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Tag: tweets

  • Twitter Wants You to Email Tweets to Your Non-Twitter-Using Friends

    Twitter just gave users a whole new way to share their favorite tweets.

    Rolling out over the next few weeks, Twitter.com will feature an option that allows users to share a tweet by email, even to recipients that aren’t Twitter members.

    “[W]e’re introducing the ability to email a Tweet directly from twitter.com –– a feature that will be rolling out to everyone over the coming weeks. You can email a Tweet to anyone, whether they use Twitter or not, right from your Twitter stream or from the details view of any Tweet. Just click on the “More” icon next to the reply, retweet and favorite buttons in order to email a Tweet to anyone you know. You can add your own comment, and we’ll send an email with your comment and the Tweet together. Just like that,” says Twitter.

    What’s good for the user, in this case, is also good for Twitter. What better way to recruit more users than to have existing users reach them for you? Now, if a non-twitter-user might see a hilarious tweet in their email and think “hey, I really should check out that Twitter thing.” Twitter, for one, has never been shy about promoting their service via email.

    Email sharing isn’t the only recent announcement from Twitter. The company also unveiled a new version of their iOS and Android apps that improve upon the discover tab and the search function.

  • The Twitter Fiction Festival Is About to Start Choosing Participants

    Last month we told you about The Twitter Fiction Festival, the social media company’s foray into the world of experimental fiction.

    Today, they’ve announced the panel of judges and have also reminded possible participants that they only have a couple of days to submit their ideas.

    If you want to submit your idea for a new fiction experience that utilizes the Twitter platform, you must submit your idea to Twitter by Thursday, November 15th.

    Here is your just-announced panel of idea judges:

    Ben Marcus‘ most recent book is The Flame Alphabet. His stories have appeared in Harper’s, Conjunctions, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. He teaches at Columbia University.

    Emily Raboteau is the author of the critically acclaimed novel, The Professor’s Daughter, and the forthcoming Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora. Her fiction and essays have regularly appeared in the Best American series. Raboteau also teaches creative writing at City College, in Harlem.

    Lee Ellis (@lhe2103) is the Assistant Fiction Editor at The New Yorker. For the magazine he has edited Michael Ondaatje, Paul La Farge, and William Gibson, among others. He is the recipient of The Henfield Award at Columbia University, where he completed his MFA in fiction.

    Meg Waite Clayton (@megwclayton) is the nationally bestselling author of four novels: The Four Ms. Bradwells, The Wednesday Sisters, the Bellwether Prize finalist The Language of Light, and the forthcoming The Wednesday Daughters.

    Ryan Chapman (@chapmanchapman) is the marketing director for The Penguin Press. His recent campaigns have been for books like Zadie Smith’s NW, Nate Silver’s The Signal and The Noise, and Thomas Pynchon’s work in e-book format.

    Sean McDonald (@neverrockfila) is Executive Editor of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

    Teju Cole (@tejucole) is currently Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. His novel Open City won the PEN/Hemingway Award. “Small fates,” his Twitter storytelling project, has been featured in the New Yorker and other magazines.

    Yael Goldstein Love (@ygoldlove) is the Co-Founder and Editorial Director of Plympton, a publishing house devoted to serialized fiction. Her first novel, Overture (paperback title: The Passion of Tasha Darsky) was published by Doubleday in 2007. She graduated from Harvard University with an honors degree in Philosophy.

    What is Twitter looking for? Creativity, it seems. Of course, other authors have already experimented with flash fiction on Twitter, or tweeting out longer stories 140 characters at a time. Thinking of a brand new way to use Twitter to tell a story is probably what they’re looking for:

    “Tell us how you are going to explore content formats that already exist on Twitter — short story in Tweets, a Twitter chat, live-tweeting — or, even better, how you’ll create a new one. How will you work with our real-time global platform, where anyone can contribute to your story at any moment? The proposal must fit into the time window of our five day festival— but that means that a project could run for the length of the festival, or just for an hour,” said Twitter as they announced the project.

