these Olympics is how often the athletes join the conversation themselves. We’ve seen Olympians engaging with their fans, cheering each other, and rueing a poor performance. But Tyler Clary (@TylerClary) did something unique— he didn’t just exchange a few Tweets, he narrated his own performance in the 200m backstroke. He took advantage of the tape delay for the US audience to send Tweets about what he was thinking in his big gold medal race just a few hours earlier.

    It’s the unique perspective only an Olympian can provide, and Clary did, sharing his journey with thousands— narrating along with the race as they watched on TV.

    The next morning Clary gave a shoutout to the musicians who kept him motivated and focused:

    And like many Olympians who suddenly find that the world’s spotlight has shone their way, Clary’s idols talked back:

    After Clary’s big night in the pool and on Twitter, his followers grew by 12x.

    Posted by Andrew Fitzgerald, Manager, Editorial Programming (@magicandrew)

    Posted by @ at 3:49 PM

  • Celebrating Olympic accomplishments

    Wednesday, August 01, 2012

    The past few days have been full of captivating, historic Olympics moments. As records are shattered and dreams achieved, the world has turned to Twitter to come together in celebration. Last night, we saw the biggest spike of the day in Olympics-related conversation during the US prime-time broadcast of Michael Phelps winning the 4x200 freestyle relay, which earned him a record-breaking 19th medal.

    Phelps also can claim the record for the most Tweets about an athlete so far during the games. The silver medal in the Twitter-mentions contest goes to Tom Daley (@TomDaley1994) and Ryan Lochte (@RyanLochte) earns the bronze.

    Even Olympians come to Twitter to revel in their teammates’ successes. Matt Grevers, who won a gold medal yesterday, found a unique way of congratulating his roommate Nathan Adrian on bringing back his own gold:

    McKayla Maroney, a member of yesterday’s gold medal-winning “Fab Five” women’s gymnastics team, Tweeted (and apparently screamed) her enthusiasm for the men’s team in their event today:

    After Rebecca Soni broke the world record en route to qualifying for the 200m breaststroke, her teammate Jessica Hardy sent a heartfelt message:

    In the midst of a race of his own, President Obama took a moment to tweet out his congratulations to Michael Phelps. (Whenever he personally writes a Tweet, he signs it with “-bo”.)

    And thanks to new cameras installed by LOCOG, you can now see pictures of the athletes as they’re in the process of these incredible feats. The photos are taken from incredible vantage points, and are shared on Twitter:

    @L2012BballCam - over the basketball hoop
    @L2012GymCam - looking down onto the rhythmic gymnastics mat
    @L2012TableCam - looking down onto the table tennis table
    @L2012StadiumCam - on the Olympic Stadium roof, looking down onto the track
    @L2012MatCam - looking down onto the judo/wrestling mat
    @L2012PoolCam - underwater in the aquatics center

    You can find moments and behind-the-scenes views like these as they happen at Twitter.com/#Olympics.

    Posted by Andrew Fitzgerald, Manager, Editorial Programming (@magicandrew)

    Posted by @ at 4:56 PM

  • A new barometer for the election

    One glance at the numbers, and it’s easy to see why pundits are already calling 2012 “the Twitter election.” More Tweets are sent every two days today than had ever been sent prior to Election Day 2008 — and Election Day 2008’s Tweet volume represents only about six minutes of Tweets today.

    All this explosive growth in conversation has fueled Twitter as a platform for civic debate and created a massive data set for analysis — data our Government & Politics team has used to study the State of the Union, a FOX News debate, Super Tuesday, gay marriage and other election-year topics. For the first time, it’s possible to measure conversations that just an election cycle ago were limited to coffee shops, dinner tables and water coolers.

    Today, we’re launching the Twitter Political Index, a daily measurement of Twitter users’ feelings towards the candidates as expressed in nearly two million Tweets each week.


    The Twitter Political Index is built in partnership with the data analysis team at Topsy (@Topsy) and two respected polling firms: The Mellman Group (@markmellman) and North Star Opinion Research (@northstaropin).

    Each day, the Index evaluates and weighs the sentiment of Tweets mentioning Obama or Romney relative to the more than 400 million Tweets sent on all other topics. For example, a score of 73 for a candidate indicates that Tweets containing their name or account name are on average more positive than 73 percent of all Tweets.

    Just as new technologies like radar and satellite joined the thermometer and barometer to give forecasters a more complete picture of the weather, so too can the Index join traditional methods like surveys and focus groups to tell a fuller story of political forecasts. It lends new insight into the feelings of the electorate, but is not intended to replace traditional polling — rather, it reinforces it.

    For example, the trend in Twitter Political Index scores for President Obama over the last two years often parallel his approval ratings from Gallup, frequently even hinting at where the poll numbers are headed. But what’s more interesting are the periods when these data sets do not align, like when his daily scores following the raid that killed Osama bin Laden dropped off more quickly than his poll numbers, as the Twitter conversation returned to being more focused on economic issues.

    By illustrating instances when unprompted, natural conversation deviates from responses to specific survey questions, the Twitter Political Index helps capture the nuances of public opinion.


