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A Standalone Messaging App Is The Last Thing Twitter Needs
Despite being one of the most popular and powerful social networks on the planet, Twitter is far from perfect. With only a quarter of the 1 billion registered accounts actively using the service, the platform clearly lacks mainstream appeal. So what's missing? According to AllThingsD today, Twitter may be launching a standalone messaging app to compete with the likes of Line, KakaoTalk and… Read More
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Twitter’s Theoretically Temporary URL Messaging Ban Due To Massive Wave Of DM Spam
Late yesterday afternoon many Twitter users began to notice that they could no longer send Direct Messages containing URLs. The complaints about the issue gained steam late into the night, when we reported that Twitter said a ‘technical issue’ was behind the problem with DMs. Updates below. Well, it turns out that the technical issue may have been referring to the handling of Direct… Read More
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Bluefin’s Deb Roy Sees Twitter As The Shared Semiotic Bridge For All Live Experiences
Today at Wired's 2013 event in London, Twitter's Deb Roy (co-founder of TV social impact analytics firm Bluefin Labs, acquired by Twitter earlier this year), the MIT researcher discussed how his company took the academic subject of semiotics and made it something "central" to the future of Twitter's business. On essentially the eve (generally speaking) of Twitter's IPO, Roy's discussion provides… Read More
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Twitter Says A ‘Technical Issue’ Is Preventing URLs From Being Sent In Direct Messages For Some
Earlier this afternoon Twitter users began experiencing difficulty sending URLs or ‘links’ via Direct Message. Depending on the client used, error messages popped up that indicated the DMs being sent included links to ‘malware’, or simply indicated that the message could not be sent. A Twitter spokesperson said only that “there is a technical issue with URLs in Direct… Read More
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Twitter User Growth Decelerating: +6% In Q3 To 231.7 Million Now Vs +10% In Q1
Twitter's percent user growth is slowing. In a new S-1 amendment to its IPO filing, Twitter notes it hit 231.7 million monthly users by at the end of Q3 2013, up 6.13% from 218.3 million at the end of Q2. If you look back, you'll see Twitter had 6.86% growth in Q2, 10.27% in Q1, and 10.77% in Q4 2012. The slowing growth could indicate trouble signing up new users or retaining older ones. Read More
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Twitter Announces It Will List On The NYSE Under TWTR
Twitter has amended its S-1 filing to note that it will be listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the TWTR symbol, a detail that was omitted from the original filing. The new document was uploaded to its EDGAR archive today. There is still no valuation or IPO estimation listed in the document. Twitter notes that it now has 230 million MAUs, marking a growth of 15 million MAUs over the last… Read More
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Twitter Solves The Follow-Back Tango, Enables Direct Messages From All Your Followers
Twitter has pushed out a feature update that is extremely useful for journalists like myself, and anyone else who hopes to use Twitter to communicate both publicly and privately. The social network now lets you receive Direct Messages from any of your followers, regardless of whether you follow them or not. Read More
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iTunes Radio Product Manager Gareth Paul Jones Joins Twitter To Work On Ad Partnerships
Apple product manager Gareth Paul Jones is leaving the company to join Twitter, he announced in a tweet. According to Jones' LinkedIn profile, he was a product manager on iTunes Radio (which recently launched as part of iOS 7), and he's also worked as a product manager at TRUSTe and as an engineer at Google. We wrote about Jones when he launched a site called TechCompanyPay after leaving… Read More
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Twitter Plans To Use What You Follow And Tweet To Target MoPub Ads On Other Apps. Here’s How
Everything that happens on Twitter could become fuel for targeting off-site ads run through its recent ad network acquisition MoPub, according to the Financial Times' sources. In theory, users logged in to Twitter could see ads related to who they follow and words they tweet on sites with MoPub-powered ads. Twitter could then earn money on its data rather than by showing more ads on its service. Read More
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You’re Not Just The Product, You’re The Ads (And Your Friends Should Thank You)
