The End of Paid Tweets

The latest Twitter blog post, The Twitter Platform, discusses Twitter's long term strategy for their advertising business model. Buried within the middle of this post is a reference to paid tweets.

"...we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API. We are updating our Terms of Service to articulate clearly what we mean by this statement..."

It looks like the end to third-party sponsored tweets.  A wise man once said, "Never build a business model off another business' API.".

Twitter Filtering Out RT in Search Results

It looks as though Twitter has started to filter out Retweets (RT) from their search results. Now this algorithm change has only affected the "integrated search" algorithm according to @Charles (Twitter UX Supprt Team member).

What is "integrated search" exactly? It looks to reference the search box within your profile page. I tested the home page search box as well as search.twitter.com, but this functionality has not been implemented yet. @Charles goes on to further explain "RTs are usually a lot of noise in search results/ Excluding them makes the results cleaner and (in most cases) better.".

@RayBeckman posted, "Has @ Twitter Declared War on Traditional Retweets? #TR", about his disgust with the removal of RT from the search results. He points out that he is more upset that Twitter did it in a "..sneaky, slient, back-door way.". He has started a petition at http://twitition.com/2sri3 and urges Twitter users to use "TR" instead of "RT" to signify "Traditional Retweet". @RayBeckman also notes that "TR" has been used in the past to represent "Translated" tweets (which I did not know).

As of yet, the only official response has come from @Charles and the Twitter blog has made no reference to this change.

Library of Congress To Archive Drunk Tweets

The Library of Congress has partnered with Twitter to start archiving your drunken tweets as well as all others, starting from the first tweet in 2006. The Library of Congress announced the partnership on their blog yesterday. There are currently several billion tweets which account for about five terabytes of data. This will be on top of the current 167 terabytes that the Library of Congress has in digital assets. The Library of Congress noted that the data would not be made available for commercial use. After a six month delay, the data will be accessible "for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library, and preservation." One big sticking point concerned the use of URL shortners. We have seen numerous URL shortners come and go, what will happen to those tweets that use these services? The Library of Congress looks to be working on a solution to preserve the links, but a solution will not come for some time.

Twitter News Roundup

Official Twitter Apps - Twitter recently acquired  the parent company of the Tweetie app, release a new Blackberry Twitter app, and is developing a official app for the Google Android. All of these apps were referenced as "Official Twitter Apps", but Twitter quickly retracted the "official" label due to backlash from the developer community. This anouncement worried third-party developers that Twitter was going to buy or develop competing "official" apps. Read more  

Promoted Tweets - Twitter is going to place promoted tweets within their search results. These promoted tweets will allow companies to only promote their own tweets. Users will be able to to reply to them, retweet them, and add them as favorites. The promoted tweets will come with real-time analytics, which is one piece of the soon to be released business accounts. Here is a cool tool that displays the sentiment on the topic of promoted tweets.

Twitter Releases Data - During their Chirp conference, Twitter released some user data. Twitter reported 105 million users and is adding 300,000 users every day. They mentioned that they are currently handling over 600 million search queries each day, almost as many as Yahoo. Another interesting fact is that 75% of traffic comes from third-party applications. These third-party applications account for 60% of all tweets sent.

Twitter Places - A new app that allows users to check-in at different locations by attaching geo-location data to the tweets. The app will aggregate what people are saying, who has been their, as well as the opinion of the place. Some see this as a competitor to FourSquares and Gowalla.

User Streams - Twitter launched a developers network site at dev.twitter.com. With this new dev center, they are providing a new streaming API. This API will allow developers to have near-realtime access to various subsets of Twitter public statuses.

Twitter To Have Major Redesign

Doug Bowman @stop (I like this handle), the head of Twitter's design team released a sneek peek into an upcoming site redesign for the Twitter web interface. The picture shows some additional stats and a more rounded layout. See the Twitter redesign picture. 

Toolkits - Twitter Lists for Twitter Apps

The web site, OneForty.com, is a well known repository of the best Twitter tools and Twitter apps. They recently announced a new featured called Toolkits. Toolkits are a way to create lists of your favorite Twitter tools and apps. These Toolkits are community driven and allow their members to bundle the best tools and apps for particular business or social functions. OneForty.com has highlighted a couple of these lists.

• A Few Good Twitter Starter Apps for Nonprofits
• Essential Twitter Tools for the PR Professional
• Social Planning for Mobile
• Cancer Killing Chemo Toolkit

The idea is pretty neat, but I think that OneForty.com should have developed these Toolkits and had the community vote on the best tools or apps for each ToolKit theme. One can already see that these Toolkits can get pretty redundant and there will be a lot of competing Toolkits. OneForty.com does provide a list of  "trending" Toolkits to help sift through the clutter. Currently there are about 60 Toolkits already created in the last 48 hours. Be sure to check out my own Toolkit, Brent Nau's Essential Twitter Tools.

Stwickers - Personlaized Decals for Twitter

Stwickers is a small company that is providing personalized vinyl decals of your Twitter name. The Stwitcker comes in a variety of colors and sizes. They currently offer 1 inch, 2 inch, 3 inch, and 5 inch stickers. These Stwitckers could be a great promotional item to draw potential clients / customer to your Twitter profile. The site has a couple of examples of the Stwitckers on laptops and car windows. You could also place them on the window of your storefront as well. The price range for these Twitter stickers range from $7 to $20. You can follow them at @stwickers.

Co-Tweeting Being Pushed Live on Twitter

Co-tweeting is when you have more than one person monitor and respond within a single Twitter account. Recently there have been sightings that Twitter is starting to push a new co-tweeting feature that will identify the author of the Tweet. Twitter is now adding a by-line to the post. So instead of "5:52 PM Mar 3rd via web" you will see "5:52 PM Mar 3rd via web by jennadawn". Some say that this may be a premium feature that Twitter will be providing for their business accounts. By including this co-tweeting feature, business accounts will be able to have a more personal feel. Here is a example from the official @twitter account.

Obessed Twitter Users Check in Day and Night

Retrevo Gadgetology's latest blog post, Is Social Media a New Addiction?, reports some interesting findings from their latest study on how people spend their time on social networks. Some of the highlights of the report:

• 48% of respondents check/update Facebook or Twitter whenever they wake up during the night or as soon as they wake up
• 42% check/update Facebook or Twitter first thing in the morning
• 16% under the age of 25 check Facebook or Twitter as their source for news in the morning
• 15% over the of 25 check Facebook or Twitter as their source for news in the morning

Where Do People Go After They Visit Twitter.com?

Hitwise recently posted, Twitter and News and Media Websites, that took a look at where Twitters go after they visit Twitter.com. The report found that almost sixty percent of them visit another social network (appx. 30%) or an entertainment site (appx. 30%). This was followed by search engines (appx. 7%), lifestyle sites (appx. 5%), news and media sites (appx. 4.5%), portal frontpages (appx. 4%), and then shopping / classifieds, business and finance sites, and email service (all appx. 3.5%). The report also looked at "down stream" visits to media / news sites versus all other categories. Visits to media / news sites increased by 54%, while all other categories increased by 138%.