    The aforementioned panel will announce the official participants of the festival on November 19th. The festival itself will kick off on November 28th and run for five days.

  • Retweets Do Not Equal Clicks, According to Study

    Good news – your tweet exploded across the Twitterverse! Hundreds of people retweeted your latest article, how awesome is that! Although social media can drive plenty of traffic to your site and you should always be happy when your content goes viral – that magical “retweet” metric may be a little deceiving.

    They may be retweeting, but that doesn’t mean they’re clicking.

    HubSpot’s Dan Zarrella looked at 2.7 million tweets that contained links and found absolutely no correlation between retweets and clicks. And the click to retweet ratio was far from 1:1. He found that 16.12% of the tweets had more retweets than clicks on the link, and 14.64% of the retweeted tweets hade zero clicks.

    That means that a significant portion of Twitter users are retweeting your links without opening them up.

    Blame it on Twitter bots or blame it on real users. The point is this: just because your tweet received a lot of retweets, it doesn’t mean that people were actually visiting your site and checking out your content.

    Check out his full infographic below:

    [via All Twitter]

  • Freedom, Lindsay Lohan, and Abandonment Issues

    Twitter is a wonderful place for one-liners. To be funny on the site, you’ve got to be sharp and practice economy of language. You’ve only got 140 characters to make an impression.

    And what better way to wind-down the work day than with a selection of some of the day’s most entertaining tweets.

    Enjoy!

  • Alabama & Mississippi Win the Most-Racist-on-Twitter Award Surrounding the Election

    Twitter, you can be so great and so disappointing at the same time. It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that social media is a haven for imbeciles. So much hateful garbage is spewed out in 140-character snippets that it’s easy to just gloss over it. It’s so common that it feels like it’s not even worth it to stop and shake your head.

    Bottom line: we know that people are still racist. This study wanted to know where people are the most racist.

    Geo-coded data analysts Floating Sheep looked at the prevalance of racist tweets post-election, as compared with all other tweets in specific areas. What they found was that Mississippi and Alabama had the highest LQ (location quotient) for racist tweets with scores of 7.4 and 8.1, respectively.

    By comparison, the highest quotient among the rest of the 48 states was 3.6. Among states that received a score, Arizona had the lowest with a 0.2.

    Here’s the map:

    racist tweet map

    And here’s the science behind the racist tweets map:

    [W]e collected all the geocoded tweets from the last week (beginning November 1) with racist terms that also reference the election in order to understand how these everyday acts of explicit racism are spatially distributed. Given the nature of these search terms, we’ve buried the details at the bottom of this post in a footnote [1].

    Given our interest in the geography of information we wanted to see how this type of hate speech overlaid on physical space. To do this we aggregated the 395 hate tweets to the state level and then normalized them by comparing them to the total number of geocoded tweets coming out of that state in the same time period [2]. We used a location quotient inspired measure (LQ) that indicates each state’s share of election hate speech tweet relative to its total number of tweets.[3] A score of 1.0 indicates that a state has relatively the same number of hate speech tweets as its total number of tweets. Scores above 1.0 indicate that hate speech is more prevalent than all tweets, suggesting that the state’s “twitterspace” contains more racists post-election tweets than the norm.

    So, the higher the quotient, the more racist the tweet stream from that state.

    Floating Sheep is careful to add the disclaimer that they are looking at tweets, not users – so a small group of users could be responsible for a higher volume of racist tweets.

    If you’re wondering about the types of tweets that might be included in this type of study, a quick twitter search of “Obama” + a racially charged term will net some whoppers. Black president or not, blatant racism is alive and well in the Twittersphere. Just ask these walking, talking stains:

    These tweets come from California and Texas, states that didn’t even register that high on the scale. Post-racist society, indeed.

  • Man Caves, Florida, and Zombie Cucumbers

    Twitter is a wonderful place for one-liners. To be funny on the site, you’ve got to be sharp and practice economy of language. You’ve only got 140 characters to make an impression.

    And what better way to wind-down the work day than with a selection of some of the day’s most entertaining tweets.