    The Index for each candidate updates every day after 8 p.m. ET to reflect shifts in conversation from that day’s events, and is available along with a historical chart at election.twitter.com. During the runup to the election, our partners will be featuring this data on their sites as well: Topsy will be posting detailed analysis at www.topsylabs.com/election, and USA Today is using the Index to create the USA Today/Twitter election meter throughout the campaign. We’ll also tweet daily updates and other observations at @gov.

    Posted by Adam Sharp, Head of Government, News and Social Innovation - @AdamS

    Posted by @ at 9:00 AM

  • Our approach to Trust & Safety and private information

    Tuesday, July 31, 2012

    We want to take a moment to explain some of our general Trust and Safety policies and procedures, and address the specific case at hand that has unfolded over the past 48-hours (we normally don’t address matters pertaining to individual accounts for the privacy of the account, but here the relevant communications are now public).

    When our Trust and Safety team receives a report from a user explaining that his/her private personally-identifiable information has been posted on Twitter, we investigate the issue and temporarily suspend the account if it is found to be violating our Guidelines & Best Practices. We make it possible for people to report posting of their private information because it may be used to harass or intimidate, and in certain circumstances may even be illegal. We have systems in place to address such behavior. 

    Before the violating account is unsuspended, we ask the account holder to do two things:
    1. we ask that they confirm that they understand our private information policy, and
    2. we ask them to state that going forward they will follow the Twitter Terms of Service. 
    Once they have confirmed this for us in their email response, their account is unsuspended. Additionally, if we receive a notice from the complainant rescinding their original complaint, the account is unsuspended.

    The Trust and Safety team does not actively monitor users’ content. In all cases, whether the user is the head of a major corporation, a celebrity, or a regular user, we require a report to be filed at our abusive users webform. Not only do we need a report, but we need a report from the person whose private information has been posted, or someone who is able to legally act on their behalf. We do not proactively report or remove private information on behalf of other users, no matter who they are. 

    We’ve seen a lot of commentary about whether we should have considered a corporate email address to be private information. There are many individuals who may use their work email address for a variety of personal reasons — and some may not. Our Trust and Safety team does not have insight into the use of every user’s email address, and we need a policy that we can implement across all of our users in every instance.

    That said, we want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up. The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation, as has now been reported publicly. Our Trust and Safety team did not know that part of the story and acted on the report as they would any other.

    As I stated earlier, we do not proactively report or remove content on behalf of other users no matter who they are. This behavior is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us. We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is — whether a business partner, celebrity or friend. As of earlier today, the account has been unsuspended, and we will actively work to ensure this does not happen again.

    Posted by Alex Macgillivray, General Counsel - @amac

    Posted by @ at 12:43 PM

  • #OnlyOnTwitter: Through the eyes of Olympians

    Thursday, July 26, 2012

    Only the world’s best athletes get to experience the thrill and privilege of marching in the Parade of Nations at the opening ceremonies. And as they tweeted pictures during every step of their memorable night, they took all of us along with them.


    Of course, @NBCOlympics was also front and center, tweeting the Parade:

    Even the evening’s star performer, Sir Paul McCartney, took a moment to Tweet his own backstage countdown:

    The biggest spike in Twitter conversation during the Opening Ceremony? When Rowan Atkinson, a.k.a. Mr Bean, appeared in a hilariously memorable homage to the Olympians of “Chariots of Fire”.

    To be part of moments like these as they unfold, follow along at Twitter.com/#Olympics.

    Posted by Andrew Fitzgerald, Manager, Editorial Programming (@magicandrew)

    Posted by @ at 4:24 PM

  • Spotlight on Olympic stories

    When it comes to events that capture the world’s attention, the Olympic Games have long been the gold standard — and never more so than right now, when Twitter is on hand for every competition. Even today, heading into the Opening Ceremony, we’re already seeing more Tweets about the Olympics in a single day than we did during the entire Beijing games in 2008. (Yes, you read that right.)

    With the entire world tuning in to enjoy the games, Twitter will carry the roar of the crowd. And as the drama and emotion unfold over the next 17 days, we’ll be shining a spotlight on the incredible stories that emerge. To bring American fans closer to every moment in London, we’ve partnered with NBC Olympics, the official broadcaster of the games, to create an event page for the 2012 Olympics.


    This page will highlight Tweets from athletes, coaches, teams, families, NBC personalities, fans, and many other Olympic insiders. When those nail-biting, riveting, and emotional moments unfold, you’ll see and hear directly from all of those who are closest to the action.

    Similar to our event pages for NASCAR and the Euro 2012 football championship, the Olympics event page will feature a mix of Tweets to bring you all of the best moments, as they happen on-air, on Twitter, and on the field ...or track, or uneven bars. And as you’re watching the coverage presented by NBC Olympics, you’ll see complementary Tweets, offering a 360° perspective of the games.

    Even before the Opening Ceremony, you can get a sense of the excitement the world’s top athletes are feeling about being at the games, their life in the Olympic village, and how they prepare to go for gold:


    Even if you’re not currently on Twitter, you’re invited to join the party. When you see the #Olympics hashtag displayed on air, that’s your invitation to check out the action on Twitter. The page will be available to anyone in the US who visits Twitter.com/#Olympics. Or find your way to the page by clicking on the hashtag “#Olympics”, or searching for “Olympics” or “#Olympics”. The event page is also specially designed to be fully interactive on mobile devices.

