twitter

Twitter isn't broken, it just looks that way.

The company said today that people can now use line breaks in their tweets. The revelation has already spawned some hideous and absurdly elongated 140-character updates.

The information network fittingly announced the change with its own broken-line tweet in haiku form. The breaks in form are visible on the Web and in the company's mobile apps, though not in TweetDeck or third-party apps.

The addition is a rather unfortunate one for those who enjoy a clean stream. Creatives, poets, jokers, and teens, however, may appreciate the option to have a … Read more

Hours after CNET reported that Twitter acquired music service We Are Hunted to build a new, standalone music app, the service was taken offline.

Visitors to the site now get a message saying "We Are Hunted is not available at the moment."

A person familiar with the matter told CNET that Twitter acquired We Are Hunted last year and is using it to build an app, to be called Twitter Music, which could be released on iOS by the end of the month. The app suggests artists and songs based on a variety of signals. The experience is … Read more

As the Vatican taps Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio to lead the Catholic Church, the pope's Twitter account has been reactivated. Bergoglio's first official Tweet as @Pontifex was "Habemus papam franciscum," which means, "We have a Pope Francis."

Apparently, the account was actually the Vatican's official account, but was changed to @Pontifex after a the new pope was chosen, according to CBS News.

The original @Pontifex Twitter account went into hibernation this past month in light of Pope Benedict XVI's decision to resign from the papacy due to health reasons.

Pope Benedict XVI … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Bonobos opens stores that don't sell anything.

- The Smithsonian gets Warner Bros. movie props no one else wants.

- Moving Image art fair sells first ever "Vine art" for $200.… Read more

Twitter acquired the music discovery service We Are Hunted last year and is using its technology to build a standalone music app, CNET has learned.

The app, to be called Twitter Music, could be released on iOS by the end of this month, according to a person familiar with the matter. Twitter Music suggests artists and songs to listen to based on a variety of signals, and is personalized based on which accounts a user follows on Twitter. Songs are streamed to the app via SoundCloud.

Twitter Music, which is set to arrive in the wake of key competitor Facebook … Read more

The Federal Trade Commission has updated its consumer protection rules for online activities, and has specifically taken aim at celebrity tweeters.

The agency released the rules yesterday (PDF), and outlined how celebrities who want to promote a product on Twitter should do so. To illustrate its point, the FTC used a fictional celebrity it called Juli Starz. The original tweet shows her endorsing a "Fat-away" pill that helped her lose 30 pounds in six weeks. That tweet was accompanied by a URL to the product's site.

According to the FTC, that kind of endorsement is now illegal. … Read more

Several visits to bars when I was 13 taught me a simple thing: it's rarely good to insult someone who's larger and more muscular than you are.

The Web, though, offers some theoretical protection from this maxim. The object of your bile doesn't know who you are.

There again, they could find out. Which is what British boxer Curtis Woodhouse decided to do after a particular annoying human being mocked him on Twitter.

Woodhouse, you see, had just lost a fight for the English light-welterweight title. As so often seems to happen in this sport, the decision … Read more

In case you're unfamiliar with the significance of the color of smoke rising from the world's current most-watched chimney, here's how Ireland's Father Paddy Byrne broke it down in a Tweet awhile ago:

Not going to directly accuse Father Byrne of anything except wacky tweeting here, but it should be noted for noobs to the conclave of Catholic cardinals currently trying to select the pope's successor that only the first two parts are true. I hope. After each round of balloting that doesn't produce a two-thirds majority, a puff of black smoke goes up and out of the Sistine Chapel. Once a new pope is selected, the smoke turns white.

So, that means the true pope-arazzi should have already staked out a prime smoke-viewing spot outside the chapel. But for the rest of us who aren't trained to the live Vatican smoke cam but are maybe just a little obsessed with anything that involves balloting, be it popes or pop stars, fortunately there's Pope Alarm (tagline: "When the smoke goes up, you'll know what's going down"). … Read more