TwitsMag Canada

Twitter is the best thing going for communiqués of 140 characters or less, and third-party developers have created a sea of apps to keep conversations flowing when users are away from the PC. Twitter itself has crafted apps for a variety of mobile phones, including the Apple iPhone ($199), but left a space for third parties to thrive by not developing its own Apple iPad ($829 ) app. That has all changed, however, with the introduction of Twitter for iPad. The free app isn’t just the long-awaited first-party Twitter client—it’s one of the best Twitter tools available for reading feeds, surpassing TweetDeck for iPad (Free). Creating new messages can be a bewildering due to a cluttered composition screen, but if you’re a Twitter devotee it’s worth a look.

Layout and Navigation
After downloading the app and signing in with my credentials, I was presented with two columns. The left column has rectangular sections for Timeline (the main Twitter river), Mentions, Lists, Messages, Profile, and Search. Tapping any one of these options opens information in the right column. For example, when I tapped Mentions, the left column was populated with a list of the tweets in which I was called out. Swiping downward with a finger let me scroll through the long list of mentions; I went back 88 days before I gave up swiping. This could come in handy for digging up old tweets. Twitter for iPad supports multiple accounts, which you can switch between by tapping the appropriate username, but you can’t view multiple tweeter feeds in one unified field. Twitter for iPad keeps the same layout whether you’re hold the iPad horizontally or vertically, which I like. TweetDeck for iPad has two different layouts that take navigation and usability shortcuts depending on how the iPad is held.

While the overall reading layout is easy on the eyes, the composition screen most certainly isn’t. A compose icon located in the lower-left corner of the app opens a field in which you can pen a fresh tweet. I found the layout more than a little cluttered, as Twitter for iPad tries to display too many elements at once. The actual composition box takes up approximately 25 percent of the screen and is so cramped that it scrolls downward as you type. That’s pretty sad, given that Tweets max out at 140 characters. The rest of the screen is comprised of the virtual keyboard, left navigation column, and the Twitter feed. I adjusted to the layout over time, but I still see no need for all this distraction. When I’m in the mood to send a tweet, I want to do so with ease. Third-party apps such as TweekDeck for iPad are superior in this regard. Still, I liked that I could attach photos stored on the iPad to my messages, geotag my location, and shrink URLs.

Gestures
Twitter for iPad incorporates gestures, of course. Placing two fingers on a tweet and pulling it downward lets you view other messages in a conversation, eliminating the need to hunt for each thread entry. Placing two fingers together and spreading them apart opens a window that displays an abbreviated user profile. All in all, the gestures were simple to execute and made sense in context.

Panes and Media
Twitter for iPad app expands the functionality of Twitter’s iPhone client by introducing “Panes,” or fly-out panels that offer a spacious reading experience without blocking your feed. Tapping a tweet triggers a panel to slide in from the right side of the screen (overlapping a portion of the Twitter stream) that displays a user’s most recent update, bio, Web site link, number of followers, the number of people that person follows, and other typical Twitter information. Replies, Retweets, Direct Messages, and all the familiar functions are in place.

The app also lists a handful of similar Twitter users who might be worth following. Although Panes take up a sizable portion of on-screen real estate, it’s still quite easy to follow the main Twitter feed to see when updated content rolls in. I like that you can swipe the Pane off the screen, or swipe down in the main content area, to brush the panel away.

Opened links (Web pages, photos, video) appear in-line within a Pane. Multiple opened links result in multiple Panes, which live inside a singular Pane window (the original Tweet is positioned at the over the content area, and the URL is on display at the bottom). You can switch between Panes by tapping arrow buttons on the bottom, but I would’ve liked a gesture of some kind implemented as a navigation option. Unfortunately, the switching isn’t always snappy; at times it took panes approximately 5 to 10 seconds to load. That’s not a dealbreaker by any means, but in a world of need-it-now content, it can be a tad frustrating.

I read Major Nelson’s latest blog entry within a Pane without leaving the app, but I had to scroll vertically scroll to take in everything. Viewing the page in full screen mode cut down on the scrolling a bit, but the option to view in Safari made reading even more pleasurable. If you have an Instapaper account, you can save pages for reading later, even if you’re offline.

Should you tweet with Twitter for iPad?
Once (or if) you become accustomed to Twitter for iPad’s cramped composition box design, you’ll find it hard to go back to TweetDeck for iPad or any other iPad Twitter client. It’s not perfect, but it simply feels right in both horizontal and vertical orientations. It’s obvious that Twitter spent a good amount of time in creating this app, and it was well worth the wait.

Twitter for iPad

Twitter for iPad

Article Source: PC Magazine

Update: Twitter just fixed it. Tweets now display properly or not at all.

If you’re crafty, you can now publish a tweet longer than 140 characters. It’s not a feature, but rather a bug, so don’t expect it to be possible for much longer.

