by Jay Hathaway on September 21, 2010 at 02:00 PM

So, we've seen Twitter for iPhone, Twitter for iPad, and a new Twitter Web interface. Where's our Tweetie for Mac update? Twitter is finally releasing some details about what developer Loren Brichter -- hired by the big T to revamp Tweetie into Twitter for iPhone and create the official iPad app-- is doing with Tweetie for Mac.
Here's the deal: Tweetie for Mac won't become an official Twitter ...
by Jay Hathaway on September 14, 2010 at 04:00 PM

All this time, we've been referring to Twitter as a social network, and all this time, we've been wrong. That's if you believe Twitter VP Kevin Thau, who presented at Nokia World 2010 today. Thau focused on Twitter's potential as a news source (and all the traffic it gets from people who don't even have Twitter accounts) and threw up a slide that said "not a social network." Huh? Well, my mind is ...
by Jay Hathaway on September 7, 2010 at 03:15 PM

It's certainly not a good week to be a Twitter app developer (unless you work for Twitter, that is). Tweet honcho Evan Williams just revealed on the Twitter blog that third-party apps make up a teeny-tiny percentage of all Twitter traffic, with the Twitter website and official apps pulling the bulk of the weight. Ev stopped short of saying, "You think we need you, but we don't," but that seemed ...
by Jay Hathaway on August 31, 2010 at 03:00 PM

Big changes for third-party apps on Twitter today: they can no longer require you to log in with your Twitter password. Twitter's mandatory switch to OAuth authentication has finally happened, which means you have more control over which apps can access your account.
In case you've never signed into a Twitter app with OAuth, here's how it works: you click to sign in, and get redirected to ...
by Jay Hathaway on August 24, 2010 at 03:00 PM

Twitter is finally getting on board the bookmarklet bus, about a million years after every other Web service and URL shortener in the megaverse. You can now add a button to your browser's bookmarks bar that allows you to quickly shorten a URL using the little-hyped t.co shortener. Gee, I wish bit.ly would have thought of that ... oh, wait, they already did.
I'm perplexed by the little ways in ...
by Jay Hathaway on August 17, 2010 at 03:30 PM

There's been plenty of big news from the Twitter camp in the past week, so let's jump right in and start with Twitter's official announcements, including the new Tweet Button!
The first thing everybody thought when Twitter announced an official sharing button was "Uh, but what about TweetMeme?" The popular tweet sharing site -- it's like a Digg based on retweets! -- is just the latest ...
by Jay Hathaway on August 10, 2010 at 04:30 PM

This week brings more progress in Twitter's advertising plan, as ads are about to be injected into the Twitter API. What does that mean to the average user? Well, for one thing, you'll start seeing sponsored tweets in your third-party apps over the next few months. Twitter has added Promoted Trends and Promoted Tweets to the API, and they'll be tested in desktop apps before they move on to ...
by Jay Hathaway on August 3, 2010 at 03:00 PM

Twitter's real-time streaming API is the biggest deal in Twitterland this week, as it enables Twitter apps to show you every tweet as it happens. Only a couple of apps have access so far -- including Tweetdeck and Echofon -- and the demos we're seeing are startling. You knew there were a lot of tweets flying around out there, but it's a totally different and overwhelming thing to see them like ...
by Jay Hathaway on July 27, 2010 at 03:00 PM

The big story in Twitterland this week is the rumors of photo and video support coming to the Twitter website. Up until now, you've been able to use third party services to share photos and videos, and a lot of clients -- including the official Twitter mobile apps -- have been able to display them with one click. Well, now there's something called "Tweet Media" that's showing up in some users' ...
by Jay Hathaway on July 20, 2010 at 02:00 PM

We've mentioned Twitter's special @earlybird account before, but this little project has finally left the nest. @earlybird offers deals to Twitter users and it launched with a Disney partnership -- offering discount tickets to The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Apparently, services like Groupon and Gilt will be getting in on the action soon. If you like deals, keep an eye on @earlybird.
In apps ...
by Jay Hathaway on July 13, 2010 at 03:00 PM

Want more Twitter followers? Want them enough that you'd pay for it? Well, Twitter might about to let you do just that. Mashable reports that Twitter is considering a "promoted tweeters" service, much like its current "Promoted Tweets" advertising. You'd basically pay to have your account featured, thus collecting an increase in followers.
It's still not clear what this product would look ...
by Jay Hathaway on July 6, 2010 at 04:00 PM

Hey, it's a big Twitter app acquisition, and Twitter's not the one doing the acquiring for once! Twidroid, a popular Android Twitter client, has been snapped up by Twitter ad company TweetUp. TweetUp plans to remain the app "Twidroyd," to avoid any trademark conflict with LucasFilm (the Star Wars guys), who own the "droid" trademark.
Even bigger news: Twidroyd (that still feels awkward to ...
by Jay Hathaway on June 29, 2010 at 02:30 PM

As we mentioned last week, Twitter ad networks aren't dead. In fact, it looks like they're just getting warmed up. Ad.ly is getting ready to launch ads in third-party Twitter clients, which is a whole new level of Twitter advertising. Ad.ly for Apps serves location-based ads to users, in-stream, right in a Twitter client. It's got an API, making it pretty easy to build into other Twitter apps. ...
by Jay Hathaway on June 22, 2010 at 04:00 PM

Back again with another Twitter Tuesday, and in this edition, I'm following up on some news I reported a couple of weeks ago about Twitter's crackdown on ad networks leading up to the launch of its own Promoted Tweets advertising system. I told you that third-party advertising in people's Twitter streams was banned altogether, but I also wrote that every third-party ad networked claimed this ...
by Jay Hathaway on June 15, 2010 at 03:00 PM

Big news from Twitter this week: the launch of Places, the next step in Twitter's plan for location-based features. You could already set a general location for your tweets, but now you can tag them with specific places. Places integrates with location-based apps Foursquare and Gowalla.
These apps can already spam Twitter (ugh), but Places actually fixes that problem. Instead of checking in ...