Webware

A look at the Zune HD Twitter app in action.

(Credit: Screenshot by Donald Bell/CNET)

It has only been available for a day, but already the Zune HD's Twitter app is being updated after it was criticized by users for automatically abbreviating explicit words in users' tweets. It doesn't even give them the option of determining when or which words should be censored.

As you might expect, the Web is overflowing with unhappy users. Commenters on the Slashdot entry discussing the censors were up in arms over the feature. Quite a few of those folks echoed "rocket97's" comments, who said that the "[censors] should be an option, not a requirement." Others took the opportunity to (you guessed it) censor curse words within the comments to voice their protest.

They might have a point. Twitter itself doesn't censor any tweets that contain curse words. Even Twitter clients like TweetDeck don't censor tweets or direct messages from Twitter users.

It didn't take long for Microsoft to respond. After seeing that users were having issues with the application, Microsoft admitted that the app does indeed censor explicit tweets. It also said in an e-mailed statement to CNET News that it plans to rectify the situation soon.

"The recently released Twitter for Zune HD application has been abbreviating some explicit words in tweets when viewed on the device," a Microsoft spokesperson admitted to CNET News. "However, these explicit words do appear in their full text on the Twitter site or on any other Twitter client. We have identified the issue and are taking steps to update the application as soon as possible to ensure Twitter for Zune HD users are able to view tweets in their original state."

If you're interested in learning more about the Zune HD Twitter app, you can check out our hands-on by clicking here.

Iran's elections topped Twitter's list of most popular topics of 2009, according to the microblogging site.

"Among all the keywords, hashtags, and phrases that proliferated throughout the year, one topic surfaced repeatedly," the company wrote in a blog post Tuesday. "Twitter users found the Iranian elections the most engaging topic of the year. The terms #iranelection, Iran and Tehran were all in the top-21 of Trending Topics, and #iranelection finished in a close second behind the regular weekly favorite #musicmonday."

The fact that Iran's elections rose to the top on Twitter is noteworthy because Twitter itself became a tool for organizing post-election demonstrations in Iran.

In the category of top news topics on Twitter, items related to the Iranian elections and swine flu took five of the top six spots for the year. They were followed by Gaza, AIG, and President Obama's inauguration.

A look at the top trending topics of 2009 on Twitter.

(Credit: Twitter)

Among the most-discussed people of the year, Michael Jackson took the top spot. He was followed by singing sensations Susan Boyle and Adam Lambert, respectively. Kobe Bryant, Chris Brown, Chuck Norris, Joe Wilson, Tiger Woods, Christian Bale, and Alex Rodriguez rounded out the top 10 most-discussed people of the year on Twitter.

"Harry Potter" was the most engaging film of the year for Twitter users, followed by "New Moon," "District 9," "Paranormal Activity," and "Star Trek."

"American Idol" was the top television show on Twitter, followed by "Glee," the "Teen Choice Awards," "Saturday Night Live," and "Dollhouse."

On the tech side, it was Google Wave that engaged the most Twitter users, followed by Snow Leopard, Tweetdeck, Windows 7, and CES.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a hardcore gamer. I play games as often as possible. But for the most part, I play those games on consoles. But over the past couple days, I've started playing some Twitter-based games on the Web. Many of them aren't very good, but I found three titles that I really enjoyed playing.

Because of that, I've decided to share those with you in this roundup. Each title is offered on its own site, but requires your Twitter credentials to work. Whenever you achieve things within a game, it notifies your Twitter followers. The experience is fantastic. Let's check them out.

Twitter-based gaming

140 Mafia: If you're a fan of "The Godfather," you might be attracted to 140 Mafia. Although it doesn't follow that movie closely, it does a great job of keeping you engaged in the title.

When you sign up for 140 Mafia, the game gives you the option of choosing what can be sent to your followers from the title and what cannot. I liked having that option. From there, you find out that you've been asked by "The Godfather" to start your own mafia crime family. You need to recruit other Twitter users into your family, while engaging in criminal activities to build your coffers and notoriety.

140 Mafia determines your effectiveness based on your attack ability, your energy, your ability to defend yourself, and a few other metrics. To build those up, you'll need to go on missions that involve illegal activities, like burglary or theft. The point of the game is to build a big, strong mafia family that you can control. It's no simple task and it will take a while. I should also note that the more followers you have, the greater the chances that you'll be able to succeed at this game, since a key component is to recruit other Twitter users.

