Filed under: Microblogging

Google is working on something mysterious that has to do with Gmail and social networking, but the details are still under wraps. The new product will be unveiled tomorrow, and it could be anything from integrating Gmail status updates with Twitter and Facebook to launching a full-scale Twitter-like service of its own.

Here's what we're hearing so far:

TechCrunch says the new product will "intregrate with at least two existing Google products. The general consensus in the tech blogosphere is that one of the two is Gmail. The Wall Street Journal says the new product will make it "easier and faster for user of Gmail to view media and status updates." (Media, eh? Is the other Google product YouTube?)

Meanwhile, over at Mashable, they're calling the pending announcement "HUGE" and saying Gmail will offer a Twitter-like timeline of your friends status updates, as well as integration (Twitpic and Yfrog-style, maybe?) of Picasa photos and YouTube videos. We won't find out until 10 AM Tuesday what this new Google hotness is called, but we can start speculating! What do you think, DLS readers?

p.s.: I haven't actually heard anyone call this thing "Google Stream," but don't you think it would make a catchy name?

If a tweet gets posted in a forest, and there's no one around to read it, does it make a sound? When it comes to finding a big audience, Twitter's so far ahead of other Twitter-like services that it seems almost impossible to catch up, even if you're offering features that Twitter doesn't. A new site called Whispurr is willing to try, though, with a focus on groups.

Instead of making you send each post to all of your followers, like Twitter does, Whispurr lets you sort your readers into an unlimited number of groups, and send each post exclusively to the groups you pick. Twitter sort of halfheartedly does this with Lists, but Lists are basically read-only at this point. If Twitter is a soapbox and a megaphone, Whispurr is a table at a café. Quieter, more refined ...

... lonelier? You can set up all the groups in the world, but there won't be very many people to put in them until Whispurr reaches critical mass. Twitter is finally pretty mainstream, but now Twitter fatigue is setting in, which means Whispurr's got a tough sales job to do.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum, the co-founder of Twitter, Evan Williams, said that software developers are working on 'interesting hacks' to evade the censorship by oppressive governments in China and Iran.

He didn't go as far to say what these 'hacks' are -- he also said that the technology is being coded by third-party developers, rather than Twitter itself -- but he alluded to some kind of distributed, and perhaps Tor-like, anonymizing service: "Twitter is a network that is accessed in thousands of ways." -- Twitter is not just a website but a framework of Internet and mobile applications. Barring access to a handful of IP addresses or protocols isn't going to be enough if Twitter wants to get its service into the hands of those that need it most.

There was also admiration for Google's attack on China, but Mr Williams said that Twitter was too small to make a stand on the same scale. You have to give it to them though -- Google, Twitter, and any other liberal software company out there -- these are noble ideals for a damn corporation.

[via Financial Times]

In a flurry of interesting (if you're into social networking) statistics, pie charts and graphs, RJMetrics has just published its latest Twitter data and user analysis. If social media or Twitter isn't your thing, here are the vital statistics: by the end of 2009, Twitter had 75 million user accounts -- of those, only 17% actually sent a tweet.

The delicious stats go on! About 80% of Twitter users have tweeted less than ten times in total. 40% of all 75 million accounts have never tweeted. 25% have zero followers. Also, while the service is still growing (6.2 million new accounts in December), it seems its growth has peaked and is now beginning to fall: July saw 7.8 million new accounts. The growth graph still looks very impressive -- it's just a matter of the inherent quality of those new users.

The report ends on a good note (for Twitter users at least): it doesn't look like its loyal users are even thinking about jumping ship. Basically, despite the 83% of users not tweeting on a monthly basis, the remaining 17% make up them in a big way -- they're highly-loyal to their followers and actually become more active over time.

[via ComputerWorld]

Twitter has just started rolling out location-based trending topics, but for now only to about 1% of their users. The new feature will be called Local Trends, and will use your location information to present trending topics that are happening near you.

Twitter is remaining fairly tight-lipped on the new functionality for now, preferring to wait until it rolls out to a wider audience before discussing it, but Lisa Barone has included some screenshots in her post at Outspoken Media that allow us to get the gist of what it's all about.

As a Canadian living near Vancouver, I'm a little dismayed to note that though major cities are supported by the new feature, they are mostly US cities with London and Sao Paulo adding some international flavor. It's pretty safe to assume that this will expand over time. Let's just hope it doesn't take Local Trends as long to roll out as Lists took.

[via Mashable]

For a long time, Twitter has welcomed new users with the Suggested User List, an assorted pool of celebrities, tech pundits, web luminaries and more. The SUL wasn't a bad idea, but it was trying to do a job that requires a much more precise tool. Because not all Twitter users have the same interest, Twitter has split its suggested users into several categories, changed the mix of people and organizations on the list, and removed the batch-following function of the SUL.

This has a couple of effects: one is that being on the SUL might not automatically get you a million followers anymore. Second, because new users now have to decide whether to follow each individual account on the list, the average Twitter n00b should start off with a more personalized following list. Although you could quibble with Twitter's selection of users, the decision to move to categories instead of one big list is undoubtedly a smart one.

"Retweeting" -- reposting someone else's content on your own account -- is so popular on Twitter that there was a huge user debate about how the site should handle official support for it. Facebook seems to have taken notice, introducing its own retweet-like "via" feature, which allows you to post other people's shared items in your own activity stream (automatically attributed to the original poster, of course).

