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Tag: tweets

  • Search Parties, iPad Mini, and Bayonets

    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!

    [Image Courtesy]

  • Twitter Replaces “Favorite” with “Like,” “Star” for Some Users

    Would you rather “like” a tweet than “favorite” it? What about the word “star?” Does that sound better than “favorite?” You should start thinking about which one you prefer, because you may have to complain to Twitter in the future. That’s because the social media service is reportedly testing out new terminology for their “favorite” feature for tweets.

    Spotted by The Next Web, some Twitter users are seeing the words “like” and “star” appear within tweets next to the “reply” and “retweet” buttons. Of course, those terms are replacing “favorite,” the term that Twitter has employed to allow users to save tweets for a few years now.

    Apparently, the test is pretty small and everyone here is still seeing “favorite.” TNW has a screencap of the new “like” test:

    There is some chatter about the test on the network:

    Like any social media company, Twitter tests plenty of features – most of which never really come to fruition. This small test could simply come and go.

    But if Twitter chooses to replace “favorite” with another word, it would be a pretty big change for users. A ‘”like” button would no doubt remind users of Facebook – which could be a good or bad thing, depending on the user. “Like” also connotes a more positive sentiment than “favorite,” as a user could favorite a tweet that they don’t agree with just to have it saved for reference.

    “Star” is even less definitive one way or the other. That word doesn’t really imply any positive or negative support, just that it has been starred for later.

    What do you think? Are you content with “favorite,” or would you like to see Twitter make a change?

  • Destiny’s Child, Lance Armstrong, and Bigger Bands

    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!

  • James Blunt Quitting Music Headline Draws Twitter Snark

    Having worked in a restaurant with a repeating musical track list during the height of James Blunt mania, I probably heard his hit song “You’re Beautiful” more than the average person. And that’s saying a lot, considering it was everywhere in 2005. Despite being voted one of the most annoying pop songs by Rolling Stone, the track had huge success on the charts and was certified 2x Platinum in the U.S. Say what you want about the song, but you can’t say that it wasn’t popular.

    I’ll refrain from comment.

    Today, James Blunt is in the news not for a new album but because he recently told The Daily Mail that he may be qutting music. Well, kind of.

    “I just want to take some time out for myself…I haven’t got any plans to do more songwriting.”

    Although the quotes hint to a break more than a curtain call, The Daily Mail slapped the story with the word “retire” and it set off a Twitter firestorm. Of course, complete accuracy and context means nothing on Twitter when it comes to pop culture rumors. And because of the network’s ability to take a story and run with it, with a complete disregard to its veracity, we get to reap the benefits in the form of funny tweets. And while this story has much more truth behind it than a celebrity death rumor, Twitter users seem sure that he’ll never pick up an instrument again.

    Twitter users aren’t being very beautiful to Blunt, to put it bluntly. Check out some of the best:

    The artist did post this cryptic Facebook update referencing the Mail article:

    (image)

    James Blunt3 hours ago

    The Mail on Sunday has reported that James Blunt has split up due to musical differences. Neither could be reached for comment due to recording commitments. Powered by socialditto(image)  837 likes ·  130 comments

    Oh well, all is fair in snark and Twitter.

  • Halloween, Vespas, and Wallets Full of Puppies

    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 Pulls Anti-Semitic Tweets After Pressure from French Groups

    Apparently, it’s censorship week at Twitter.

    Earlier this week, we told you that Twitter was under fire from French anti-discrimination groups over a series of unsavory tweets stemming from a particular hashtag. The groups accused Twitter of allowing a “competition of anti-semitic jokes” to exist on the site, after some users used the hashtag #unbonjuif to tweet inflammatory images and messages about the holocaust.

    #unbonjuif translates to “A Good Jew” in English. The groups threatened legal action if Twitter allowed the tweets to remain in circulation.

    Now, Twitter has complied, removing the offensive tweets associated with the hashtag. Another, anti-Muslim hashtag was also part of the wipe.

    “Twitter does not mediate content. If we are alerted to content that may be in violation of our terms of service, we will investigate each report and respond according to the policies and procedures outlined in our support pages,” said Twitter in a statement to the AP.

    Twitter’s terms do give them the right to remove any content it sees fit to remove and to comply with governmental requests.

    “We reserve the right at all times (but will not have an obligation) to remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services, to suspend or terminate users, and to reclaim usernames without liability to you. We also reserve the right to access, read, preserve, and disclose any information as we reasonably believe is necessary to (i) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, (ii) enforce the Terms, including investigation of potential violations hereof, (iii) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, (iv) respond to user support requests, or (v) protect the rights, property or safety of Twitter, its users and the public”

    The Twitter rules also state that users “may not use our service for any unlawful purposes or in furtherance of illegal activities. International users agree to comply with all local laws regarding online conduct and acceptable content.”

