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One Valley exec's "daunting challenge" is another's "hackalicious" Candyland, it seems.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs had some forceful words about Google's Android operating system in Monday's company earnings call--Jobs' first appearance on a quarterly call in two years--calling the open-source mobile software "very, very fragmented and [it] becomes more so every day." Android boss Andy Rubin hit back at him with a tweet full of open-source code.

Iain Dodsworth, the CEO of Twitter client manufacturer TweetDeck, joined the fray on Tuesday morning with a Tweet that read, "Did we … Read more

Twitter may have just 160 million users now, but co-founder Evan Williams is already eyeing a day when the service caters to a billion.

Williams, who recently gave up the reins as chief executive, made the comment Monday night during an appearance at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Joining him was co-founder Biz Stone as they chatted about Twitter's new design, its lack of censorship, Williams' job shift, and a myriad of other topics, as covered by ZDNet.

On Twitter's new look and feel, the two said they had been prepared for a backlash from users, but … Read more

Mozilla is looking for a few good people to join its army.

The new Army of Awesome program unveiled yesterday is designed to bring together Firefox experts and browser users in search of technical help.

Anyone with a Twitter account can join Mozilla's Army of Awesome. Volunteers just browse through a list of recent tweets from users that stream on the Army's Web page. If a volunteer spots a tweet that he or she would like to respond to, the volunteer just clicks on it. Firefox will open a window in Twitter in which the volunteer can choose … Read more

Yahoo started rolling out several major changes to its search engine last night with the goal of helping people more quickly find and interact with all the information they need in a single place.

Using the search engine's new "intelligent shortcuts," you can search for popular movies, celebrities, and other topical items, and Yahoo will deliver the latest articles, photos, videos, event listings, and Twitter tweets on your chosen topic. If Yahoo knows your location, it can also display the closest listings for movies and concerts. The various search results are organized by type all in one … Read more

In an attempt to make money from more parts of its service, Twitter is rolling out a new form of advertising called "promoted accounts." In short, it will let advertisers buy a spot on Twitter's sidebar with a suggestion of Twitter accounts you should follow--that is, if it's relevant to accounts the user is already following.

Such a feature was first rumored in July, though it had originally been suggested that it was going to be aimed at individuals. This program--at least in its beginnings--is being launched with businesses in mind.

A blog post about the … Read more

New research from social-analytics company Sysomos reveals--surprise!--that your tweets have fleeting value over the course of a day and, moreover, a lifetime.

Using the retweet as a key indicator for the life of a short message, Sysomos examined 1.2 billion tweets posted in the last two months. The data shows that 29 percent of tweets produced a reaction, either a reply or retweet, and that 92 percent of retweets occur within the first hour of the original message.

This is an interesting set of data, with respect to the fact that companies have begun to embrace social media … Read more

Let's face it: the typical tweet in the Twitosphere (if you need help with the vernacular, consult the Twictionary) is about as revelatory as the words going into the cell phone of the girl sitting behind me on the bus last night. The vast majority are meaningless to strangers--and probably even to close friends.

But the sheer volume of Twitter activity (the site is "over capacity" as I type this) turns otherwise banal tweets into telling trends, when scrutinized in the aggregate, and health trends are no exception.

"A microblogging service such as Twitter is a … Read more

Among the more than 145 million users of Twitter, a growing number are accessing the microblogging service through mobile apps.

The number of mobile users on Twitter has grown 62 percent since mid-April, according to a Thursday blog post from CEO Evan Williams.

Among newbies to the site, 16 percent of them tap into their first tweet via the mobile Web. That's up from 5 percent before the company launched its rebranded Twitter app for the iPhone a few months ago.

In his blog, Williams also revealed why Twitter bought the app formerly known as Tweetie and reintroduced it … Read more

A real-time version of TweetDeck is now available to the public, one month after Twitter announced a developer preview of its User Streams API, opening up third-party Twitter applications to display tweets in real time.

That API gives desktop apps like TweetDeck the ability to display tweets virtually as soon as they are published. Other Twitter activity, like retweets, mentions, search, DMs (direct messages), lists, favoriting, and following will also come in real time.

According to the TweetDeck blog, the beta version of its User Streams app was well-received by its 5,000 beta testers. However, some users have critiqued … Read more