Overall, 140 Mafia is a really fun game. It won't get your blood pumping like Grand Theft Auto, but it should help you pass the time.

140 Mafia allows you to create a mafia family and run it.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

One of the hottest use cases for Twitter, as you well know, is businesses communicating with their customers or potential customers. Up to this point, Twitter really has not introduced any new features to support these business users, but as a part of an initiative to roll out more business-specific features, Twitter on Monday introduced "Contributors." Contributors allows business accounts to designate other Twitter users, usually employees or PR, to tweet on their behalf. Twitter is currently testing this with "a limited subset of folks."

Twitter's new "Contributors" feature.

(Credit: Twitter Blog)

The screenshot above is what this new feature will look like, according to Twitter's blog. Tweets will still appear as coming from the business' Twitter account but will have a byline that credits the author of the tweet. This will help to put some more personal faces behind the generally faceless business Twitter accounts.

As far as we can tell, however, this will not be required for Twitter business accounts, so if you run a business that wants to keep its tweeters anonymous, you can still do that. Twitter does note that this feature is "not ready for prime time" yet, so the functionality could change around a little, but expect it to stay generally the same.

It's worth mentioning that there are a couple of business and power user-oriented Twitter apps out there right now, specifically CoTweet and HootSuite. This added Contributor functionality will be incorporated into Twitter's API, so these third-party apps should be able to support it as well. This new feature should play nicely with CoTweet and HootSuite's current offerings.

Up to this point, Twitter business accounts have had the same functionality as personal accounts. While it's not clear whether personal accounts will get the new Contributor feature, the release of this and the other business-oriented features that Twitter currently has in development might be a sign that the release of Twitter business accounts is imminent.

In August, Biz Stone said that Twitter would be offering business or "pro" accounts by the end of the year. Paid accounts for businesses has long been a rumored business model for Twitter and it looks like we are on the verge of seeing that come to fruition. While Twitter is running out of days in 2009, it appears that it is making some progress toward the eventual release of full-blown business accounts. Whether Contributors will be included in the paid offering is unknown, although some users might resent Twitter for charging for it after offering it for free initially.

Got a case of information overload? You're not alone.

A study released Wednesday from the University of California, San Diego, reports that the average American consumes a whopping 34GB of data and 100,000 words of information per day.

Over the course of 2008, Americans as a group gobbled up 3.6 zettabytes of data. (In case you missed the definition of "zettabyte" in your daily data binging, that's a million million gigabytes.) For all you visual learners out there, the researchers helpfully point out that 3.6 zettabytes is equal to the "information in thick paperback novels stacked seven feet high over the entire United States, including Alaska."

Between 1980 and 2008, the number of bytes consumed by Americans increased 350 percent. The average annual growth rate was calculated at 5.4 percent.

Here's how TV and the Internet stack up in the "How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers."

(Credit: University of California, San Diego)

Dubbed the How Much Information? project, the study measured data consumption both at home and away from home. It includes several information sources, "including going to the movies, listening to the radio, talking on the cell phone, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and reading the newspaper."

Besides bytes and words, the study also noted the number of hours spent consuming information.

In terms of time, traditional media still has a strong hold on the U.S. The study reported that "a large chunk of the average American's day is spent watching television." On average, 41 percent of an American's day is given over to watching television shows, viewing recorded TV, or watching DVDs.

Noncomputer sources, the study says, account for more than three-quarters of U.S. households' information time.

But if bytes are the standard by which American days are judged, it's the video game that takes the top prize. Researchers found that the average American consumes 18.5GB of gaming data per day, representing 67 percent of all bytes they consume daily.

"Games are almost universal, but most of the gaming bytes come from graphically intensive games on high-powered computers and consoles, which have the equivalent of special-purpose supercomputers from five years ago," report author Roger Bohn, director of the Global Information Industry Center at UC San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, said in a statement. "Games today generate their bytes inside the home, rather than having to transmit them over cables into the house, but gaming is increasingly moving online."

The study found that 16 percent of daily information consumption comes from the Internet. A staggering 79 percent of all American two-way communications is done through the Internet.

If you want to see what else UC San Diego found in its study, click here.

