Twitter Officially Responds To Developers. Tries To Calm Fears

Twitter to Developers: We Needed to Acquire Tweetie to Grow / Twitter Walking a Tightrope With Developers



In Twitter’s development talk Google group, API lead Ryan Sarver took some time to try and calm developers fears regarding Twitter’s recent moves to acquire certain apps and effectively wipe out others.
He explains the main motivation behind the acquisition of Tweetie was to remove the confusion that many new users would find when visiting the app store looking for “Twitter” and never finding what they were looking for because most apps aren’t called Twitter (that’s because Twitter won’t allow them to of course).
Sarver also claims that this doesn’t mean the end for other iPhone Twitter clients. There will apparently never be an “official’ twitter client – it was a mistake and “you won’t see that language used with Twitter clients in the future” he says.
He concludes by assuring that Twitter is still very focused on building its platform and that is what Twitter’s upcoming developer conference Chirp will be about.


More on thenextweb ( by Zee)

Japanese astronaut tweets from space

Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi (@astro_soichi) has been in the international space station since December and he is tweeting some amazing photos of the Earth! The international space station (ISS) orbits the Earth about fifteen times per day.
By tweeting the photos of various locations he is generating more interest in the space program than we've seen in several years. The government agency needs to be more involved with social media and this is definitely a small step for man in the right direction!

Source - http://twitpic.com/1e1502

More on examiner ( by Lauren Actkinson-Carlton)

Maria's CD Cover Revealed, Dixie Carter Tweets On Dixie Carter's Death

Dixie Carter issued the following tweet today, acknowledging the passing of actress Dixie Carter. Carter noted: Condolences to the family of actress Dixie Carter. I was a big fan and I loved sharing a name with you. She also tweeted: Happy Birthday to da Pope! He is such a great guy. It's going to be a big year for him. Love that beautiful smile....
Reports from the ongoing SHIMMER tapings in Berwyn, IL say that Madison Eagles has defeated MsChif to become the new SHIMMER champion. She will be the third champion in the promotion's history.


The crazy looking cover for former WWE Diva Maria's new CD, which hits iTunes on Wednesday April 13, has been posted online.


More on wrestlinginc (by Ryan Clark)

Four Implications of the Leaked Twitter Redesign

Twitter's new look won't be limited to the redesigned Twitter home page. Doug Bowman, creative director at the social media company, posted a screen shot of a refreshed design for Twitter Thursday, according to SocialTimes. Of course, the whole screen isn't even shown because, as Bowman wrote in a comment, "Working on what may end up a significant redesign. Not final yet. What we can show without giving away the farm."


It looks like quite a bit is going to change, and as usual, even the smallest of updates could carry a significant revenue implication for Twitter. Here are four implications of a screen redesign for Twitter (and, more important, its investors):


1. What have you done for me lately?
The tweets-per-day metric will tell other users how active you are at a glance, rather than requiring the mental calculus of last tweet date, date joined and total number of tweets. It also shows the "reply" rate, which speaks to interaction with other users instead of simple broadcast tweeting. The total number of tweets doesn't appear to be provided, because having been a super-user last year means nothing this year.


Implication: These features will be incredibly useful to social media marketing professionals in gauging reach and identifying influencers. For Twitter, that means increased end-user commitment from businesses, which entails more opportunities to sell commercial Twitter accounts.


2. I was there first!
While it's possible now to see how long a user has been on Twitter, the leaked redesign makes this stat prominent, and it is measured in number of days to make the numbers nice and big. For early adopters, this is an obvious pride point, and now members can know quickly whether they should feel pride or admiration in any given interaction.


Implication: This metric is likely to fuel follower interactions, as n00bs are drawn to experienced users in an attempt to attain some reflected glory. For Twitter, this increased commitment to the platform fuels growth along every announced revenue stream.


More on bloggingstocks (by Tom Johansmeyer)

The 3 best URL shortening services

Twitter has been instrumental in increasing the popularity of URL shortening service, such as TinyURL. However, many offer more than just a shortening service. Here's our 3 favourite URL shortening services that offer more.

After all, the help ensure users of the micro-blogging service can say what they want to and share URLs without exceeding the 140-character limit.
Simply copy a link, paste it, click, and you've got a URL to share with your Twitter followers. A URL shortener is a simple, no-frills tool.
Now though, URL shortening services are drawing a new crowd of users who aren't necessarily interested in just saving space on Twitter - users including bloggers curious about who's linking to their sites and businesses interested in tracking their social media efforts.
A number of URL shortening sites have added or are adding new features ranging from detailed analytics about who's clicking your links and geographically where they're coming from, to features that 'unmask' shortened URLs - so you know where a link will bring you before you click.
The tools also provide easier ways to shorten and Tweet, without leaving the web page you're viewing.
Here are our top three picks for URL shortening services that do more than save space.

Bit.ly

Cli.gs

Idek.net

More on pcadvisor (by Kristin Burnham)

Why 99% of 3rd Party Twitter Apps Will Die

This post is about Twitter and why application developers are kidding themselves to think more than a few apps have a future.

While the prophets were making predictions about where the river was flowing, thousands of aspiring business leaders and web developers created applications that redirected light from Twitter’s river to fuel their own applications. Ev and Biz, essentially the river gods, didn’t mind these developers leeching off the stream for two reasons:

• Every new 3rd party Twitter app meant another little group of enthusiastic people aggressively promoting Twitter. You need to sign up with Twitter to use a 3rd party application so every person the app developers convinced to sign up for the application meant another user for Twitter.
• Twitter was a giant stream of light and, like most giant streams of light, it didn’t have a lot of cash lying around to spend on testing new functionality with private user groups. The solution? Give developers free access to the stream and let them do the dirty work of figuring out what users really like. This seemed like such a great idea to most developers that they jumped into development without thinking about an end game.

Twitter had an end game in mind though. An application that had enough users to gain momentum in the real time micro blogging space presented a danger to the big river. Why? Because if a 3rd party app can prove a working business model on their platform there’s little to prevent them from buying a bunch of servers and breaking away from the big river entirely.

This made many developers angry because they felt like they deserved a reward for creating something so many users enjoyed. They thought Twitter would let them develop cool new apps and bring the functionality back to the main river by buying out the developers. After all, didn’t Amazon and Google do the same thing for years?

Yes, they did. But there’s one thing that makes all the difference between Twitter and a company like Google or Amazon: money.

More on sethsimonds (by @SETHSIMONDS)

Justin Bieber on People Magazine Cover Tweets Dissatisfaction

Good news to all Justin Bieber fans out there. Justin Bieber, the 15-year old singer that made it to mainstream hit music charts from rising in Youtube is now currently the cover of People Magazine’s April 2010 Issue. Justin Bieber apparently tweeted comments of dissatisfaction about making to the cover of People Magazine. The young star’s tweets were:

Dear @peoplemag Covershoot…next time i laugh real crazy warn me u r still taking pics…still appreciate u but let’s get on the same page

Exclusive story and pics in the new issue of @peoplemag. I look crazy as heck on the cover but if u cant laugh at yourself u aint havin fun.

Justin Bieber is a Canadian pop and R&B singer who rose from being popular on YouTube by Scooter Braun, who later became his manager. Justin Bieber is on a joint contract between Braun and Usher called Raymond-Braun Music Group, and with L.A. Reid and Island Def Jam.

More on Daily World Buzz (Posted by Christy Lovejoy)