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Tag: tweets

  • Here’s the Most Annoying Tweet That Exists, Now That Twitter Supports Line Breaks

    As you probably know, Twitter just started allowing line breaks inside tweets on the web this week. Before, users could only experience fragmented tweets on mobile.

    This new functionality is particularly useful in three scenarios. Only three, ok? First, it allows users to tweet poetry in the line-by-line format in which in was meant to be seen. Haikus, anyone?

    Next, it allows advertisers to make their promoted tweets stand out in the crowd. If you’re going to pay to promote a tweet, you might as well make it take up as much space as possible, right?

    And lastly, it allows everyone to be super annoying. We wondered what the most useless, rage-inducing tweet looks like, now that users can insert line breaks. Turns out, the most terrible thing anyone can do now is create a tweet that takes up 70 lines (70 characters + 70 breaks = 140 total characters)

    May I present the worst thing you can do on Twitter:

    Ugh.

  • New Pope Chosen, @Pontifex Twitter Account Reactivated

    With a plume of white smoke, the papal conclave has just selected Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a cardinal from Argentina, as the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. He will be called Pope Francis and is the first ever pope to hail from the Americas.

    And the Vatican wasted no time in reviving the dormant @Pontifex Twitter account, which served as the official account for Pope Benedict during his final months in the papacy.

    On March 1st, the @Pontifex Twitter account went “sede vacante,” or “vacant seat” upon the official resignation of Benedict. All of his 39 tweets were archived and the Twitter account was put into hibernation – not deleted like some speculated would be the case.

    The last tweet ever sent out by pope Benedict read “Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives.”

    And here’s the first tweet from the Vatican as they welcome a new leader:

    According to the Vatican’s social communication head, it’ll be up to Pope Francis to determine whether he wants to continue to tweet his message to the account’s nearly 1.7 million followers.

    “Obviously we leave all decisions to the new man. But we would hope that he might continue to use @pontifex, which would maintain continuity,” said Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications Paul Tighe.

  • FTC Gets Specific on Guidelines for Third-Party Twitter Ads

    The Federal Trade Commission has just released some revisions of its decade-old online advertising guidelines, alliteratively titled “Dotcom Disclosures.” In it, the FTC lays out more specific rules for “space-constrained” ads, which you and me would probably just call Twitter ads.

    The new regulations add bits and pieces about all types of online ads – especially ads viewed from mobile devices. But it’s the new guidelines on “space-constrained” ads (most applicable form being ads inside tweets) that are really interesting.

    Of course, the FTC reminds us that all of the ad guidelines for all types of media apply to social media ads. Advertisers can’t hide the small print, and they can’t make it seem like the ad is not really an ad. But there are some specific guidelines for shorter ads, like the ones that appear on Twitter, that social media marketers need to know about.

    First off, the FTC says that you can link to all the fine print instead of having to say it all inside the 140-character limit. But if you do, the click-through page must contain all applicable information and it must get to the point pretty quickly:

    “When a space-constrained ad requires a disclosure, incorporate the disclosure into the ad whenever possible. However, when it is not possible to make a disclosure in a space-constrained ad, it may, under some circumstances, be acceptable to make the disclosure clearly and conspicuously on the page to which the ad links,” says the FTC.

    But about that link: the FTC warns that shortened links like “bit.ly/f56” or even shortened links with the world “disclose” in them like “bit.ly/f56/disclose[6]” could confuse consumers. Simply put, the link may direct the consumer to the product’s website, but they wouldn’t know exactly why. Plus, it may be hard to find the disclosure.

    Additionally, “space-constrained” advertisers run into another problem if their product is available to be purchased offline:

    “If a product promoted in a space-constrained ad can be bought in a brick and mortar store, consumers who do not click through to a linked website would miss any disclosure that was not in the space-constrained ad itself. If the disclosure needs to be in the ad itself but it does not fit, the ad should be modified so it does not require such a disclosure or, if that is not possible, that space-constrained ad should not be used.”

    Basically, the FTC is saying that if you can’t provide the fine print in your Twitter ad, and there’s a chance that a customer could buy your product offline without having seen the fine print, it’s best to simply forgo the Twitter ad altogether.

    Even if the ad tweet is able to achieve this, the advertiser still has to adequately disclose that the viewer is in fact looking at an ad. The FTC suggests that adding “Ad:” to the beginning of the message or “Sponsored” somewhere inside would be sufficient. But one popular Twitter trick, adding “#spon” to ad tweets, could not be enough according to the FTC.

    They say that it “might confuse consumers and make it less likely that they would understand that it is a disclosure.”