    Let the Games begin!

    Posted by Chloe Sladden, VP of Media (@ChloeS)

    Posted by @ at 4:24 PM

  • Our apologies for today’s outage.

    We are sorry. Many of you came to Twitter earlier today expecting, well, Twitter. Instead, between around 8:20am and 9:00am PT, users around the world got zilch from us. By about 10:25am PT, people who came to Twitter finally got what they expected: Twitter.

    The cause of today’s outage came from within our data centers. Data centers are designed to be redundant: when one system fails (as everything does at one time or another), a parallel system takes over. What was noteworthy about today’s outage was the coincidental failure of two parallel systems at nearly the same time.

    I wish I could say that today’s outage could be explained by the Olympics or even a cascading bug. Instead, it was due to this infrastructural double-whammy. We are investing aggressively in our systems to avoid this situation in the future.

    On behalf of our infrastructure team, we apologize deeply for the interruption you had today. Now — back to making the service even better and more stable than ever.

    - Mazen Rawashdeh, VP, Engineering (@mazenra)

    Posted by @ at 1:56 PM

  • Premios Juventud’s super-show

    Thursday, July 19, 2012

    This year, the superhero-themed Premios Juventud (Youth Awards) show on Univision will join forces with Twitter. With Twitter as their superpower, fans will be able to have their voices heard through their Tweets.

    Premios Juventud is a show powered entirely by fans, who vote for the nominees and winners. This year, for the first time, viewers get to determine who will go home with the honor of being crowned the best dressed star of the night. As fans tweet #MejorVestido with the name of their favorite star to hit the show’s special blue carpet, Univision's social media correspondent will let viewers know who's in the lead. Fans will be able to save the day and choose the ‘flyest’ supergirl and superman on the blue carpet.

    What if you could have the superpower to talk to your favorite performers on their biggest night? Univision is using Twitter to make that possible. All week, fans have been tweeting their questions for the stars with the hashtag #PJPregunta. When the stars make their trip down the blue carpet tonight, they’ll be asked questions straight from the fans.

    Music duo Chino y Nacho encourage their fans to submit questions:
    If you want to ask us questions during the @PremiosJuventud blue carpet, tweet them using #PJPregunta and they may be featured on the broadcast

    A fan wants to know when she can expect new music from the group -- hopefully she’ll find out tonight:
    Do you think that by the end of the year you will have a new song? Talk about your projects. @ChinoyNacho @premiosjuventud #PJPregunta

    With so much happening out on the blue carpet, you wouldn’t want to miss the buzz backstage. You can get a behind the scenes glimpse of rehearsal this week by following @PremiosJuventud, and get a sneak peek at what’s in store for the show. And be sure to check out the VIPs attending the show tonight with this list to see how they’re enjoying the big night.



    All night, super-fans tweeting with the hashtag #PremiosJuventud may see their Tweets displayed live during the broadcast. If you’re having a viewing party, be sure to tweet a picture of it with hashtag #PJfoto as well.

    Don’t miss out on any of the action; tune into Univision at 7pm ET/ 6pm CT/ 7pm PT and follow the conversation from @PremiosJuventud and #PremiosJuventud. During this year’s Premios Juventud show, the fans will be heard, and the stars will be listening -- and Twitter’s the only superpower you need.

    Posted by Grace Chu Lee, TV Parternships Team (@gracelee)

    Posted by @ at 10:06 AM

  • Swifter navigation for TweetDeck

    Tuesday, July 17, 2012

    Cross-posted on the TweetDeck Blog

    Today you can more easily discover and react to the information you care about with new navigation features in TweetDeck. You have given us some really useful feedback after using these features on web.tweetdeck.com, and now you can use this swifter TweetDeck on other platforms too by visiting tweetdeck.com.

    Here’s an overview of what’s changed.

    Browse easily

    Now your columns are arranged in one continuous horizontal row, allowing you to navigate smoothly left and right with the scrollbar.

    You can scroll several columns at a time by clicking the arrows either side of the “Columns” button on the top toolbar. You can also click the “Columns” button to reveal the full list of all the columns in your TweetDeck and access any column immediately.


    Manage your columns

    With the addition of the new Columns button it’s now easier to arrange your columns. With the column drop-down open, simply hover over the “drag” icon to the right of the column name you wish to move, click and drag the column to its new position, then drop.


    Act on what's happening

    A menu icon on every Tweet gives you instant access to more Tweet actions, like “Create link”, and user-related actions, like “Block”. This makes it possible report a user for spam, add an account to a list, delete your own Tweet, and much more, all without having to leave your main column view.


    This swifter version of TweetDeck is available now at tweetdeck.com, where you can download TweetDeck for Mac and Windows, access the Chrome app or sign in to web.tweetdeck.com.

    Posted by Richard Barley (@richardbarley), Product Manager, on behalf of the TweetDeck team

    Posted by @ at 8:33 AM