When Facebook Connect launched a little over a year ago, Facebook said it had big things planned for the service, which lets users log in to third-party sites with their Facebook credentials and bring their social identity with them. The numbers now seem to bear out those high hopes.

The social network said Wednesday that Facebook Connect is now available on more than 80,000 Web sites and is being used by more than 60 million people. Wow.

"Facebook was developed with the idea that friends make every experience better, and with Facebook Connect that same concept is extended off of Facebook so that you can view your News Feed and updates where and when you want," the company wrote in a blog post. "With just a few clicks on an external Web site, your Facebook content, privacy settings, and friends follow you to make your experience on that website more social and meaningful."

Perhaps Facebook Connect's best quality is ubiquity. The service is employed in several iPhone apps, it's available on sites like CBS.com (Disclosure: CBS.com is owned by CBS, which also owns CNET), as well as this site. Even Xbox 360 owners can use Facebook Connect.

But just where Facebook will be taking Connect in the future is unknown. The company didn't say in the blog post whether it had any plans to update the service. All it said was that "soon, connected experiences will extend to even more platforms, all with Facebook as the underlying technology."

Any guesses? Let's hear what you think in the comments below.

Twitter is working on a fix for a problem that has caused some of its users to receive tweets in their timelines that were meant for other parties, the company announced on its status page Wednesday.

The issue started earlier this week, when Twitter received some reports from users saying that tweets were cropping up in their timelines that didn't seem intended for them. Twitter asked for help from users on Tuesday on its Known Issues page. The company requested that users experiencing the tweet misdirection issue include their username, the "stranger's" username, and a link to the stranger's tweet.

A look at some of the issues users are having.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

The issue seems rather widespread. The post is littered with comments left by users that have been affected by the problem. Even those with protected accounts have received misdirected tweets.

For now, Twitter has yet to find a solution to the problem. The company wrote a quick entry on its status blog on Wednesday, saying "some users are seeing tweets (that aren't retweets) from users they do not follow." It pointed users to the Twitter issues page and said it is "working on fixing the underlying cause."

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

If you're experiencing the misdirected-tweet problem, you can let Twitter know here.

We'll update this space as we learn more.

Those who say that Twitter is nothing more than a place where people share inconsequential experiences in their lives might want to listen up. Dell told Bloomberg on Tuesday that it has earned an estimated $6.5 million in sales of PCs, accessories, and software, thanks to promotions on Twitter.

Dell's vice president for the company's online unit, Manish Mehta, told Bloomberg that over the past three months alone, the number of people who have started following Dell's tweets has risen 23 percent. The company's DellOutlet account, which is home to most of the vendor's sales announcements, currently has almost 1.5 million followers. But unlike some companies, Dell has made Twitter an integral part of its operation. Bloomberg reported that "more than 100 employees send out the tweets" to customers.

"It's a very vibrant channel for us and it's growing aggressively," Mehta told Bloomberg, referring to Twitter. "It's not just our reach and growth that has progressed, it's that it's happening globally."

Mehta told Bloomberg that its Twitter accounts are followed by people in 12 countries. Brazil users alone spent $800,000 in the past eight months, he said.

Facebook users are too willing to give out their personal information, security firm Sophos has found.

According to Sophos' Australian team, which conducted a study to see how likely Facebook users were to offer up personal information, 41 to 46 percent of the 100 people Sophos contacted "blindly accepted" friend requests from two fake Facebook users created by the security firm.

After becoming friends with Sophos, the security firm was able to access up to 89 percent of the users' full dates of birth, all of their e-mail addresses, where they went to school, and more. Half of all the users Sophos befriended displayed the town or suburb where they live. They even offered up information on family and friends.

Younger users were "more liberal" with their workplace or school information than older users. "Both groups were very liberal with their e-mail addresses and with their birthdays," the security firm wrote in a blog post Sunday announcing the results. "This is worrying because these details make an excellent starting point for scammers and social engineers."

The security firm added that "10 years ago, getting access to this sort of detail would probably have taken a con-artist or an identify thief several weeks, and have required the on-the-spot services of a private investigator. Sadly, these days, many social networkers are handing over their life story on a plate."

Sophos' concerns over the way Facebook users are keeping information private comes on the heels of a statement released last week by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg discussing why Facebook users need to use the privacy tools his company has created. On Sunday, Facebook also announced the formation of a safety advisory board, comprised of five Internet safety groups.