When signing up for Twitter there is a list of recommended users to follow that appears. Those who were fortunate enough to be on that list of people instantly received hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers. Jason Calacanis, co-founder of Weblogs Inc. and Mahalo believed that the suggested user list was so valuable that he offered $250,000 to be on it.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said that the company is currently exploring alternative ways to introduce prominent users to new members of the micro-blogging community. Some of the prominent users include politicians, news outlets, sports athletes, actors, and actresses.
“That list will be going away,” stated Stone when talking to reporters in Putrajaya, Malaysia. “In its stead will be something that is more programmatically chosen, something that actually delivers more relevant suggestions.”
It even got to the point that politicians started criticizing the list themselves too. Some Republicans said that Democrats are heavily favored in the suggested user lists than Republicans. Twitter employees say that they choose the suggested users list based on who posts messages often and engages with followers. Currently Twitter has about 54 million users.
In the video above Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman discuss the partnership between the two companies. It is cool that LinkedIn is getting a real-time status update boost with the help of Twitter but comparing it to peanut butter and chocolate just seems off-putting. Especially as they look at each other in the video when they make the comparison. To Stone’s credit, I did enjoy his interview with Stephen Colbert.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has given credit to developers that have added location features within their applications despite have limited API support. Twitter users will have the option to add longitude and latitude information to any tweet.
iPhone application Tweetie already gives the option to find out who is tweeting within a certain number of kilometers from you. Stone said that this type of feature would be useful for those who are following events such as concerts or earthquakes.
The feature will be given to platform developers first and then will be added on Twitter.com itself.
“We’re going to release geolocation to platform developers before we add the feature to Twitter.com. Most of the mobile applications people use and love are built by Twitter platform developers,” stated Stone. “Developers will have access to this new geolocation feature early which means it will most likely be available on your app of choice before it’s available on Twitter’s web site. Later, we’ll add it to our mobile web site and Twitter.com as well.”
One of the most popular Twitter features is the “retweet.” Retweeting simply means that you repeat another Twitter user’s status update while still referencing that user. So let’s say that my user name on Twitter is Pulse2Dotcom and I wrote the following tweet:
Huffington Post and Facebook Partner On HuffPost Social News: Liberal-focused The Huffington Post and social net.. http://bit.ly/dsoVi
If another user want to repeat my message, it would appear something like this:
RT@Pulse2DotCom Huffington Post and Facebook Partner On HuffPost Social News: http://bit.ly/dsoVi
TweetDeck, a desktop application built to support Twitter already has an automatic retweet feature integrated, but Twitter.com itself does not support the feature. Tweetmeme is a website that automatically tracks how many times your website has been retweeted.
Now the team at Twitter is planning to integrate this feature within their own service. The sketch above shows to the developer community around Twitter how the feature will be integrated within a Twitter user’s homepage itself.
If a person you follow retweets another user, the message and profile picture of the person that is retweeted will appear on your homepage regardless of whether you follow the retweeted person. This feature will be optional for you.
“We are still sketching out exactly how this feature and its API counterpart works. Sharing our thoughts before launching means developers will have the opportunity to prepare their applications,” wrote Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. “In a few weeks or so we’ll launch the feature on our web site and because app developers had a chance to prepare, it should become available across most of the Twitter ecosystem about the same time. This way, we can all enjoy retweeting—however we choose to access Twitter.”
Yesterday Michael Jackson died from a heart attack.
AOL’s TMZ first reported the story and spent all night covering the story as it developed. As a result, TMZ’s traffic spiked and they had the capacity to keep the website online while their competition’s servers couldn’t handle it.
TMZ wasn’t the only one that had traffic spikes. On Twitter over 5,000 messages were sent out per minute shortly after the Michael Jackson news story broke. The number of tweets doubled according to Biz Stone. AOL Instant Messenger and LiveJournal’s servers also took a big hit, causing a slowdown. The Los Angeles Times website hit about 2.3 million pageviews in one hour after the news story broke. Facebook status updates tripled from the average.
Twitter has received coverage on Stephen Colbert and on Oprah. Apparently Oprah is loving the promotional possibilities of Twitter so she had Biz Stone come to her company Harpo and give a “creative seminar” to the production team.
