microblogs

Twitter is trying to do more than just spotlight trending stories and events -- it's trying to be part of the spotlight as well.

Dick Costolo, the microblogging company's CEO, told The Wall Street Journal that Twitter was ramping up its effort to help users sort out tweets surrounding major, live events by increasing its presence associated with the event. That effort is embodied by a partnership Twitter has formed with NBCUniversal to create a page that would corral millions of tweets sent by athletes, fans, and TV personalities during the Olympics in London.

With the live events … Read more

Last month it was blog users, this month it's blog owners. The Chinese government announced today that it will tighten restrictions on all Internet service providers for blogs, microblogs, and online forums -- forcing them to act as Web police, according to the Associated Press.

This is just the latest in a long list of restrictions that the government is enforcing on its citizens. According to the Associated Press, China began requiring real-name registration on all microblogs in December. However, people still seem to be sneaking under the radar.

The new restrictions entail making the Internet providers act as … Read more

Twitter announced today that its Web site is getting new enhancements geared toward being "optimized for speed." Besides getting rid of the hashbang (#!) in URLs, the social network is also focusing on reducing the "time to first Tweet" and ensuring only what's necessary will load with each Web page.

"To improve the twitter.com experience for everyone, we've been working to take back control of our front-end performance by moving the rendering to the server," Twitter engineering manager Dan Webb wrote in a blog post. "This has allowed us to drop … Read more

China's Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo has followed through on a promise to institute a "contract" with users over their conduct on the communication platform.

Sina Weibo's new code of conduct, introduced today, takes aim at users who attempt to post messages that speak unkindly of China's constitution, harm the "unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity" of the country, or reveal national secrets, according to Reuters, which was first to report on the news. The code also bans users from spreading rumors and promoting "evil teachings and superstitions."

Sina Weibo earlier this … Read more

Just a couple of weeks after Chinese censors lambasted the social network Sina Weibo for "rumor" mongering, the Twitter-like service announced plans to establish a "user contract" by the end of this month. This comes shortly after the uberpopular site also promised to fight against rumors on the Internet.

According to tech news site The Next Web, which got its hands on the contract and translated it, there are several points that look like they could impede the free flow of information.

It seems as if, for Sina Weibo, the point of the contract is to … Read more

It's no secret Tumblr is big and growing, but now, the time has come for the company to start generating some cash. Just don't expect ads to play a role in that.

Speaking to AdAge in an interview published today, Tumblr CEO David Karp made it abundantly clear that his company has no interest in placing ads on its service, saying that the microblogging tool is "selling our desks to avoid that, it's a complete last resort."

Still, the temptation to bring ads to Tumblr, which has yet to effectively monetize its growth, might be … Read more

Tumblr is on a roll.

The company's founder and CEO David Karp spoke at the Digital Life Design (DLD) Conference in Munich earlier today, and revealed that Tumblr is visited by over 120 million unique users each month, helping it tally over 15 billion monthly pageviews. What's more, the nearly 42 million microblogs currently in operation are re-blogged via RSS, Twitter, and Facebook an average of nine times, dramatically expanding their footprint across the Web.

The Next Web was the first to report on Karp's comments.

Just four months ago, Tumblr announced that it was generating 13 … Read more

Tumblr users have come out in full force against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the microblogging service announced yesterday.

Earlier this week, Tumblr set up a page where its users could sign up and receive a phone call from the company with talking points about SOPA. From there, the company connected users with their U.S. representatives to voice concerns about the bill.

All told, Tumblr said yesterday, 87,834 calls were placed to representatives. The average call lasted 53 seconds, while the longest came in at 31 minutes, the company said. A total of 1,293 total hours … Read more

President Barack Obama's campaign yesterday opened up its first Tumblr account to help get the word out about their candidate.

"We'd like this Tumblr to be a huge collaborative storytelling effort--a place for people across the country to share what's going on in our respective corners of it and how we're getting involved in this campaign to keep making it better," the campaign wrote its first post on the page.

Currently, the Tumblr page has three posts, including an image of the campaign's Ohio offices and an excerpt from the President's address … Read more