    Still, it’s unlikely that free speech advocates and many Twitter users will be happy about the removal of tweets because they were “offensive.” Still, French law outlaws all types of discrimination based on race, religion, etc.

    This decision is a little bit different from another one to censor tweets made this week. Yesterday, Twitter decided to block a neo-Nazi account inside Germany – and inside Germany only. That means that the account is still available to everyone else in the world. It marked the first time that Twitter had invoked the right to locally censor content, a right they gave themselves back in January of this year. In the case of these French tweets, they’ve simply been removed from the network altogether.

  • Twitter to Hold Its Own Fiction Festival, a “Virtual Storytelling Celebration”

    Twitter has changed a lot of things when it comes to how the world receives information. It’s most definitely turned journalism on its head by making everyone an amateur reporter, and it’s also affected the way people communicate in real life – 140 characters is a hard constraint to shake off.

    But fiction? Could Twitter become a place for great storytelling?

    Twitter thinks so. And to prove that, they have just announced the Twitter Fiction Festival. That contest will kick off on November 28th and run for five days.

    “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,” says Twitter in a blog post.

    Twitter obviously has a pretty expansive view of what constitutes “fiction” as far this contest goes. Some people have already experimented with Twitter as a fiction medium. Take for instance author Jennifer Egan, who tweeted her story “Black Box” 140 characters at a time back in May.

    Or what about The Guardian’s #140novel challenge, which saw authors take a stab at a 140-character story.

    It’s not just flash fiction that Twitter’s after. They even point to @MayorEmanuel, a parody account, as an example of Twitter fiction.

    If you want to participate and you think you have a good idea, you can submit it here. Twitter will announce the participants of the festival on November 19th.

  • Chris Hansen, the Heimlich, and Candidates’ Google History

    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!

  • Kale Smoothies, Cannabis, and Binders

    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 Under Fire in France Over Anti-Semitic Hashtag

    If you know Twitter, you know that there are plenty of racist, discriminatory, and downright unsavory tweets floating around. When you give millions of people the ability to say whatever they want with a few flicks of their thumbs, it’s bound to happen. Now, anti-racism groups in France are eyeing legal action against the social media company for an anti-semitic hashtag that has spawned some particularly nasty communications.

    The Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions have been joined by groups like MRAP and SOS Racisme is outrage over the hashtag #unbonjuif, which is French translates to “a good jew.” They accuse Twitter of allowing what them deem a huge “competition of anti-semitic jokes.”

    The outrage may prompt legal actions, according to the council.

    We are taking this extremely seriously,” said SOS Racisme director Guillaume Ayne. ”There is a deep-rooted anti-Semitism in France, and there is a very small step between racist words and racist acts.”

    The hashtag #unbonjuif has reportedly produced tweets featuring images from concentration camps, and other racially-charged statements like “a good jew is a dead jew.”

    A quick search of the tag on Twitter reveals what the groups are upset about, for example this tweet:

    This isn’t the first time that groups in France have gone after an internet property based on anti-semitic content. Back in June, Google battled with anti-discrimination groups over their autocomplete suggestions. The groups (including SOS Racisme) accused Google of “creating probably the greatest Jewish history file ever” by allowing their autocomplete results to associate many French public figures with the words “jew” or “jewish.” Although Google’s autocomplete results are the work of algorithms based on term popularity and are not hand selected by Google, the search giant eventually settled with the groups.

    [Israel National News via The Daily Caller]

    [Image Courtesy eclecticlibrarian, Flickr]

  • Second Presidential Debate Sees 7.2 Million Tweets

    Last night’s town hall debate saw the two Presidential candidates go at it for a little over an hour and a half on topics both foreign and domestic (mostly domestic). We’ve already told you how the Twittersphere reacted to one particular moment involving binders full of women, and now we have the official tweets statistics from Twitter themselves.

    According to the social media site, 7.2 million tweets concerning the debate were sent last night during its 90-minute duration. For comparison, last week’s Vice Presidential debate saw 3.5 million tweets and the first presidential debate saw over 10 million total tweets.

    Out of those tweets, most of them were about the economy (28%). 17% were about taxes and 16% were about foreign policy. At last week’s VP debate, foreign policy won the night with 26% of the total tweets.

    If you think Romney’s “binders” remark or one of various sparring matches between the candidates would have been the most-tweeted-about moment of the night, you’re wrong. Romney’s response to an audience member’s question on immigration actually won the night with 109,560 tweets per minute (TPM). Obama telling Romney that he’s “the last person to get tough on China” came in a close second with 108,619 TPM. Finally, Romney’s discussion on tax rates received 107,386 TPM.