    Of course, we’re not talking about Twitter’s official ad product here. Sponsored tweets are clearly marked as ads by Twitter themselves. What we’re talking about are unofficial “third-party” ads that users are paid to post. Twitter already requires that these third-party ads properly disclose that they are ads. But the FTC has clearly decided that there needs to be some hyper-specific rules for these new space-constrained ads, which we’ll only see more and more of in the coming years.

  • Apple’s @iBookStore Account Retweets Salty Tweet

    In what is most likely a case of the ol’ personal vs. business Twitter account login switcheroo, Apple’s official iBookstore Twitter account retweeted and then quickly removed a tweet containing an obscene phrase.

    Early Monday morning, the official @iBookstore account retweeted a tweet that said “Let me suck a dick and tell you how much I love introspective novels.”

    The tweet, which was sent out to over 214,000 followers, was removed within minutes.

    But not before some Twitter users had the chance to catch it. Apple’s iBookstore account has not referenced the tweet since.

    The tweets was originally sent out by Alison Agosti, a writer at Upright Citizens Brigade who sports over 228,000 followers herself.

    Although the retweet mishap is pretty tame in the realm of NSFW social media mishaps, it just goes to show that employees who operate official business accounts need to make sure that they’re logged into their personal accounts before retweeting off-color posts.

    [9to5Mac, Image via Michael Steeber, Twitter]

  • Twitter Archives Now Available in 12 New Languages

    Twitter has just announced that they’ve expanded the reach of their archive service to 12 new languages: Dutch, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, & Spanish. Now, users using Twitter in those languages can download a full archive of all of their tweets.

    After making promises for a few month, Twitter finally began to allow English-speaking users to download browsable tweet archives back in December. These “Twitter Archives” contain all types of outgoing communications including tweets and retweets – from the very beginning. “Tweet Zero,” if you will.

    “We know lots of you would like to explore your Twitter past,” said Twitter last year.

    In order to obtain your Twitter Archive, just go to your setting, scroll to the bottom, and click the “request your archive” button. Twitter will warn you that it may take a little while to prepare, but when it’s done they will email you a link.

  • The Pope’s Twitter Account Goes ‘Sede Vacante’

    After the death or resignation of a pope, the Sancta Sedes (Holy See) becomes vacant. Today, the Twitter account of former pope Benedict reflects this reality and has gone “Sede Vacante,” or latin for vacant seat.

    As such, all of the former pope’s 39 tweets that he made since joining Twitter on December 12th, 2012 are gone. In the world of Twitter, @Pontifex hasn’t tweeted yet.

    Yes, all of pope Benedict XVI’s tweets have been removed from Twitter – but they aren’t completely wiped out. The Vatican has archived all 39 on their news site and you can read all of them in nine different languages there.

    The last tweet ever sent out by pope Benedict read “Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives.”

    Reports from last week based on Vatican radio claimed that the @Pontifex account would be shuttered following Benedict’s resignation. Yesterday, we learned that that wasn’t entirely accurate. Rather than be deleted, the account will lie dormant while the Conclave selects a new pope. At that time, it’ll be up to the new pope to decide whether or not he/she wants to continue the social media outreach.

    “Obviously we leave all decisions to the new man. But we would hope that he might continue to use @pontifex, which would maintain continuity,” said Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications Paul Tighe.

  • Lost Creator Damon Lindelof Goes on Epic Twitter Rant About Justin Bieber’s Spiky Yellow Hat

    Overnight, Lost co-creator Damon Linedelof discovered and then spent many hour tweeting about Justin Bieber’s spiky yellow hat (pictured both above and below, for maximum emphasis).

    Here is that epic rant, presented without further commentary.

    Lindelof warned his followers that he was going to spend the next 9 hours tweeting about Justin Bieber’s hat, so at least there’s that.

    And so he did:

    Eventually, he started feeling the wrath of the Belieber army on Twitter:

    Bieber has yet to respond on Twitter.

  • GetGlue Content Comes to Expanded Tweets

    GetGlue Content Comes to Expanded Tweets

    Social TV and movie-watching app GetGlue has joined the growing lists of apps and sites that have enabled Twitter Cards, meaning that GetGlue content will show up in Twitter’s Expanded Tweets.

    “Now, when you share and see GetGlue links in Tweets, you can get an enhanced visual experience. When users click ‘expand’ on a Tweet with a link to GetGlue, the shared content, such as a show description or movie information, is seen directly within the Tweet,” says GetGlue in a blog post.

    The Expanded Tweets not only feature a short description of the media in question, but also contain a thumbnail as well as a link to GetGlue’s Twitter account.