Stone tweeted out that he was “At HARPO in Chicago to deliver ‘creative seminar’ to the production team before they go on summer break — this place is awesome.” Perhaps we may see Twitter have more of a presence on Oprah’s show after Stone’s seminar such as how to interact with Oprah’s audience watching from home using the micro-blogging service.
If that is the case, I’m sure that we’ll find out soon. More coverage on this later on if something interesting comes out of the seminar.
Quick Editor’s Note: I spent quite a bit of time rewatching this video over and over again, if you’re going to use the transcript by copying from me, link me back here.
Colbert: My guest tonight is the co-founder of Twitter. I’ll ask him every mundane detail about every moment of his life. PLEASE WELCOME BIZ STONE!
*Audience cheers* Colbert: Thank you very much! Stone: Thank you! Colbert: That’s how I communicate Stone: Impressive. Colbert: Well, thank you so much for joining us. You are the co-founder of Twitter. What does it feel like to be one of the preminent twits in the United States? Stone: It feels good, it feels powerful. Colbert: Really? Stone: Yeah. Colbert: Yeah. Stone: Yeah. Colbert: Why did you decide to create Twitter? Did it just come to you in a flash? Or was it years of figuring out how to say less? Stone: Twitter was a side project from another company that we got a little bored working at. Colbert: What was the other company. Stone: The other company was a podcasting company. Colbert: A podcasting company? Stone: Audio on the Internet. We actually didn’t use our own product which was a clue that we shouldn’t be doing that so we started focusing on this other idea of what if you could take this simple little messages like you have in an away message on an instant message application like AIM and turn it into a whole service and connect it to mobile texting such that it was available everywhere… Totally ubiquitous. And that seemed compelling enough to work on it. Colbert: Why 140 characters? Was texting too complex? I mean why? Stone: The limit on texts are 160 characters. We wanted to reserve a little bit of room for a username and so we made it 140 and standarized there… and you’d be surprised by the creativity *laughs*
*Camera cuts to Colbert playing on his iPhone and just mumbling “mmhmm”* Stone: Its important to get that down. Colbert: I’m sorry, what? I’m sorry this isn’t rude, is it? Stone: No, no, no. Colbert: Okay, let me just write that down, I don’t think it is. “This isn’t rude. This is the future.” Okay.
*Colbert tweeting message to twitter.com/Stephenathome on iPhone* Colbert: What was the very first tweet? I mean we know what the first Transatlantic Morris code signal was. It was like “what hath God wrougth?” What was yours? Was it “what hath God Twot?”
*Audience and Biz Stone laughs* Stone: It was something very simple. Like “inviting my co-workers to try this.” Unfortunately not as quite as… Colbert: That’s it? Stone: Its simple, Steven. Its a simple, easy, tiny… Colbert: But why do you think people find it appealing? Because why not just talk to the person next to you and make a new connection with someone? Stone: That is something that people on Twitter do a lot. They have things called tweetups or they like to meet up in person with other people who are on Twitter. Twitter provides a new way of messaging. Its really the messaging service we didn’t know we needed until we had it. You send out 140 character bursts of information to anyone who wants to receive it. They receive it in real-time and then thats when some of the magic happens. Colbert: Wait its the what? Its the what? Stone: Its the messaging service we didn’t know we needed until we had it. Colbert: That sounds like the answer to a problem that we didn’t have until I invented the answer. Stone: Which you do often! Colbert: Thats like bad news, I’ve given you cancer. Good news, I have the only cure for cancer. Stone: Hey listen, when they invented the telegraph people said if its good enough to send, its worth sending on a horse. When they invented the… Colbert: You know what I say, if its good enough to scratch it into clay with a reed and let it dry in the sun, thats good enough for me. What’s good enough for Hammurabi is good enough for me maybe. Stone: No we got to keep pushing. We got to keep pushing. Colbert: How can you go further? How could you reduce this even more? Have you been on… I’ve been on Twitter, have you been on nothing?
