twitter

Track coming back to Twitter

A trio of Twitter executives--Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Alex Payne--showed up at the BearHug Camp, held at CNET headquarters in San Francisco, to answer questions about the future of the service, such as when the "track" feature would return. CEO Dorsey said that the acquisition of Summize and work on redoing the back end have made it easier to bring track back, but didn't provide any specific timetable.

The company has 24 employees and recently got $15 million in funding. Dorsey said that Twitter is taking a measured approach to introducing new features, and won't … Read more

E-mail is as addictive as gambling

Just when you finally came to terms with your e-mail addiction, blogs came along, then IM, then Twitter, and now we are all zombies. As it turns out, e-mail is a dangerous distraction.

In a study last year, Dr. Thomas Jackson of Loughborough University, England, found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by e-mail. So people who check their e-mail every five minutes waste 8 1/2 hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before.

I would suspect that Twitter and random IMs must double the wasted … Read more

Twitter page used to pass malware

In yet another new way to infect people, criminal hackers are using a Twitter page, according to one security researcher.

In a blog, Chris Boyd, director of malware research for Facetime, explained how a Twitter page is being used to lure victims. To lend credibility to his discovery, the Twitter page lists 17 followers, however each appeared to be fraudulent. Boyd said Twitter had been notified.

The messages, written in Portuguese, attempt to get visitors to download a photo album. In order to view the album, you'll need to download a Flash update, which is really the infection files … Read more

Tweetburner gives your Tweets analytics

If you think Tweetburner sounds like a way to track the uptake in the online world of your Twitter posts, you got it in one. Tweetburner does three things you probably want if you're using Twitter to tell the world about web sites:

Shortens URLs. Twitter's 140 characters make many Web URLs unworkable. Tweetburner, like other URL shorteners, squeezes verbose URLs into bitsize links like http://twurl.nl/p6rtus. Tracks which of your Twitter links get clicked. To test this, I twittered Friday about "Twittin' Secrets: The 100 World's Greatest Twitter Tips" via a Tweetburner … Read more

Stalk your favorite TV characters (legally) with Whrrl

Location-based social network Whrrl has forged a rather odd partnership with content provider HBO to place various fictional characters from the show Entourage as real users on its network.

Events from the television show will end up as annotated items on Whrrl's user-generated map. You can subscribe to whichever of the characters you want, and each of their items go into your central friends feed along with regular users who are providing "real" ratings and locational bookmarks. As the series progresses, locations seen on the show will continue to be placed on the map.

This is a … Read more

Twintro: Twitter's 'blind dating' service

Robert Balousek, my collaborator on the Swagalicio.us blog, has launched Twintro a new service to help Twitter users find people to follow outside of the usual self-reinforcing Twitterholic circle.

If you follow Twintro on Twitter, you'll get updates from a different "fascinating, amusing, and thought-provoking" Twitter user every day. If you like what you're reading, you just start following that person so you keep getting their updates. You'll get a new person the next day.

Here are full instructions.

I think Rob is onto something, although this little service is all about the content. … Read more

Facebook's Live Feed challenges FriendFeed, Twitter

Facebook has recently launched a new feature that takes aim at life-streaming sites FriendFeed and Twitter. Facebook's Live Feed is an evolved version of its hugely popular News Feed feature.

Found via a tab on the Facebook homepage, Live Feed loads up all of the stories from your friends and updates the list in real-time. The feed is available in Log Mode (seen above) or the more traditional Full Stories. When one of your friends does something, Live Feed slides everything down, making room for the new story, which fades in. The stream is very cool to watch roll … Read more

AMC decides to allow fans' 'Mad Men' Twittering

It looks like wiser heads--or at least those who could be made to recognize a great PR opportunity--have prevailed at AMC.

If you're one of the many hooked fans of the cable channel's hit show, Mad Men, which chronicles the goings-on at a fictional 1960s New York ad agency, and you're also a Twitter user, you might have found yourself eagerly following tweets from folks like Don Draper, Roger Sterling, or Peggy Olson.

And getting people to follow the show's characters probably seemed like a clever way of using Twitter for marketing.

Except that AMC had … Read more

Marvel forces Twitter takedown of fan account

If you've been thinking about starting a Twitter account under the pretense of being someone else you might want to think twice if it has anything to do with someone else's intellectual property.

In the past few weeks users, who have been trying their best to emulate characters from AMC's television series Mad Men have apparently had their accounts wiped clear and de-authorized by the microblogging start-up at the request of AMC's lawyers.

That's not the only instance, though.

More troubling is the story of Rich Johnston, a columnist for ComicBookResources.com. Johnston had gotten … Read more