    Clicking on the Expanded Tweets takes you to the show or movie’s official GetGlue page, where you can browse the current conversation.

    GetGlue joins apps like Foursquare and sites like CNN and The New York Times in enabling Expanded Tweets content. Back in December, Instagram famously disabled its Twitter Cards integration, forcing users to click links and visit the Instagram site to view photos cross-posted to Twitter. Just a few days after that, Pinterest added support for Twitter Cards.

  • Watch the Elderly Read Comedian Rob Delaney’s Tweets

    With 765,000+ followers, Rob Delaney is one of the most popular, retweetable, and absurd comedians on Twitter. He’s a writer and sometimes actor, but it’s Twitter where he’s made his biggest mark as a comedian. Often cited as one of the funniest people on Twitter, he’s one of the main comedians showing that Twitter can be used as a serious comedic platform.

    Last night, he was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and it only made sense that Kimmel would do a segment that involved Delaney’s Twitter personality.

    Presenting “Old People Read Rob Delaney’s Tweets”:

  • Cardinals Barred from Twitter Use as They Select the New Pope

    Twitter-using Cardinals are going to have to shutter their devices when they all convene to select a new Pope to replace the outgoing Benedict XVI.

    The 117 Cardinals who will participate in the upcoming Papal Conclave will be barred from tweeting the moment they sit down to make the decision. Like a sequestered jury, the Cardinals will be prohibited from have access with the outside world – and this of course includes Twitter.

    According to the Catholic News Service, only 9 of the 117 “red-vested princes of the church who are eligible to vote for a new pope” operate Twitter accounts. They range in influence from small to large (in terms of followers). For instance, Spanish Cardinal Lluis Martinez Sistach of Barcelona has just over 2,000 followers.

    On the other hand Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who was named Archbishop of New York by Pope Benedict,has over 81,000 followers and is an very active Twitter presence.

    Twitter hit the Vatican in a big way in December, as Pope Benedict himself began tweeting his daily messages to millions of followers.

    Some Cardinals have already been tweeting about the situation and the upcoming vote.

    It looks like Cardinal Mahony and a few others will have to silence their Twitter-thumbs for at least a few days (maybe) in March.

    [Catholic News Service]

  • State of the Union: Obama’s Minimum Wage Bit Sees Biggest Twitter Spike

    Tuesday night’s State of the Union address contained 6,419 words and took just about an hour to deliver. 101 different lines in the speech were followed by applause, and President Obama mentioned defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney a total of twice throughout the address.

    Twitter has provided us with some more figures – total tweets and tweets per minute. And according to their calculations, 1.36 million tweets were registered from the start of President Obama’s SOTU to the conclusion of Senator Marco Rubio’s GOP response speech.

    And if you think that Twitter buzzed the most during the President’s impassioned section on gun violence, you would be wrong. The moment of the speech with the highest tweets per minute registered was when he was discussing the minimum wage and “ladders of opportunity.” That saw 24,000 TPM.

    The gun violence part came in second with 23,700 TPM (the “they deserve a vote” part).

    As far Rubio’s speech goes, Twitter says they they saw a spike when he had to reach a little bit out of his comfort zone to grab a bottle to take a sip of water.

    State of the Union tweets

    If you need something to compare the SOTU tweet total to, let’s look back at this month’s Super Bowl. Twitter said that they counted 24.1 total Super Bowl-related tweets – 5.5 million of which were simply about Beyonce.

  • Twitter’s Promoted Trends Now Cost $200,000 a Pop

    If you’re looking to promote your brand with one of Twitter’s most visible ad products, the Promoted Trend, you’re going to have to shell out a little bit more money than you did last year.

    Peter Kafka at All Things D reports that the asking price for a Promoted Trend has been raised, and now sits at $200,000 per trend. The previous price for an all-day Promoted Trend was $150,000, and the change occurred back in January.

    When Twitter first launched Promoted Trends back in 2010, they were only $80,000.

    Promoted Trends are one of Twitter’s major ad offerings, working alongside Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. Promoted Trends always take the top spot on the trends list and are seen on the web, mobile, and all Twitter apps. Clicking on a Promoted Trend prompts a search (it’s usually a hashtag), in which tweets about the trend are surfaced organically.

    Of course, Promoted Trends can generate tons of publicity for your business, site, or brand. But since the trends generate content organically, without any tweaking for the trend-buyer, things don’t always go as planned.

    Still, Twitter has been able to generate plenty of revenue through the Promoted Trends product, and this significant increase in the asking price suggests that Twitter is confident that brands will continue to pay a premium to direct the conversation on the site.