We first read about the bug in the Twitter Development Talk Google Group, where forum user Chris White posted a step-by-step of how to make it happen. He wrote that you go directly to the Twitter Share URL (http://twitter.com/share?url=) in the Firefox web browser and put your tweet’s text after “url=” — for example, “http://twitter.com/share?url=This is a test of the Twitter 140 character bug.”

The result is a tweet box with a shortened http://t.co/ link (that’s Twitter’s URL shortener). Then you can just click the tweet button and the full-length tweet will go out on your account. It will display properly on Twitter ’s website, but many third-party web, desktop or mobile apps will fail to show the whole message.

Twitter user TenhoMania published a tweet that included the entire first chapter of the book of Genesis from the Hebrew Bible — not a wholly original idea at this point, but special for its 3,000+ character length, at least. That and several other lengthy tweets have been retweeted numerous times.

Twitter employee John Adams posted a thanks to Chris White on Google Groups for exposing the bug, and said, “I filed a bug with our webclient team,” so a fix is sure to come in the very near future.

Article Source: Mashable

Twitter will reportedly soon get its own external sharing tool that will help both users and publishers share content on the popular social publishing platform.

Based on internal company documents, blog Mashable on Wednesday unearthed details on the “Tweet Button” program, which centers on an embeddable sharing button. When put on third-party sites, it will allow users to share whatever content they’re looking at, while it keeps track of how many times that particular URL has been retweeted by other Twitter users.

Sound familiar? If you look at the top of this post, you’ll see that such a feature has existed for the past year and a half thanks to Tweetmeme. Beyond offering up these buttons to publishers, Tweetmeme also has a Digg-like front page of the most popular content from the sites that use it. Last month the company also launched a pro version of its service for large publishers that want to re-brand the look and feel of the dialog that comes up when you click on these buttons, as well as offering up support for integrating multiple analytics tracking tools.

Twitter’s initial offering looks to be less expansive, though that could just be the beginning of something much larger. Tweetmeme charges up to $5,000 a year for publishers to use the paid versions of its service, so something competitive from Twitter later on down the line could make for an additional revenue stream.

Mashable thinks the service could be here as early as Thursday. In the meantime, the embed code for the new Tweet Button does not work on all Twitter user accounts.

Article Source: cnet news

Article Source: aceshowbiz

Angelina Jolie is officially joining Twitter, Us Magazine reported. However, fans have to wait a little longer to read messages posted on the account because the 35-year-old actress has locked her Twitter page and might start tweeting later this year.

On why Jolie, who has no followers and is not following anyone yet, protected her account, a source told the site, “Jolie had her people obtain the account for her so no one else could have that username.” The source further said, “There was actually someone else using @AngelinaJolie but Angelina requested the account suspended and took it over.”

The insider then mentioned that Jolie might only be active on the micro blogging site “later this year.” Though so, fans should not expect the girlfriend of Brad Pitt to dish out about her six children and romance life with the actor as the insider stated, “If she uses it, it will be for charity-related items or sharing links.”

Article Source: Financial Post

The popular micro-blogging social network known as Twitter is not actually a social network.

“That has been the myth since the beginning,” twitter co-founder Biz Stone told the World Innovation Forum in June. “We’re much more like an information network or a source of news.”

Indeed, more and more people are using Twitter to find live updates on current events faster than with other search engines. When the National Post covered the G20 protests in Toronto live, it was Twitter that informed our reporters of riots forming elsewhere while other media was still covering what appeared to be peaceful protests. When an earthquake shook central Canada in late June, Canadians turned chiefly to Twitter to share information.

Last June, Twitter was a primary source for news on the Iranian election as traditional media failed to gain access. Facebook has also been trying to become a social network-search engine hybrid, but those efforts have not been going very well for them.

So it should come as no surprise that since April 2009, search queries through twitter saw a 33% increase in total volume. While that statistic may not sound impressive by itself, consider Microsoft Corp’s Bing search engine saw its total number of searches increase by 22% last year. Subsequently, reputed pollster Nielsen declared Bing the fastest-growing search engine in the United States.

With twitter’s latest bump substantially higher, that title now belongs to them.

More than 800 million twitter search queries are processed every day, making for a monthly total of 24 billion searches. According to FastCompany, Microsoft Bing only hosts 4.1 billion searches per month and Yahoo search hosts 9.4 billion monthly queries. That means more searches are now processed by twitter every month than by two leading global search providers combined.

Good thing FP Tech Desk is also on twitter.

More than 150,000 people get a few chuckles every day from @BPGlobalPR on Twitter, a satirical take on BP and the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. But BP, the company behind what has been called the biggest ecological disaster in U.S. history, isn’t laughing.