    Enjoy!

  • Hot Dog! Look Who’s Back on Twitter (It’s Anthony Weiner)

    Back in June of 2011, and sitting U.S. Representative tweeted an inappropriate photo of his private area to thousands of followers. His name, as you probably recall, is Anthony Weiner. Weiner tweeted a pic of his wiener. The jokes wrote themselves – it was just too easy.

    Like most people caught in an incredibly embarrassing, possibly career-ending mess, Weiner lied and said that he was hacked. After the evidence became overwhelming that it was in fact his package, tweeted at his own discretion, the congressman admitted the error.

    “I tweeted a photograph of myself that I intended to send as direct message as part of a joke to a woman in Seattle. Once I realized I posted it to Twitter, I panicked, I took it down and said that I had been hacked. I then continued with that story to stick to that story which was a hugely regrettable mistake,” he said.

    A few days later, he resigned his postion. Weinergate, as it was lovingly called, came and went. In its wake was a destroyed political career and a very public lesson on the perils of social media.

    His Twitter account remained active, but silent for 17 months. Today, he broke his silence and tweeted for the first time since June of 2011. There are no words from the former House member, only a link to a YouTube video:

    The video raises awareness for the Rockaways district in New York, one of the most-ravaged areas in the path of Hurricane Sandy. The video says that the damage in the Rockaways is “extensive and under-reported.”

    He’s received some encouragement from his 68,000+ followers:

    Is Anthony Weiner dipping his toes back into the public dialogue, or simply using Twitter to spread awareness of a cause dear to him? What do you think?

  • Obama’s “Four More Years” Tweet Is the Most Popular Tweet in History

    Good morning, America. Last night you reelected the President. And although there will be no change in the White House for the next four years, there has been a shakeup inside the ranks of Twitter’s most popular tweets.

    Ladies and gentlemen, meet your new most popular tweet ever:

    As of 9 am ET on Wednesday, this tweet has over 626,000 retweets and over 212,000 favorites. But it only needed a few minutes to become the most retweeted tweet in Twitter history. Shortly after posting the tweet, Twitter’s @gov team informed the President that he had officially claimed another prize:

    In all, Twitter reports 31 million election-related tweets yesterday and a peak tweets-per-minute total of 327,452 – right as the networks began to call the race for President Obama.

  • Pitbulls, the Disney Channel, and the Election

    Twitter is a wonderful place for one-liners. To be funny on the site, you’ve got to be sharp and practice economy of language. You’ve only got 140 characters to make an impression.

    And what better way to wind-down the work day than with a selection of some of the day’s most entertaining tweets.

    Enjoy!

  • Starbucks, the Election, and Some Sex Marriage

    Twitter is a wonderful place for one-liners. To be funny on the site, you’ve got to be sharp and practice economy of language. You’ve only got 140 characters to make an impression.

    And what better way to wind-down the work day than with a selection of some of the day’s most entertaining tweets.

    Enjoy!

  • You Can Now Receive Twitter’s “Best-Of” Emails Daily, If That’s Something You’re Into

    Back in May, Twitter decided that weekly emails highlighting the “best of” content on the site would be a good way to promote more user engagement. The email digests showcase individual tweets from people users follow, as well as popular news stories and links across the site. The weekly recaps are kind of like Twitter’s “Discover” function, and oftentimes include tweets from people outside the user’s network, which allows them to expand their horizons across the site.

    Now, users can choose to receive those weekly digests daily.

    The revamped digests now include a link to “switch to daily delivery.” If Twitter truly wants to compete as a real-time news source, this is a step in the right direction.

    Here is the new email, complete with the link to switch to daily mailings (via TechCrunch):

    Twitter best of emails daily

    If you like receiving these weekly recaps, you’ll probably enjoy receiving them daily even more. That way, the tweets and stories will be much more timely and relevant. A week-old tweet is naturally a lot less useful than a couple of hours-old tweet.

    Twitter recently found another reason to send users email with the launch of “people you may know” mailings in September.