    There is usually only one Promoted Trend per day, and it runs all day. Twitter doesn’t always run a Promoted Trend, but they do on a large majority of days. If they were to run a promoted trend at this price point every day for the next year, it would generate $73 millon in revenues.

  • Here’s Who You Should Follow on Twitter on Grammy Night (According to Twitter)

    Twitter, who is always looking to give you plenty of reasons to second-screen it during bid television events, has just put up their suggestions for who to follow if you want to get a little extra insight into this year’s Grammy awards.

    Twitter is apparently music-driven, at least according to some choice stats. Did you know that music is the second-most discussed topic on Twitter in the U.S.? Or that 50% of all active users follow at least one musician? How about the fact that the top 4 most-followed people on Twitter (globally) are musicians?

    Here’s Twitter’s lists for who to follow if you want additional access and commentary this Sunday.

    First, people who will actually be there while they live-tweet:

    @TheGRAMMYs
    @CBS
    @CBSTweet
    @GRAMMYKen
    @PauleyP
    @TheEllenShow
    @hunterhayes
    @zacbrownband
    @emeliesande
    @Pharrell
    @SteveAoki
    @dianamadison
    @hollyscoop

    Next, the people who Twitter describes as “couch commentators”:

    @common
    @shinedown
    @chevelleinc
    @honorsociety
    @parachute
    @steveangello
    @puddleofmudd
    @sebby_g
    @iamjericho
    @tranquilmammoth
    @ash_costello
    @michaelvampire
    @TheRealBSmyth
    @mindlessbehavior
    @zedd

    If you want to be a part of the conversation, you can use the #grammys hashtag or a new one that they’re promoting this year, #TheWorldIsListening.

  • Explore Twitter in LOLCAT, If That’s Your Thing

    TWITTR HAS JUS ADDD NEW LANGUAGE, AN IZ TEH LANGUAGE OV TEH LOLCATS.

    LOOK:

    HEERS WUT IT LOOKZ LIEK IN DA SETTINGS:

    [If none of this made sense, Twitter has added lolcat as a new language. It’s available in your language settings. That’s all]

  • Twitter Now Lets You Unearth Old Tweets in Search

    Following an app and mobile update that streamlined search, Twitter has just made another tweak to its search function – on both mobile and web.

    Starting now, you can view old tweets in search results. Really old, in fact – months and months old.

    Before today, searches on Twitter would only display tweets that were about a week old or more recent.

    “As we roll this out over the coming days, the Tweets that you’ll see in search results represent a fairly small percentage of total Tweets ever sent. We look at a variety of types of engagement, like favorites, retweets and clicks, to determine which Tweets to show. We’ll be steadily increasing this percentage over time, and ultimately, aim to surface the best content for your query. For now, enjoy your trip down memory lane!” says Twitter.

    So you’re not going to get everything, but you’re going to get more. Any old tweets that you see must be engaging enough (either via retweets, favorites, or another form of popularity) to make the cut.

    You can try it out for yourself by searching a hashtag like #SpotTheShuttle. That search finds dozens upon dozens of tweets going all the way back to September 2012.

  • Jim Carrey’s History of Gun Control Tweets

    Jim Carrey’s History of Gun Control Tweets

    Jim Carrey went and pissed off the gun-loving right over the weekend with a couple of tweets referencing assault rifles, the Newton massacre, and soulless gun owners.

    Many anti-gun control activists have voiced their displeasure with the actor – and some seem to be surprised by the recent tweets.

    The fact is, Jim Carrey has used his Twitter account (which boasts nearly 10 million followers) to voice his opinions on guns in America for quite some time.

    Here’s what he said on Saturday:

    And then here’s his followup on Tuesday:

    As you may expect, these comments angered some on the right. Fox Nation said that “‘Dumb and Dumber’ doesn’t begin to cover this one” and Red Alert Politics called it a “careless remark…rooted in the shallow, parroted talking points so commonly espoused by liberal elites.”

    Turns out, Jim Carrey has a habit of tweeting about gun culture in America – so these tweets shouldn’t really surprise anyone.

    Back in December:

    And shortly after the shooting at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado:

  • State Dept. Fails to See the Problem with John Kerry Signing His Tweets “JK”

    You know how the official Twitter accounts of top government officials and the First Family make a point to let us know when it’s really them sending out the tweet, instead of their staff? For instance, a tweet sent from Barack Obama’s twitter account is only credited to the President himself when the tweet contains his initials at the end (-bo). It’s the same with Michelle Obama (-mo) and some other White House officials.