BP recently asked that @BPGlobalPR clarify that it was not an official outlet for BP news, according to The New York Times. In response, @BPGlobalPR changed its Twitter bio to read, “We are not associated with Beyond Petroleum, the company that has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico for 51 days.”

It’s not hard to see why GBP wanted the rogue Twitter account to clarify it was a fake. The account paints a picture of an irresponsible and fun-loving company that has no regard whatsoever for its actions.>>>>>Continue Reading Here.

Article Source: Toronto Sun

Twitter quietly took one step closer to profitability this week when it said it would ban third-party paid tweets in order to better monitor its own proprietary advertising service.

Twitter was relatively late to the advertising party compared to its counterparts, such as Facebook, who embraced the model much earlier, said independent technology analyst Carmi Levy.

In April, the micro-blogging network unveiled the first phase of its Promoted Tweets service to disseminate information from businesses and organizations to wider user groups.

In a blog post Monday, the company said it would now move to block third-party ad tweets that undermine its Promoted Tweets.

Levy said Twitter is trying to eliminate spam-like activity on its services in an effort to prevent it from degenerating the way email has. Roughly 80% of all email messages are spam, he said.

Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief operating officer, has said the new ad system will become a key pillar in the company’s plans to turn its popular 140-character social networking service into a money-making operation.

The San Francisco-based company has been valued at over $1 billion and has more than 100 million users worldwide.

Twitter expects hundreds of advertisers to sign on to Promoted Tweets by the fourth quarter of this year. So far, participants include Starbucks, Bravo, Virgin America and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

But for the most part, Levy said, advertisers are taking a wait-and-see approach before they allocate any more of their marketing budgets to Twitter.

Twitter said it will forgo revenue on Promoted Tweets for the time being while it monitors the service’s impact.

“For this reason, aside from Promoted Tweets, we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API.” The company said third-party ad tweets aren’t necessarily looking to preserve the Twitter experience and at times seek to maximize ad click through rates even if it leads to a net decrease in Twitter use due to user dissatisfaction.

“They may optimize for either market share or short-term revenue at the expense of the long-term health of the Twitter platform.” Ad tweets should exist primarily in search functions and in timelines where metrics show they relate to users, it said.

Levy said third-party tweets are often automated and risk flooding user interfaces.

“What Twitter is trying to do is trying to maintain the integrity of the service by keeping in the hands of real people,” he said.

Attendees at Twitter’s Chirp Developer Conference last month said they needed more clarity about what content lines, if any, are drawn, Twitter said.

“We believe it is our responsibility to encourage creative product development and to curb practices that compromise innovation,” it said.

Twitter also plans to launch a commercial accounts business sometime this summer.

Article Source: thestar.com

VANCOUVER—Canada is a hit with Twitter followers of guidebook publisher Lonely Planet in the wake of the Vancouver Olympics, according to a poll conducted this month by the Canadian Tourism Commission.

Almost three-quarters of the 735 respondents felt Canada was No. 1 in the world among countries that “have it all,” including wilderness escapes, cosmopolitan cities and a friendly population, said a CTC news release.

The Vancouver Olympics appear to have delivered on their promise of marketing the entire country to the world, according to a survey

As well, just over 60 per cent felt that more people are now considering Canada for their next vacation as a result of the Olympics.

The unscientific poll of the international publisher’s Twitter audience was intended as a “temperature check post-Olympics,” said CTC publicist James Loftus.

The commission released the poll results Thursday along with picks by Canadian Olympic athletes for “gold medal” vacations.

Alexandre Bilodeau, winner in the 2010 men’s moguls, chose Victoria: “I went there recently for training and went cycling, road biking, surfing and played hockey all in the same place, which is great.”

Jon Montgomery, who won in skeleton, said his idea of a gold-medal itinerary is to go home to Russell, Manitoba.

“We love going to Riding Mountain National Park which is about an hour away from Russell and my folks have a cabin there.”

Speed skater and cycling star Clara Hughes said…>>> Continue Reading

A little over a month ago, Twitter acquired Tweetie. Which was not only the best Twitter client for iPhones, but maybe the best way to use Twitter, period-and an exceptionally impressive piece of software, period. The company said that Tweetie would be relaunched as Twitter for iPhone-and the first (free) version under that name is now available in Apple’s App Store. It’s not just a moniker switcheroo: Tweetie’s last version was Tweetie 2.0, and this is Twitter for iPhone 3.0.

Twitter cofounder Biz Stone’s blog post on the news made me slightly antsy. He doesn’t even mention Tweetie-as if this were a brand-new app-and spends most of his wordage emphasizing that you don’t even need to have a Twitter account to use Twitter for iPhone, and can sign up for one within the app. I was concerned that the wonderfully powerful Tweetie might have gotten dumbed down. >>>> Continue Reading