microblog

Biz Stone, co-founder of microblogging service Twitter, sent out an e-mail to the site's members on Monday night. The take-home point: They're hiring.

"We're hoping to hire for a bunch of new positions," the e-mail read. "If you or someone you know wants to work at a small company with a bright future then by all means, check out our jobs page."

Twitter's jobs page doesn't give any specifics. But putting out a big "we're hiring" e-mail is an important message for a small start-up that's high … Read more

When we heard that pop singer Britney Spears was reinventing herself, we didn't know it involved a Twitter account.

But it's true--go to the newly revamped BritneySpears.com, and check it out. You can "Friend Britney" not only on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and Britney's own "VIP" social network, but also Twitter. For obvious reasons, it's not actually Spears doing the Twittering. But you can still get updates like "OMG!! 7 hours until Womanizer premieres!!!!!!!" ("Womanizer" is Spears' latest hit single) and "Hey paparazzi...Rolling Stone cover rumors? … Read more

Twitter executives Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams are switching places.

According to a post on the microblogging service's official blog, co-founder Williams will resume the helm of CEO from Dorsey, who will take over Williams' position as chairman of the board.

"We're entering a new phase now and there are new kinds of challenges ahead. Healthy companies acknowledge the need for change even during the best of times," Williams wrote in the blog post. "As Twitter grows both internally and externally, we took a good look at our path forward and saw the need for … Read more

Earlier this summer, just as Twitter started to really pick up steam, the microblogging service began to have major stability problems.

The more users who signed up, the more the site seemed to be down, and it became nearly as commonplace to see the so-called "fail whale"--signifying that a desired operation wouldn't go through--as it was to have the service work properly.

For countless users, this was extremely frustrating, as Twitter had become the live conversation medium of choice for many early-adopters. And into this vacuum jumped a series of other microblogging services, each trying to … Read more

Now live, from the team behind Twitter: a site for tracking "tweets" pertaining to the fast-approaching U.S. presidential elections. Enter an election-related post on the page and it will appear in the continually-updating feed, which also aggregates other Twitter posts that contain election-related terms like the candidates' names.

In July, Twitter announced that it had acquired Summize, a popular search tool based on the Twitter application program interface (API). Now called Twitter Search, the Summize technology appears to be behind the filters on the election site.

If the 2004 elections hailed the debut of bloggers and the … Read more

Current, the edgy news and culture channel co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, has come up with a new way to broadcast the presidential debates: show Twitter commentary on what people are saying.

Through an official partnership with the microblogging service, Current will broadcast "Hack the Debate," which will live-stream on Current.com as well as air on the network. Twitter updates, or "tweets," will be shown in real time for all four debates (three with the presidential candidates and one with the vice presidential candidates), which begin on September 26. It makes a whole … Read more

There's been a lot of chatter this week about the importance (or unimportance) of PR in Web 2.0. My take on it is that unsolicited pitches can be just as fun as things I discover on my own, including this Spanish start-up called Poukker, which e-mailed to let us know about its launch.

It's a sister service to poker site Pacopoker.com, and is an unadulterated copy of Twitter. It uses fish instead of birds as a mascot and, according to the loose documentation, it was meant to be a place where poker players could announce their … Read more

European users of Twitter can no longer receive text message updates on their cell phones, in a temporary move designed to keep the start-up's telecom bills down.

Twitterers can still use its U.K. number, +44 762 480 1423, to send updates to the site. But that number will no longer deliver text-message updates back to users, and recommends that they use the Twitter mobile site or a third-party client like TwitterBerry, Twitterrific, TwitterMail, or Cellity.

"When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to ten followers, you aren't charged ten times--that's because … Read more

Did you know that you can only follow 2,000 people on Twitter--unless there are at least 2,000 people who have opted to follow you?

This was one of the measures that the microblogging service formally announced Thursday as part of a new system to cut down on spam. The company acknowledged it only obliquely, but bloggers like David Risley picked up on the news and spread the word.

Twitter spam accounts are known for adding thousands of followers and then hoping that some of the unwitting Twitter users will follow the spam account in return--most don't, … Read more