    Well, it appears that the State Department’s official Twitter account is going to use the same protocol with new Secretary of State John Kerry. All tweets from the Secretary will be signed as such:

    -JK

    Yep, JK. As in “Two Americans held hostage in North Korea – jk” or “Were getting ready to invade Iran – jk.”

    Twitter users have been quick to pick up on why this could lead to some confusion. How will we know when it’s Secretary Kerry making his own tweet or the State Department just kidding?

    UPDATE: In his first tweet from the State Department account, Secretary Kerry announces that over the weekend, he talked with British Foreign Secretary William Hague. JK I didn’t talk to anyone LOL.

  • Twitter’s Top Super Bowl Moments Had Nothing to Do with Football (Hint: Beyonce Killed It)

    Sure, anything that happens in the context of the Super Bowl has football to thank for its existence. The halftime show wouldn’t exist without a football game that required an intermission. All of those funny ads wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t an incredibly popular contest to plant people in front of their screens.

    Sure, people love and care about the football aspect of the Super Bowl. But last night, the top moments on Twitter didn’t deal with any aspect of the actual game.

    In fact, Beyonce’s halftime show was the most buzzed-about period during Sunday night’s broadcast. When the performance concluded, Twitter tracked 268,000 tweets per minute (TPM). When her former Destiny’s Child bandmates joined Beyonce on stage, TPM hit 257,000. And when they performed “Single Ladies,” TPM hit 252,500.

    When half the lights went out in the Superdome, TPM hit 231,500.

    By comparison, the top football-related moment on Twitter was Jacoby Jones’ 108-yard kickoff return TD, which generated a spike of 185,000 TPM.

    In all, Twitter says that they saw 24.1 million total Super Bowl-related tweets. 5.5 million of those had something to do with Beyonce.

    Those who opted to watch another, more cuddly game also generated a fair amount of chatter. According to Twitter, the Puppy Bowl produced 500,000 total tweets – or about 9% of what Beyonce saw during her halftime performance.

  • Kenyans Reading Celebrity Tweets Is More Depressing Than Anything

    People on YouTube are calling this clip racist. It’s not. But I can see how one might think that if they just kind of watched the first few seconds and didn’t really think about it.

    Depressing is really the right word here. Watching people in a poor, developing country read the meaningless, inane bullsh*t spewed out by first-world celebrities is sad. I don’t know any of these Kenyans, but I think I’m safe in assuming that the woman reading Paris Hilton’s tweet about swimming, jet skiing, and working on her tan in St. Tropez doesn’t know much about swimming, jet skiing, and tanning in St. Tropez.

    Remember that campaign that saw Haitians reading #FirstWorldProblems? Yeah, it kind of feels like that.

    It’s kind of funny sometimes, I guess. But it mostly serves as a stark comparison between the first and third world. I don’t know if Jimmy Kimmel meant for it to come off like that, but it does.

    If you want something with more funny and less sad but in the same spirit, check out Nick Offerman reading inane celeb tweets and celebs reading mean tweets about themselves.

  • Twitter Expands Tweet Pages to Include More Replies (and Replies to Replies)

    Twitter has just made an improvement to individual tweet pages that, to be honest, has been a long time coming. Now, users can scroll thorough every single reply made to a tweet, even if that tweet garnered dozens and dozens of replies.

    Before, any single tweet page would only contain a handful of replies – even if the tweet received tons more. Starting today, you can simply keep scrolling down to see all replies.

    Not only that, but you can also click each reply to see the replies to those original replies.

    As Twitter points out, this functionality is especially useful when a popular user with tons of followers posts a tweets that asks for replies. Take for instance this tweet from Jimmy Fallon, who asked users to tweet embarrassing admissions with a particular hashtag.

    You can now keep scrolling down to see more replies that you could before:

  • Tweet Ping Is a Beautiful Single-Purpose Site That Lets You Visualize Tweets in Real Time

    This is a cool single-purpose site alert.

    It’s called Tweet Ping, and it is a gorgeous visualization of all the tweets in the world, as they post in real time.

    It also has some cool tracking features at the bottom, like a live tweet counter for each continent and well as hashtag trackers. It allows you to do fun little unscientific experiments like calculate the number of tweets rolling in per minute, and extrapolate that into tweets per hour, day, and year. For instance, for one minute in time, it counted roughly 2,400 tweets worldwide. Do a little math and if the TPM stayed constant, that would total about 1.26 billion tweets per year. People sure are tweeting a lot.

    Check it out here.

    It’s not the first site to visualize tweets live, but it’s really well-done. It’s sort of mesmerizing, in a way, to watch the world light up, gradually, as people tweet.

    [http://franckernewein.com/ via reddit]