*Stone and audience laughs* Colbert: Its so intuitive. The user interface. Its like it does itself. It sends messages to people, lets you know where you are while you do nothing. Stone: There are services like that. But I think 140 characters of text is actually a lot more than you think it is and creativity is definitely inspired by that constraint. Colbert: You say that its “more than I think it is?” Because I think its about 110. Stone: Don’t forget, we include spaces. Colbert: So a space is also a character? Stone: Yes. Colbert: You are ripping people off! Well speaking of ripping people off. Does Twitter charge anything? Stone: Its totally free. Colbert: So I assume that “Biz” in Biz Stone does not stand for “business model.” Stone: No it doesn’t. Colbert: By the way Biz Stone sounds like you are a character in The Flintstones.
*Stone laughs* Stone: If I have a son, I should name him Flint. Colbert: That would be nice. So how would you make money? Are you going to make off of this? Stone: Yes we are. Colbert: How, how are you going to do it? Stone: We are going to become a strong, profitable, independent company. We’re going to continue to stay based in San Francisco. What we’re doing now is we’re recognizing… Colbert: You and Pets.com?
*Audience laughs, Stone looks irritated* Stone: We’re recognizing a difference right now between profit and value and we’re building value right now. Colbert: What’s the difference between profit and value? Stone: Well right now we’re building on value that means extending the service worldwide globally so that more people will have access to this real-time network. Not just on the Internet. There are over 4 billion mobile phones. When we network them together its very transformative especially when you realize it works over both texting and the web. As we grow that network, it becomes more valuable. As we add features to it, as we make it more robust… When we get to a certain point that we felt we’ve gotten there. We’ll begin experimenting with a revenue model. This is not unlike the way that Google approached their revenue model. Colbert: How long is that? Stone: How long is what? Colbert: Before you experiment with a revenue model. Stone: We’re going to start experimenting this year. But we don’t have to hit a home run right away. We have patient investors, we have time to work it out. We’re going to be exploring and experimenting starting this year and we have time to figure out what the perfect revenue model is. Colbert: Why do you think so many Congress people Twitter? Stone: Thats an interesting question. I think… Colbert: Thank you. Stone: You’re welcome. Colbert: For that matter, why so many celebrities? Stone: I think the Congressmen and the celebrities are similar cases. I think there’s two reasons why there are Twittering. One, I think a lot of celebrities… not all of them … some of them find a deeper connection with fans, especially Shaquille O’Neal. He’s amazing at this. Colbert: Shaquille’s got half a million people following his twits. Stone: Yeah that’s amazing. So he feels a deeper connection. Other celebrities like Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher… I think that the appeal there is not only are they connecting with fans… but they’re controlling their messaging. Tabloids aren’t. So they can now say this is what I’m up to and you can report on that if you want to. Colbert: Sorry I’m just going to take a quick picture of you to prove that I’m actually tweeting right now. Stone: Twitpic, just like the plane that landed on the Hudson. Colbert: Is that what crashed that plane?
*Audience and Stone laughs* Colbert: Biz Stone! Thank you so much for joining us. Stone: Thank you very much. Colbert: Biz Stone, you’ve heard about it. Its Twitter! We’ll be right back.
The Suggested Users feature on Twitter is getting a lot of buzz. A study revealed that those who were on the list for suggested users on the microblogging service receives a sudden influx of followers. Jason Calacanis even made a $250,000 offer to be added to the list of suggested users.
Up until now, there hasn’t been an explanation about how Twitter chooses the list of suggested users. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone offered a politically correct explanation on the Twitter blog about how they choose suggested users:
We’ve explained that the Suggested Users list is a bit like your local book store’s staff picks but there’s a little more to it than that. Our Chief Scientist developed a program that scans active Twitter accounts for a bunch of key ingredients such as how much of the profile is filled out, certain indications that the account is interesting to others in some respects, and a few other signals.
If the company suggests a celebrity or business, they ensure that it is a real account.
Stone mentioned that if you want to be added to the list of suggested users, filling out your profile information in the account settings is a good start. The company may get rid of the feature if they find an alternative way to get the job done.
I’ve got mixed feelings towards the feature. I think that they should suggest only mainstream news companies and a couple of other online publications. For example, they should suggest you to follow BreakingNewsOn, CNN, BBC, New York Times, and Wired. I think that if you are in a certain zip code, the feature should recommend local newspapers too. But to make individual, mainstream blogs, and celebrities suggested users on Twitter just seems wrong.
