The Award Winning Place for Plain English Explanations of Internet Stuff
You may have recently heard about a new social network called Mastodon. Mastodon is an open source, completely free social network that is similar to, and on some level competing with, Twitter. However there are some important differences between Twitter and Mastodon. Here’s what Mastodon is, and what it isn’t.
This week Twitter removed it’s option to “Favorite” a Tweet with a star symbol, replacing it with a heart symbol to indicate a “Like” (shades of Facebook!), and not everybody hearts it.
Now that they have trained us to fit all of the relevant information into 140 characters, Twitter has announced that they are removing the character limit and lifting the length restrictions on private, direct messages.
So what constitutes a lousy honeymoon? For some people it is a rainy week at a resort. For others it means that everyone on their cruise ship got sick or food poisoning. And for one unlucky fellow recently, it meant getting shoved off a cliff by his bride. Well, Twitter’s stock value honeymoon ranks somewhere in that range between food poisoning and murder. (Although we’d still place it far above than Facebook’s botched IPO.)
Well, we all saw it coming and it certainly did not take long – Twitter Vine is the newest hub for porn videos. And unfortunately it got worse when one six-second NSFW clip made it to the top as an Editor’s Pick, appearing at the top of the Vine screen when users first opened their apps. Even though it was quickly taken down as Editor’s Pick, fast-spreading word of the clip caused it to make the “Popular Now” ranking.
Twitter users will soon start seeing #TwitterArchive trending. Twitter has announced that they are now allowing users to download their entire archive history to store for their own personal files. The archiving feature will allow users to download past tweets and retweets, and users can look at their archives by month and search keywords, hashtags, usernames and phrases.
We love it when we can report on an altruistic and novel use of social media. As any but the least sentient beings know, Spain has hit really hard financial times, with unemployment at a record 25%. Spanish soccer club Real Oviedo has fallen on particularly hard times – in fact, they are facing bankruptcy, with a tax bill of nearly $2.5million (US) looming in the next several weeks. But thanks to some enterprising, and socially-savvy fans, and club management thinking outside the box, Real Oviedo may have a second chance.
If you received an email from Twitter prompting you to change your password due to a possible hack, you’re not alone. It was a mistake from Twitter, who has issued a statement explaining what happened.
In a lawsuit that may have repercussions around the world, Twitter has been sued for defamation, based on its publication of alleged defamatory Tweets made by one of its users. The libelous Tweet was Tweeted by Australian personality Marieke Hardy, when she erroneously identified Joshua Meggitt as the author behind the ‘hate blog’ mariekehardy.blogspot.com, which was dedicated to, well, hating Hardy. [Note: The general difference between slander and libel is that slander is spoken, libel is written – so Hardy’s was a libelous Tweet, not a slanderous Tweet. Both slander and libel are defamation.]
Twitter made a surprising announcement that has the social media world buzzing. They announced that they would be censoring Tweets in certain countries, when requested to do so by officials in the specific country.
Twitter has been the vector for a flood of work-from-home scam spams this week, as followers of hacked accounts found dozens of copies of the “I snagged $217 in just a few hours online. learned how to do it from {link to scam}” type of spam coming at them via direct message. The link goes to a faked NBC article that touts “How did this stay at home mom make $13900+/Month.. We Investigate..” and that cleverly makes note of the geographic location (geolocation) of your IP address and customizes the article to make it seem as if the single mom is from your own town.
Yes, Twitter really is coming to television. But unlike the Twitter reality television show that was touted last year, but that never came to pass, this Twitter tv show is really set to happen. Starring William Shatner, the Twitter television show is based on the real-life Twitter account and Twitter feed of Twitter user Justin Halpern, who publishes stuff that his father says under the Twitter name “Shit My Dad Says” (really). Halpern also just published the book, “St*ff My Dad Says”, based on his Twitter feed. While Halpern is the Twitter helmsman, it is really his father, 73-year old Sam Halpern, played in the show by William Shatner, who is the star of the feed, the book, and the show, which, according to reports, is to be called either “Stuff My Dad Says” or “Bleep My Dad Says”.
Even though Twitter added location-based information services (“Twitter with Location”) to Twitter a few months ago, Twitter is only just now advising Twitter users that they can opt in to the new Twitter Location feature (it’s turned off by default, so you don’t have to opt out of Twitter with Location). Here’s how to use – and why you should, or shouldn’t use – Twitter’s Location based Tweet information.
