Facebook is making changes to its news feed in order to try and filter content better for users, while Twitter continues to provide a largely unfiltered experience. Which one is better? That depends on how you use it. Read more »
While Twitter is increasingly encouraging us to look at measures like tweets per minute to measure reactions to national events, data from the Pew center comparing Twitter opinions with overall public opinion serves as a reminder that tweets aren’t yet a perfect measure. Read more »
Companies like Johnson & Johnson have long encouraged consumers to spread the word about their products. These marketing campaigns are taking on new twists in the age of social media. Read more »
Twitter announced that it’s shutting down its Tweetdeck apps for iPhone and Android, encouraging users to take advantage of the Tweetdeck web app instead. Read more »
App.net is opening its doors for free to new users starting Monday who gain an invitation through current users. Some will say that adding a free tier invalidates founder Dalton Caldwell’s vision, but he argues that it’s just another step forward. Read more »
Twitter’s new advertising API is just part of an ongoing seismic shift in the way advertising works online, where algorithms and self-serve networks are taking over from traditional ad buying and further destabilizing the media industry. Read more at paidContent »
In an attempt to take on Microsoft and Apple, Google today announced a cloud computer that costs upwards of $1,299. The device designed in-house is part of Google’s transformation into a quasi-hardware company. Read more »
Optimizing content is crucial as customers migrate from being passive recipients to becoming active contributors. This opportunity presents a fresh set of challenges, not only for those in traditional broadcast industries but also for content managers and enterprise leaders. Read more »
New CEO Marissa Mayer launched a redesigned version of the Yahoo homepage on Wednesday, but the site’s new features seem like a lukewarm rehash of the company’s old portal strategy and imitations of what Facebook offers. Read more »
The head of the research lab at the New York Times says the newspaper has launched an advertising product called Sparking Stories that allows advertisers to insert ads into specific content that is trending on Twitter. Read more at paidContent »
Twitter released updates to Tweetdeck on Tuesday allowing users greater flexibility in how they display content and media within Tweetdeck columns on web apps, demonstrating Twitter’s continued commitment to keeping Tweetdeck up and running. Read more »
Burger King got a nasty social media surprise on the President’s Day holiday when someone took over its Twitter account and announced the company had been sold to its rival. Read more »
Twitter’s ad operations are growing rapidly but not all brands and marketers understand them or are convinced of their value. This may explain why Twitter hired Jeffrey Graham as director of ad research. Read more at paidContent »
The web is getting more visual and our communication options now span video, voice and the written word. Technology and the web are breaking down the barriers of distance. Can bandwidth and devices keep up? Read more »
Google Flu Trends significantly overestimated the number of Americans afflicted with flu-like symptoms during the season’s peak a couple months ago, but assuring accuracy is a big part of the puzzle any time we’re talking about web data. Read more »
The concept of bringing social media sentiment closer to business intelligence is a sensible move that can help companies create more value from social media. Read more »
Looking to buy a new Kindle Fire or Xbox product? How about making your purchase through a hashtag? Twitter has teamed up with American Express to allow purchases on the site, raising questions about the company’s future in e-commerce. Read more »
Hunter Walk and Satya Patel, formerly of Google and Twitter respectively, are reportedly raising a new fund for a VC firm called Homebrew. The two would bring deep experience as product managers in the Valley to a relatively small beginning in venture capital. Read more »
Twitter has made a few changes in how users interact with tweets on mobile through the search and discover and connect tabs, improving the interface slightly as the company works to make Twitter search more useful and interesting. Read more »
After pornography was found on Vine, Twitter has quietly updated the app with an age-rating warning and a user/content reporting tool. Read more »
Twitter has officially acquired Bluefin Labs, confirming earlier reports and demonstrating its intent to move into the television and media markets, working to understand how people are interacting with that content on social media. Read more »
Twitter is said to be looking at acquiring Bluefin Labs, which would fit the trajectory that the real-time information network has been on for some time. But is cozying up to traditional TV the only future for Twitter? Read more »
In our age of the dual television and smartphone screen, watching Twitter during live events has become intertwined with the actual watching of the broadcast itself. You can always DVR a show for later, but experiencing the Twitter jokes as they happen is something else entirely. Read more »
Reports came out on Monday that Twitter has acquired Bluefin Labs, a company that attempts to measure interaction around television and media on social media and provide feedback to businesses and marketers. Read more »
PBS showed quick social media instincts on Sunday night with a tweet inviting people to ditch the “Blackout Bowl” for some British drama. Here’s how it happened. Read more at paidContent »
Another week of high-profile outages may spook some prospective cloud users but Amazon Web Services strength shows the appeal of cloud. And Microsoft keeps adding Windows Azure options. Read more »
The news had more than one report of Chinese hackers targeting United States media companies this week including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and according to a blog post from Twitter, it seems the social media company faced security threats as well. Read more »
Developers over at Twitter have open sourced the code for Flight, a JavaScript framework for web applications. Read more »
Oh no! Information addicts were distressed to find Twitter down again for the better part of an hour Thursday morning. Read more »
When it comes to social video, plenty of people have tried to nail it, but no one’s really succeeded so far. Vine could come closest to making videos easy to upload and share, but will it be the answer to video’s obstacles? Read more »
Twitter has acquired Crashlytics, a company that works to improve mobile app performance and reduce bugs and crashes among other popular startups. The two companies announced Monday that the Cambridge-baseds startup will be joining up with Twitter. Read more »
In his annual letter to shareholders of the seed-stage incubator Betaworks, founder and CEO John Borthwick argues that while closed platforms can be valuable in the short term, open systems and services will ultimately prevail. Read more »
Apple already has a problem consistently enforcing App Store rules across an ecosystem of 800,000 apps. But it seems even more complicated when partners are involved. Read more »
It’s always a risk building on top of another technology platform, although building on Facebook’s API has obvious benefits when you’re starting out. But if you pick that route? Be sure to note how quickly the company is changing. Read more »
Facebook clarified its policy toward third-party apps using its platform on Friday, noting that apps using Facebook’s social graph and login need to either make it easy for users to post their activity on those apps back to Facebook, or not compete directly with Facebook. Read more »
Users of Twitter’s video-sharing app Vine will already find the deteriorating relationship between Twitter a Facebook a hindrance as they go to start using the product and have difficulty finding Facebook friends on the app through Vine. Read more »
The New York Times is cutting 30 staff — some of them with deep backgrounds in social media. This means the paper could lose a number of its Twitter readers. It also shows how media outlets and journalists need to work out Twitter issues by contract. Read more at paidContent »
Twitter has been expanding the idea of what a tweet consists of for some time now, and has just added the ability to include short video clips. But is the service at risk of losing the simplicity that once made it unique? Read more »
Twitter debuted Vine on Thursday, a new video-sharing app that lets users share short, six-second clips of video in the iOS app. Read more »
After Microsoft bought Skype, some were concerned about the security of their Skype calls. Microsoft did little to assuage those concerns, so a group of human rights organizations and journalists are demanding more transparency. Read more »