There are other Twitter users out there that have more to offer than some of the pinheads that are suggested.
Twitter has a feature that is similar to Facebook’s “Friends You May Know” and LinkedIn’s “People You May Know.” This feature has been very effective in terms of high-profile users getting a ton more followers. To find out who Twitter is suggests for you, visit this website: http://twitter.com/invitations/suggestions.
When users sign up, they are shown featured personalities such as The Guardian, Felicia Day, TechCrunch, CNN, NYT, Dell, and Rainn Wilson. Twitter started endorsing certain personalities in mid-January. The Guardian went from about 4,000 followers to 66,000 in about a month. Felicia Day went from 20,000 to 83,000. TechCrunch went from 41,000 to 111,000. The New York Times jumped to 145,000.
“The reason we created this feature is because lots of people sign up to Twitter but aren’t following anyone, so we’re trying to help get them started,” stated Williams in a comment on Brook Bayne’s blog.
Many people believe that this interferes with Twitter’s organic growth. The suggested user system wasn’t exactly ideal accoring to Stone. “Right now it’s sort of like staff picks at your local bookstore,” stated Stone in an e-mail with the L.A. Times. “Later, we hope to make this smarter.”
It won’t be done for a while because improving suggested users aren’t exactly the highest on the priority list. Although I think this is pretty important because it seems like the friends of Twitter benefit from the suggested users while the rest get shafted.
Twitter is gaining traction at an alarming rate. The company has $55 million in funding and the user base is growing by the millions. Twitter users include celebrities, politicians, VCs, surgeons, entrepreneurs, etc. One of Twitter’s biggest features is their search engine. Thousands of people are using it everyday to find the latest topic trends. Earlier today Twitter Search was added to the homepage of several limited users.
“Searching over Twitter messages is like a filter for what is happening right now—it’s an interesting look into the real-time thoughts of people and organizations around the world,” stated Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. “Whether you’re curious about something specific or you just want to browse the trending topics, we’ve found that Twitter Search adds a new layer of relevance.”
All I can say is that Twitter may be a good search engine for people to use to find news about trends. After all people reporting news may be a better source than any algorithm can put together. I think we may have found a legitimate Google News competitor.
Twitter Search was created after the company acquired Summize.
Twitter, the microblogging service started by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams started as an R&D project within the podcasting company Odeo around March 2006. Since then, the popularity of the company shot through the roof. The company has about $22 million in funding, a $250 million valuation based on VC, and reportedly turned down a $500 million stock offer from Facebook. The biggest problem with Twitter right now is the lack of a revenue model. They have all this funding and are paying a ton for server costs, but it is not yet known how money will come in to help curb these costs.
Biz Stone reported today that “We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.” Stone mentioned that they could use the way that brands are using Twitter for customer-service and marketing to charge for extra features. Stone mentioned that individual users would not be charged to use the service.
Some of the brands that have a presence on Twitter include Virgin, Cisco Systems, Jet Blue, Sun Microsystems, IBM, and Whole Foods.
Twitter has had a crazy day! Over 33 Twitter accounts have been hacked. Many of those belonging to prominent celebrities including Rick Sanchez of CNN, Britney Spears, President elect Barack Obama, and FOX News. This is a separate incident from the phishing scheme that happened over the weekend.
Whoever hacked the accounts has a pretty interesting sense of humor, but is bad at spelling. From the FOX News Twitter account, a message stated “Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay.” I’m sure he meant Bill O’Reilly, host of FOX’s The O’Reilly Factor. Britney Spears’ Twitter account had a more explicit message: “HI Yall! Brit Brit here, just wanted to update you all on the size of my *bleep.* Its about 4 feet wide with razor sharp teeth.” Rick Sanchez’s Twitter stated “i am high on crack right now might not be coming into work today.” Rick often times refers to his Twitter account on CNN program. On Huffpost’s Twitter account there are a bunch of links to digitalgangster.com.
Twitter’s internal admin was affected too. According to Biz Stone, founder of Twitter, the hacker got into some of the tools that the support team uses in order to reset passwords. When Twitter’s admins realized this, they took the support tools offline so the hacker couldn’t get any further.