So far, "via" only works for shared links, so you can't use it for someone else's status updates. Since Facebook is a lot less private now, maybe they're working on aggregating links to further their ambitions as a real-time search property. I can see this feature being interesting, but I hope there will be controls to cut vias from specific people (or vias altogether, even) out of your stream. After all, it would get irritating very quickly to see the same link posted by 10 different mutual friends.

[via AllFacebook]

Twitter search is a big business these days. Thanks to search partnerships with Google and Microsoft, Twitter is profitable for the first time ever. That doesn't mean Twitter search is any good, though.

For example, what if you wanted to limit a search to the streams of people you follow? Search.twitter.com can't do it, but a site called Flocking.me can.

Searching only within your friends' tweets is cool, but it's not always going to beat searching all of Twitter, especially when it comes to breaking news. On the other hand, Flocking.me shows trending topics for you friends, which are very likely to be more interesting to you than the general - and generally asinine - trending topics. Flocking results also update automatically in real time, which makes it useful for following new developments.

Although Flocking.me is a great idea for a site, be careful when you set up your account for the first time. I've noticed quite a few people accidentally auto-tweeting an advertisement. Make sure you uncheck that box if you don't want to spam your followers.

[via Lifehacker]

Looks like Seesmic is still trying to position itself as the Twitter client that does it all. Loic LeMeur and Co.'s most recent move -buying Ping.fm - will enable Seesmic users to cross-post status updates to 50 different social networks at once. Ping.fm has half a million registered users who post hundreds of thousands of updates a day via the service.

Ping.fm will be fully integrated into Seesmic's various apps later this month, allowing Seesmic users to instantly post to the networks of their choice. Ping's SMS, chat and email functions will also become part of Seesmic, and users will be able to set up triggers to automatically post certain updates to specific networks.

Not only has Seesmic bought Ping.fm's software, it's also brought on Ping's team of developers. If anyone can help Seesmic become the all-in-one social networking hub Loic seems to be after, it's the guys who perfected the scorched-earth approach to telling the world what you had for lunch.

[via Mashable]

Whilst you can check in online using Foursquare's mobile website, the folks at Foursquare have been gradually rolling out more native applications after launching with just an iPhone app. On top of the existing iPhone, Android and beta Blackberry applications out there, the new webOS app has just been made available for Pre and Pixi users to use.

Though the application is available as part of the webOS App Catalogue, it's currently still in beta. As such there are a couple of unfinished areas to the app - including the leaderboards for each Foursquare city.

However, if you simply have to check into it at the gym, coffee shop or elsewhere on your Pre, be sure to have a look at our gallery after the break and visit the App Catalogue to download the beta!

Earlier this month, Jay mentioned Favit - a great iPhone application that lets you find comedy gems from Twitter, based on the Favstar service. Hot on the heels of Favit comes Tweeteorites - an iPhone application based on the web app of the same name. Whilst Favit is more about finding humour on Twitter, Tweeteorites takes a slightly different approach - focusing on showing you "favourite streams" of what your Twitter friends are favouriting.

The application also allows you to post to Twitter, easily view your Ego Boost: a list of your tweets that have been favourited - showing you the users who've favourited them - and even features push notifications when your tweets are favourited.

Tweeteorites is 99¢ on the App Store (and you'll want to visit the service's website and sign in with your Twitier account so that your favourite streams can be generated for use in the iPhone app).

Over the last year, I've almost entirely abandoned browser bookmarks - instead switching to Instapaper: the service that lets you save webpages for reading later, whether in the browser or via the service's handy iPhone app. In the run up to Christmas, whilst I was busy running around doing some last minute Christmas shopping, the Instapaper website received a slick update: in addition to a new look there's also a brand-new section on your homepage to show you things you might like to read.

It's worth noting that the content recommendation isn't based on your saved items right now, and isn't as complete as the content from the Instapaper-powered Give Me Something to Read however it's a nice addition to your dashboard if you're visiting the new Instapaper website and looking for something to, er, read.

You never forget your first. Well, okay, maybe sometimes you do. I don't think many people could tell you who their very first Twitter follower was, but a new service called FirstFollower can. Put in your username, and it will show you the username of the first person who ever started following you. It's the inverse of MyFirstFollow, which shows you the first person you followed who you still follow today.

When I saw FirstFollower, I got a bit curious about Download Squad's most loyal Twitter fan, so I put our @downloadsquad account into the system. Meet @swirlee, our first follower! Actually, he's Jordan Running, who served as Download Squad's lead blogger until Grant Robertson took the reins in February 2007. I guess we can't really give a prize to the guy who set up our account in the first place, so ... can someone start SecondFollower.com?

Maybe your first follower is weirder than ours. Got any good stories? Post them in the comments!

Twitter's foray into geolocation just got a lot more serious with the company's acquisition of Mixer Labs, creators of GeoAPI.

GeoAPI allows developers to add geolocation features to their apps, and now it's going to help Twitter advance its location-based capabilities. This is good news for developers of third-party Twitter apps, too, because the new API will enable them to use location data in new ways.

Twitter is pretty vague about what improvements GeoAPI will bring to the table, but it's clear that they're pushing for users to geotag their tweets. I suspect that part of GeoAPI's role will be to make geotagging as easy as possible for Twitter's userbase to adopt. As Twitter's Ev Williams says in his blog post on the subject, "twittering "Earthquake!" alone is not as informative as "Earthquake!" coupled with your current location.

Twitter developers get new geolocation tools to play with, users get new features, and Twitter gets even more data that it can potentially analyze and sell. Meanwhile, the Mixer Labs team gets hired on at Twitter.

Sounds like a win-win-win-win situation to me.