    If you missed last night’s town hall debate, you can watch it in its entirety below:

  • Almond Butter, Beyonce, and Drinking Games

    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!

  • Rejected Debate Conditions, Your Mom, and Paranormal Activity

    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!

  • Spice Girls, the Debate, and Zumba Class

    Spice Girls, the Debate, and Zumba Class

    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!

  • Young, American, Women Dominate the Twitterverse

    Social media marketing firm Beevolve looked at over 36 million Twitter profiles and used their own software to analyze them to find out what Twitter users looks like across the globe. Using profile pics, tweets, names, and bios, they were able to determine that women ruled the Twitter world by 6 points.

    Based on their findings, if you picked a Twitter user at random, it would be a woman, aged 15-25, living in America. She has a little over 200 followers and has sent out just shy of 600 tweets. That’s your average Twitter user. But the study looked into some more interesting demographics behind just who makes up the Twitterverse.

    In terms of geography, we just told you that the majority fo users (51%) come from the United States. But the next most Twitter-happy region is the U.K., followed by Australia, Brazil, and Canada. Other than the U.K. (17%), no other country registers even 5% of the total Twitter population.

    When it comes to their level of interaction on the network, a Twitter user has about 208 followers on average. 6% of Twitter users have no followers. On average, a Twitter user follows around 102 people. 10% of Twitter users don’t follow anyone.

    Beevolve also looked at color preferences for Twitter backgrounds, an admittedly unique dataset. For girls, purple is the most common color used, followed by hot pink and brown. For the guy, it’s dark colors. “Shark,” a dark steel grey, commanded 36% of the profiles analyzed.

    Check out this word cloud of the most common words used on people’s bios:

    Finally, a majority of Twitter users access the service via iOS, almost 69% to 31% over Android. 77% of users access Twitter via the official Twitter app, if they use an app (32% tweet from the web).

    Of course, taking a bunch of different demographics and constructing the “average user” is not a perfect science. Plus, Beevolve acknowledges that 25% of users have never even tweeted. This either means that they are bots, duplicates, or simply users who prefer not to submit their own thoughts into the Twitterverse. But this is a fun look into who makes up the Twitterverse. So if you’re a marketer – here’s who you should target.

    [h/t WSJ]
    [Image courtesy Kalexanderson, Flickr]

  • The Great Pumpkin, Joe Biden, and Mini-Wheats

    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!

  • Forrest Gump, Maybelline, and Bugs Bunny

    Forrest Gump, Maybelline, and Bugs Bunny

    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 May Actually Spur People into Making Political Donations

    We already know that this year, social media is a bigger part of the election than ever before. During the Republican National Convention, 4 million tweets were generated about the event. That number more than doubled the amount of tweets sent globally on election day 2008 – concerning all topics. A week later, the Democratic National Convention saw over 9.5 million tweets generated. Last week’s Presidential debate saw more than 10 million tweets (it was the most tweeted event in the history of U.S. politics). Generally, people are more politically engaged on social media this year and candidates are trying harder to reach voters via the medium.

    Now, a new study from Twitter and data analytics firm Compete suggests that developing a Twitter strategy is not just about reaching people to change their minds or lock in a vote. Twitter interaction with voters can actually drive campaign donations in a meaningful way, according to the company.

    According to the study, simply being a Twitter user increases a person’s likelihood of visiting a campaign donation page, by 68%. But it’s exposure on Twitter that really ups the chances.

    “This likelihood increases when Twitter users are exposed to political Tweets either from political handles they follow, retweets by users they follow, Promoted Product campaigns by a political handle, or searches on political terms. Twitter users exposed to any of these kinds of political Tweets are almost twice as likely (97%) as other Twitter users to visit an online political donation page,” says Twitter in a blog post.

    Amount of exposure to political materials on Twitter also plays a big role in donation likelihood. A user exposed to political tweets, promoted tweets, or retweets on 3-7 successive days saw a 31% spike in their likelihood of visiting a donation page (on top of that of a single exposed user); if the user was exposed on 8+ straight days, that chance increased another 76%. Persistence is apparently the right course of action for campaigns – at least on social media.

    According to the study, these “lifts” in donation likelihood did not vary red to blue. Among users, party lines had no impact on the stats.

    Whether or not these Twitter users are actually making donations once they get to the campaign page is unknown. But getting them there is half the battle, right?

  • Pizza Hut, Jerry Sandusky, and Aerosmith

    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!

  • Columbus Day, Danny DeVito, And Finger Cancer

    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!

  • Steve Jobs, Creation Science, And Fur Babies

    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!