  • Twitter Now Shows You When It’s Yanked a Tweet for DMCA

    Twitter has just made a significant change in their privacy policy that they say will increase transparency across the site. Now, instead of removing tweets flagged with a DMCA copyright notice, they are simply “withholding” them.

    Twitter will normally respond to DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) requests that involve the “use of a copyrighted image as an profile photo, header photo, or background, allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted image uploaded through our photo hosting service, or Tweets containing links to allegedly infringing materials.”

    Once a takedown request has been filed, Twitter notifies the user and gives them the ability to file a counter-notice to dispute the copyright claim. None of this has changed. What has changed is how the rest of Twitter will see these particular tweets:

    “In an effort to be as transparent as possible regarding the removal or restriction of access to user-posted content, we clearly mark withheld Tweets and media to indicate to viewers when content has been withheld (examples below). We also send a copy of each DMCA notification and counter-notice that we process to Chilling Effects, where they are posted to a public-facing website (with your personal information removed),” says Twitter in its Help Center.

    That is a pretty big shift from how Twitter used to handle removed tweets. In the past, these tweets would just vanish without a trace. Now, even though the content of the tweet will be removed, users will at least be able to see that there was in fact a tweet there at some point and it fell victim to a copyright claim.

    Here’s how a tweet (with an infringing link) will look when withdrawn:

    And here’s the look for withdrawn tweets featuring media:

    Earlier this year, Twitter reported 4,410 DMCA takedown requests for 2011.

  • November, the NYC Marathon, and Queen Latifah

    Twitter is a wonderful place for one-liners. To be funny on the site, you’ve got to be sharp and practice economy of language. You’ve only got 140 characters to make an impression.

    And what better way to wind-down the work day than with a selection of some of the day’s most entertaining tweets.

    Enjoy!

  • Twitter: Over 20 Million Hurricane Sandy Tweets, Uptick in “Red Cross” and “Donate Blood”

    Twitter’s official Twitter account has tweeted out some interesting stats about October 27 through November 1st, or the Saturday through Thursday encompassing Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath.

    The big number: 20 million+. That’s the number of Sandy-related tweets that Twitter registered in that time frame. As you might expect, the terms “Hurricane” and “Sandy” were the most commonly used terms in those six days.

    By comparison, Twitter users only sent out just over 13 million during both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, combined.

    Twitter had its problems, with bad reporting and the subsequent viral spread of said bad reporting. But overall, Twitter served as a lifeline for many – a way to communicate that didn’t jam cellular bandwidth like a voice call would’ve.

    Here are some more stats from Twitter:

    [Lead Image via NASA]

  • Facebook Ads, No Shave November, and Glee

    Facebook Ads, No Shave November, and Glee

    Twitter is a wonderful place for one-liners. To be funny on the site, you’ve got to be sharp and practice economy of language. You’ve only got 140 characters to make an impression.

    And what better way to wind-down the work day than with a selection of some of the day’s most entertaining tweets.

    Enjoy!

  • Twitter’s New Interactive Map Shows Where Political Tweets Mattered the Most

    Back in August, Twitter launched their own Political Index (TPI) to track Twitter users’ general feelings about the Presidential candidates. The index is calculated using an algorithm that weighs the sentiment of tweets mentioning Obama or Romney as compared to hundreds of millions of tweets on various other topics. Whatever number pops out is a percentile score, showing that tweets about said candidate are more positive than X% of all tweets.

    For instance, President Obama’s TPI is 32, unchanged from yesterday. Mitt Romney’s TPI is 25, down 3 points from yesterday.

    Today, Twitter is unveiling another politically-themed analytics dashboard – this time in the form of a Political Engagement Map. Instead of looking at how everyone’s tweets reflect on the candidates like the TPI, this new interactive map looks at how the candidate’s tweets resonated with everyone.

