twitter posts

Heya, Download Squad readers! I'm back again with the most thrilling Twitter developments of the past week. No protesters at Twitter HQ this week, but the Big T did roll out some neat new features. I'll tell you about all that and more -- with no horrible bird puns, guaranteed! -- in this week's Twitter Tuesday.

Let's go!


What's a hovercard? Are we in the future? Do you need a helmet? Relax, guys: hovercards are Twitter's new way of showing you information about a user without making you load up that user's profile page. Now all you have to do is hover over the person's name, and their basic profile information will show up in a tooltip. Maybe it's not as cool as a hoverCAR, but it's definitely cooler than having to open up a bunch of new tabs.

Who do you think of when you want to search for what's happening now? Increasingly people are searching social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and Google has increased the speed of its index to offer more up-to-date real-time information. In the realm of technology, Techmeme has had a lock on live news for a few years now.

But there's a site I recently learned about that you might not be aware of that has a unique take on allowing you to search for and presenting news and current affairs called Silobreaker. Silobreaker's current list of categories includes Global Issues, Technology, Science, Business, Energy, and World. Clicking on any of these top-level categories presents a menu of 4 to 6 sub-categories that allow you to further refine your view.

Silobreaker pulls from news sources, blogs, and multimedia sites to put together a hub of related posts and articles for any given story. In the sidebar, they offer an In Focus section with direct links to the people or organizations being discussed, a Network graph that helps you to visualize how each of the publications or services that are used in a story's summary are related, a Blogs section listing relevant blog posts, and a self-explanatory Audio/Video section.

Silobreaker's approach to sourcing out relevant information and determining what's hot seems to be working, and the way they present the collected information is second to none. Watch for the service to grow by leaps and bounds.

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 you've ever written a blog post and wondered who's tweeting about it and linking to it on Twitter, wonder no more. A Google Chrome extension called Twitter Reactions can quickly show you the buzz on any webpage you visit. While its most obvious use is the Twitter equivalent of a vanity search, you don't have to use it on your own pages. Twitter Reactions can also reveal the conversation around news stories, downloads, businesses, and more.

The cool thing about an extension like this is that people don't have to put comments into some specific form (as with Google Sidewiki, for example). They can just Twitter about a page as normal, and Twitter Reactions will pick it up. It appears to decode shortlinks, too - at least from bit.ly - so even tweets without the page's full URL will be revealed. Twitter Reactions is definitely one of the most clever implementations I've seen of Twitter as a way to extend comments.

[via Lifehacker]

Seesmic is one of the most popular twitter clients for Google Android (there are also Seesmic apps for BlackBerry, Windows, Adobe AIR for Mac and Linux, and a web client). You can use the Android client to keep track of your Twitter timeline, replies, direct messages, and profile. And of course you can send updates. You can even include links and photos taken with your Android phone's camera.

Last night Seesmic rolled out version 1.2 for Android, which includes support for multiple Twitter accounts. Now whenever you post a message, you can select to have it sent to one or more Twitter accounts associated with the mobile app. You can also switch between accounts to see the latest updates from your contacts on each account.

Another new feature in Seesmic 1.2 for Android is the ability to remember your scroll position. In other words, if you've been scrolling down your timeline and new updates come in, they'll show up at the top of the page but you won't lose your place. You can disable this feature and always stay at the top if you prefer.

For a complete list of changes, check out the Seesmic blog. Seesmic 1.2 for Android is available as a free download from the Android Marketplace.

[via Mashable]

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.

A new mobile metrics company called GroundTruth has just posted a statistic on their blog showing that well over half (61%) of mobile online page views are to social networking sites. While anecdotally I've noticed that most of the people I see pecking away at their phone's keyboard are doing so on Facebook or Twitter, GroundTruth is including a number of lesser-known social networking sites in this number.

The point of GroundTruth's post seems to be that mobile users have distinctly different browsing habits than regular web users, but isn't that fairly obvious? In a mobile context people are just snacking on info, or posting a quick update. You typically don't do a lot of research on your mobile device.

Surely this information is interesting to advertisers, who need to find new and better ways to reach their target audiences. Mobile eyeballs are still eyeballs, so maybe this is a good sign for the longevity and financial viability of social networking sites.

[via Business Insider]

In a new post on Twitter's Status blog, Twitter points out that a sudden surge in followers on a few select accounts was due to a large number of insecure passwords being used by regular Twitter users. What's happening is that users are re-using passwords that they've used on other sites, and some of those other sites turn out to have not been secure.

That's the thing; as soon as any of the sites you log in to gets compromised, the email address or username and password associated with it can be tried by the bad guy on various other services. Since most people re-use passwords, there's a high likelihood that they will gain access to your account. From there, who knows what kind of damage they might cause. If you're lucky, you'll notice something's amiss.

This should be a wake-up call for all users who use the exact same password, or a predictable variant at each site they log in to. If you haven't already, right now is as good a time as will ever be to make sure you're using unique passwords for all of your online services. You never know when one of them might get compromised.