Twitter has finally openly released their first Twitter ads product, called “Promoted Tweets”. So what are Twitter Promoted Tweets? Twitter Promoted Tweets are Tweet ads that are sent out by businesses as regular Tweets, but which the businesses have paid to have show up at the top of search results on Twitter (think Adwords for Twitter).
In an effort to clean up after a phishing attack on Twitter, Twitter is targeting some Twitter accounts as “possibly compromised”, and proactively disabling the current password for the account, and sending a “Please change your twitter password” email, which asks you to “please create a new password by opening this link”. While we give them a great deal of credit for being so proactive, the irony is that the email Twitter is sending looks just like the phishing efforts that lead to this problem in the first place! So, if you get a “Please change your twitter password” email, what should you do? Read on.
Twitter down? Hey, it happens, and sometimes it’s even planned! Twitter may be down for planned maintenance tonight – Tuesday, November 17th – sometime between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. Pacific time (2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. Eastern). That said, Twitter isn’t actually planning to be down that entire time – it’s more that they are planning maintenance, and so Twitter could be down at some point during those hours.
For those Twitter users who are still using Twitter through a web browser (do people really still do that?), Twitter is beta testing a new through-the-browser retweet function. Not everyone yet has access to this new retweet function, so we thought that we’d show it to you.
Last month Twitter announced that it was rolling out a new feature, called Twitter Lists. This week Twitter started rolling out Twitter Lists across their entire user base. Here’s an explanation of what Twitter Lists are, and how to use them.
If you’re a Twitter user whose native tongue is not English, Twitter has some great news for you! Twitter Translate is Twitter’s initiative to translate Twitter into other languages. Under the Twitter Translator program, Twitter is “calling on the help of real Twitterers to translate our site into their own language.”
People who first sign on to Twitter have in the past been directed to a suggested list of users to follow on Twitter. Similarly, at some points in time, brand new users found that their new Twitter account was created with a pre-populated list of suggested users that they were already following, right out of the box. And of course you can always find the “suggested users” list under the “Find People” option on Twitter. But that all may change.
Twitter is fed up, and their not going to take it any more. The thing with which they are apparently fed up is spammers polluting people’s Twitter streams with everything from “make money fast” scheme sites to porn. And so Twitter has added a “this is spam” button (well, actually a “report for spam” link) to everybody’s profile, so that now you can report them to Twitter HQ with a single click.
As we recently wrote, Twitter has just posted a new Terms of Service. And, intentionally or otherwise, Twitter has banned anyone under 18 years old from using Twitter.
Twitter has updated and posted new Terms of Service (ToS), which are effective immediately. The new Terms of Service more directly address the issues of spam, and make clear that what happens on Twitter can be used by Twitter, but still belongs to the user.
It’s official: Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, has announced that Twitter is gearing up to start charging businesses for business use of Twitter through a premium Twitter service.
Many, many people find themselves a bit lost when they first start using Twitter. They don’t really get how to use Twitter. They don’t really understand what Twitter is. Here is a clear, plain English, real-world explanation that answers the questions “What is Twitter?” and “How to use Twitter?” and that explains the various messaging functions of Twitter such as @, DM, D, Retweet, RT, and #, and including Anne’s famous “Party Analogy” for Twitter.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has confirmed that Twitter will begin the beta roll-out of a new Twitter service – the Twitter verified account service – designed to confirm and verify that the Twitter accounts of celebrities, public personalities, and other famous people are actually the accounts of the people they say they are, and not imposters and pretenders.
Sources have revealed that there is a Twitter reality television show in the works, which would feature real time Twitter messages (“tweets”) from the show’s contestants, who will be pitted against one another in an effort to track down celebrities.
That darling grapevine of the 21st century, Twitter, is being socially indicted and implicated in the increasing panic over the currently-anticipated swine flu epidemic. According to Evgeny Morozov, a fellow at the Open Society Institute, in an article published on the website of the Foreign Policy magazine, “having millions of people wrap up all their fears into 140 characters and blurt them out in the public might have some dangerous consequences.”
For those who are constantly checking both Twitter, and Gmail, now you can have your cake and eat it too! Twitter Gadget is a Gmail gadget that allows you to both read and post to Twitter right from your Gmail interface!