    “Here’s how it works: Select Tweets, represented by a bar, from the left or right columns. Tweets are organized by engagement level, and the size of the bar indicates the level of engagement that Tweet received. Hovering over the bar previews the Tweet text, and clicking on it will show you the state by state engagement level. You can also search for specific terms to see Tweets from @BarackObama and @MittRomney about the topics that matter most to you,” says Twitter.

    As of now, the most engaged the population ever was with a single tweet was on September 6th:

    That tweet saw the highest engagement in Kansas, Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, District of Columbia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Connecticut, North Carolina, Nevada, and New Mexico. It saw the lowest in Idaho, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New Jersey.

    Of course, “engagement” on Twitter entails retweets, favorites, and replies and such. Engagement doesn’t necessarily equate to support, or even any sort of positive feedback.

    Once you’re done looking at the varying engagement levels of a single tweet across the states, you can re-filter the map to show “noteworthy reactions,” or places where the tweet was an outlier (meaning it saw a higher or lower engagement level than usual in that state). For Obama’s college tweet, the state of South Carolina showed a very noteworthy reaction.

    You can also click on each state to see the list of tweets that made the most noise there. The state view will also tell you which five political topics saw the most engagement in that state. For instance in Kentucky, gay rights tweets from Obama showed the most resonance. Among tweets coming from Mitt Romney, it was the topic of energy and the environment that saw the most buzz.

  • Polident, Halloween, and Donald Trump

    Polident, Halloween, and Donald Trump

    Twitter is a wonderful place for one-liners. To be funny on the site, you’ve got to be sharp and practice economy of language. You’ve only got 140 characters to make an impression.

    And what better way to wind-down the work day than with a selection of some of the day’s most entertaining tweets.

    Enjoy!

  • Words with Friends, McNuggets, and Sandy

    Words with Friends, McNuggets, and Sandy

    Twitter is a wonderful place for one-liners. To be funny on the site, you’ve got to be sharp and practice economy of language. You’ve only got 140 characters to make an impression.

    And what better way to wind-down the work day than with a selection of some of the day’s most entertaining tweets.

    Enjoy!

  • Frankenstorm, Quotation Marks, And Celebrity Tweets

    Twitter is a wonderful place for one-liners. To be funny on the site, you’ve got to be sharp and practice economy of language. You’ve only got 140 characters to make an impression.

    And what better way to wind-down the work day than with a selection of some of the day’s most entertaining tweets.

    Enjoy!

  • Taylor Swift, Tim Burton, And Wedding Videos

    Twitter is a wonderful place for one-liners. To be funny on the site, you’ve got to be sharp and practice economy of language. You’ve only got 140 characters to make an impression.

    And what better way to wind-down the work day than with a selection of some of the day’s most entertaining tweets.

    Enjoy!

  • Dutch Orchestra Wants to Play Your Tweeted Masterpieces

    What if you could take a few minutes to compose a short tune and see it played by a world-class orchestra? Well, wonder no longer – there’s a new project from Metropole Orkest. It’s called Tweetphony, and its goal is to get as many people as possible to make their own tweet-songs.

    The project will eventually culminate in the Dutch orchestra playing the best selections live during a 9-hour streaming concert this Friday, October 26th.

    All you have to do it head over to the Tweetphony site and compose your song. After you’re satisfied, record it and tweet it to the masses. The tweet will show up as a series of notes, as such:

    The Tweetphony site also allows you to listen to all of the creations from Twitter users. On Friday, the orchestra will pick some of the tweets to play live. You can watch the live concert here.

    According to the site, Tweetphony is designed to raise awareness for the orchestra, which is facing budget cuts.

    “Let the Metropole Orchestra play! That’s the message behind the Tweetphony. Worldwide we are labeled as one of the best orchestra’s in our genre but due to cuts in the subsidy of public broadcasting channels, our existence is threatened. Last December the government was willing to continue supporting the orchestra but this is a promise they did not keep. With the Tweetphony campaign, we once more want to put the orchestra in the spotlights.”

    So, head on over to the Tweetphony site and construct your 140-character masterpiece. Maybe you will have your work played by one of the best orchestras in the world. Wouldn’t that be cool?

    [via Mashable]