Welcome to Twitter Tuesday! Every week, I'll bring you the latest in new Twitter clients and services, sprinkled with a healthy dose of news and rumors. Twitter Tuesday - please, don't call it Twuesday - follows in the footsteps of Download Squad's other illustrious weekly roundups, Chrome Corner and Firefox Friday Five.

Let's jump right in and talk about what's happening on Twitter this week:

There's a new Android Twitter client in town: Handmark's Tweetcaster. It boasts push notifications, support for multiple accounts, lists, and retweets. There's even built-in URL shortening. The customizable UI candy looks pretty decent, too. Could this be the best Twitter client for Android? Check out the free, ad-supported version or the $4.99 pro version and decide for yourself.

One caveat, though: Tweetcaster's free version makes you send out an annoying tweet about the app when you first launch it. I think that's poor form on Handmark's part, and I'd recommend testing the app on a dummy account to avoid spamming your followers.

Speaking of followers: Download Squad's own Jason Clarke explained why your twitter followers aren't as valuable as you might think. How much would you pay for each of them? Jason Calacanis tried to buy a million at 25 cents a pop, and you can buy followers on eBay for a penny a piece. Do you think that would be worth the cost?

How do you determine what something is worth? Generally speaking, the answer is that something is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. This comes up when trying to evaluate the value of companies, but it can also come up when trying to evaluate the value of something that is conceptually new. For example, years ago companies popped up that created an economy around the hyperlink. Today some people are trying commoditize Twitter followers.

As Techcrunch points out, a year ago Jason Calacanis offered $250,000 to Twitter to include him on their suggested user list, which at the time would likely have netted him about a million followers. That offer placed the value of a Twitter follower at about 25 cents.

Today, you can purchase Twitter followers on eBay Buy-It-Now listings for less than half a cent. That puts Jason's valuation last year at 50 times the current value.

Of course, the problem is that just like hyperlinks, no two twitter followers have the same value. The followers you can get from eBay listings are likely either automated bots, or followers created by follower farms driven by cheap laborers in China. And Jason's desire to acquire followers from the suggested user list would have resulted in similar low-value followers.

Of course what makes a Twitter follower valuable is engagement. If you have something to say, then you want your followers to actually be listening. On the other hand, if you just want to seem impressive with a big number of followers beside your name, I guess it's not that expensive to do these days.

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]

You're probably aware of the insurance company Geico due to their ubiquitous quirky TV commercials featuring the Geico gecko. Some of their commercials are actually pretty funny, which I think is a good way to go about advertising.

Now the company has added a page to their website where you can download audio clips from their commercials as ringtones. This seems like a blatant attempt to "go viral" and have people passing around Geico's URL on Twitter and Facebook. While there's nothing wrong with the strategy, at some point making such obvious efforts to take advantage of social networking will likely backfire and garner disdain instead of positive word of mouth.

So that leads me to this question: do you think campaigns like Geico's page offering free ringtones are fun and make the company seem more hip, or do you think people feel like it's an obvious attempt to manipulate their feelings towards the company?

Personally, I'm in the latter camp, but I'm still going to install the Boss's Ringtone on my phone. It's pretty funny.

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]

Don't you just love it when you find a way to make something good even better? Remember the Milk is a fantastic online task management application, and here are a couple of browser extensions that make it even better if you're using Firefox or Chrome.

Both of these extensions have existed in some form in Firefox for a while, but they have both recently been released for Chrome, and they're worth investigating for either platform if you haven't already.

A Bit Better RTM

Remember the Milk's primary view is through its web app (though you can access it via email, mobile, Twitter, iPhone... the list goes on and on), and unfortunately the web app leaves a little to be desired. The layout is mostly fine, but the biggest problem I have with the site is the use of tabs across the top for your lists instead of a simple list down the side.

Heavy RTM users find they can easily have 20 or 30 lists, particularly when you include smart lists, and the tab metaphor does not scale well. A Bit Better RTM (Chrome / Firefox) solves this problem by changing the layout exactly as I described, adding the ability to reorder your lists, and adding some nice keyboard shortcuts for navigating your lists that match up well with the keyboard shortcuts you know from Gmail and Google Reader.

If you happen to follow Mac indie software development, you've probably heard of Craig Hockenberry, the developer behind Twitterrific. Hockenberry is known for an online persona he sometimes takes on Twitter, where he types in all capitals. This persona is sometimes known as the CHOCKLOCK, and has resulted in people that are "in the know" referring to CapsLock as CHOCKLOCK.

All of that is background to explain why the utility I'm about to tell you about is called CHOCKSEE. CHOCKSEE is a Mac utility that will show you a pretty floating bezel on the screen if you happen to bump the CapsLock key, much like what you see on a Mac if you hit the Eject key.

And that's all that it does. Cute? Definitely. Useful? Kinda, sorta. I mean, there's already a visual indicator that your CapsLock key is on: ALL YOUR TEXT IS IN UPPERCASE LETTERS.