Word of mouth, sponsored. Trusted recommendations, promoted. Reviews from friends, endorsed. This is the new lexicon of advertising. As the world learns to ignore traditional advertising online, tech giants have found a way to grab people's attention: using your name, face, and words. Are we okay with that? Maybe we should be. Read More
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Twitter Launches An Android Tablet Optimized App For The First Time — On One Tablet
In what is a poignant statement about the state of Android tablet apps, Twitter has announced the first tablet-optimized version for the platform. It’s been 3 years since the iPad hit and Android tablets have blown up in the meantime, but this is the first time they’re being served with a real app. Twitter says that the app is rolling out on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 first but will… Read More
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Twitter Exploring Personalized Breaking News Notifications With @Eventparrot Experiment
Twitter appears to be exploring introducing breaking news notifications tuned for you to its apps, if a new experimental account is any indication. An account called @eventparrot has garnered around 1,500 followers and promises to deliver ‘direct messages that help you keep up with what’s happening in the world’. Update: Yep, it’s official, the account has just been… Read More
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Twitter’s Silent Chairman
Last week, when Twitter’s S-1 filing dropped, the media pored over it with a fine-toothed comb, extracting every bit of juice possible from under the freshly peeled-back rind of the intensely secretive company. One very interesting tidbit was dug up by the Times’ Claire Cain Miller: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey had apparently given up the voting rights of his stock to fellow… Read More
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Twitter Gets Its Chance To Prove It Can Drive TV Ratings With Comcast Tie-Up
Comcast and Twitter have just announced a wide-ranging strategic partnership that is designed to get users reading tweets about shows to start tuning in if they aren't already. With the introduction of a new "See It" button that will appear in tweets about Comcast's shows, viewers will be able to quickly switch channels or set their DVR to record shows directly from their mobile device. Read More
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What Really Happened At Twitter’s Pre S-1 Tea Time?
"With @Jack, @Ev & @biz at @Twitter today, together, guessing the IPO/S-1 filing will probably happen tomorrow," Om Malik tweeted last Thursday, presciently predicting the arrival of the company's S-1 a couple of hours -- not 24 hours -- later. Read More
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Twitter Updates Its Windows Phone App With In-Stream Translation To 54 Languages
Twitter updated its Windows Phone application today to include in-stream tweet translation to 54 languages, which is powered by Bing. Tweets can now be displayed on the lock screen of Windows Phone devices. This will come in handy when Nokia's 'Glance' feature is released for the platform, which allows information to be displayed even when a phone is locked. Twitter updates will presumably be… Read More
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Nielsen Preps Its Twitter TV Report, While Facebook Extends Data Partnership To Foreign Networks
Nielsen is set to publish its first report with TV rankings based on data from Twitter. The report, which comes out on Monday according to the Wall Street Journal, will look at the number of tweets about a show and the size of the audience that sees them. Read More
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CrunchWeek: Twitter’s S-1, The Silk Road Shutdown, And The Rumored Amazon Phone
So this is what CrunchWeek is like without adult supervision. Leena Rao and Colleen Taylor, the show's two regular hosts, were both out of town this week, but there was still plenty of news TechCrunch writers — specifically Greg Kumparak, Alex Wilhelm, and me — to talk about. We weighed in on the anticipation around Twitter's S-1 filing for its IPO (and what was revealed), the shutdown of… Read More
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Twitter Quitters And The Unfiltered Feed Problem
At its heart, Twitter is a firehose. Everything you tweet shows up to every one of your followers. It's what makes Twitter feel like the real-time pulse of the world. But it could also be preventing Twitter from growing. Follow too many people, and you lose track of those you love and stop following anyone new. Read More
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Gillmor Gang: IPOed
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — Sure, we talked about the Twitter IPO, about the Bitcoin Bust, about whether Apple is a hardware or software company, and other stuff. Looming in the background was the idea that our politics have atrophied yet more to complete decrepitude, that we could unring the bell of the election, that the… Read More