Twitter was considering Camera+ acquisition after Facebook bought Instagram

According to a report from Bloomberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey met with the development company behind popular iOS app "Camera+" shortly after Facebook announced it would be acquiring Instagram to discuss a possible acquisition. Instagram allows users to place filters on their photos and share them on social networks. While Camera+ is similar in that sense, it is also a full-on photo editing app for iOS.

A deal fell apart between Twitter and developer Tap Tap Tap because the company didn't want to relocate to San Francisco.

Twitter executives held several meetings with Camera+ developer Tap Tap Tap, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks were private. The talks broke down before Twitter could make an offer because the startup’s far-flung workforce was reluctant to relocate to San Francisco, they said. While 10 employees are already based there, Tap Tap Tap has 20 others in Austria, New Zealand, Spain and elsewhere.

Twitter was interested in acquiring Instagram before Facebook?

According to a report from The New York Times, Twitter was interested in acquiring popular photo upload and filter service Instagram before the company was bought by Facebook earlier this month for $1 billion. The fact that Twitter founder Jack Dorsey hasn't uploaded any pictures to Instagram since the announcement further supports this rumor. Dorsey had apparently been trying to secure a deal months before Facebook, but ultimately failed to do so.

Mr. Systrom may have lost one connection in the deal: Mr. Dorsey of Twitter. His company, according to several people briefed on the matter, had expressed interest in buying Instagram in recent months. Mr. Dorsey once used Instagram daily to send photos to Twitter, but he has not been back since the deal was announced, perhaps a sign that he is not happy to see it in the hands of a competitor. A Twitter spokeswoman declined to comment.

Twitter files lawsuit against spammers

Twitter announced via a blog post yesterday that it has filed a lawsuit against the most aggressive spammers on the microblogging service. The company has been battling spammers since Twitter's launch years ago, but only recently have the number of spammers on the service gone up significantly.

This morning, we filed suit in federal court in San Francisco against five of the most aggressive tool providers and spammers. With this suit, we’re going straight to the source. By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal. Further, we hope the suit acts as a deterrent to other spammers, demonstrating the strength of our commitment to keep them off Twitter.

Twitter also says that its engineers are hard at work to fix the back-end of the service to prevent spammers.

Twitter releases updated BlackBerry app

Today, Twitter released an update to its BlackBerry app (App World link), bringing a slew of new features and improvements to the somewhat neglected app. The update, version 3.0, brings support for sharing links through the BlackBerry Browser, uploading photos to Twitter's official service, and connecting a Twitter account to BlackBerry Messenger (a.k.a. "BBM").

The new version requires BlackBerry OS 5.0 or later to function.

The BlackBerry apps for iOS and Android have already long been updated to include similar new features.

Twitter turns six years old: 140 million users, 340 million tweets per day

Today, March 21, 2012, Twitter turns six years old. The popular microblogging service revealed in a blog post that there are currently 140 million active users on the website, and that there are about 340 million tweets sent every day. The rest of the post focused on how founder Jack Dorsey posted a sketch of his idea of what would eventually become Twitter (known as "twttr" back in 2006).

Without you, of course, there wouldn’t be a Twitter. We mark our sixth birthday with you in mind, and celebrate your myriad ways of engaging, enjoying, and emoting on our platform. As Jack noted when he posted his sketch of the service he envisioned, “I'm happy this idea has taken root; I hope it thrives.” Thanks to you, it is.

Twitter acquires blogging platform Posterous

Today, Twitter announced via its blog that it has required the simple blogging platform Posterous, which was founded in May of 2008. "This team has built an innovative product that makes sharing across the web and mobile devices simple—a goal we share. Posterous engineers, product managers and others will join our teams working on several key initiatives that will make Twitter even better," Twitter explains.

The microblogging service has also confirmed that Posterous Spaces will remain up and running for users, and that should changes occur, users will be given "ample" amount of time for preparation. Those looking to move away from Posterous will be able to in the coming weeks once Twitter provides instructions on how to do so.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Twitter adds support for right-to-left languages

Twitter announced today that it has officially added support for right-to-left languages, including Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu. Back in late January, Twitter revealed that it had begun translating the website with the help of volunteers, but neglected to give an estimated release date.

Twitter is now available in 28 different languages around the world. Right-to-left languages posed a unique technical challenge, particularly with Tweets containing both right-to-left and left-to-right content. To solve this, our engineering team built a new set of special tools to ensure these Tweets, hashtags and numbers all look and behave correctly.

Twitter updates iOS app with “new” features

Yesterday, Twitter released an update to its official iOS app (App Store link) that brings back several features that were removed in the app's previous update, which brought in a refreshed user interface. The ability to use "swipe" gestures, copy and paste tweets, font size options, and the actions display are all back in this update. Bug fixes and performance improvements are also to be expected.

Full release notes:

Changes are for iPhone only:

• Swipe shortcut
• Copy and paste for tweets and profiles
• Press and hold actions on links in tweet details
• Font size settings
• Direct Message improvements
• Confirmation alert for Find Friends
• Improved startup time and general performance improvement
• Improved image quality in tweet detail
• Accessibility improvements
• Profile shows whether a user follows you
• Verified badges in people search results
• New language: Turkish
• Lots of other polish and bug fixes

New version of Twitter live for all users

Back in early December of last year, Twitter announced a major redesign of its website and mobile applications, putting a focus on discovering new content and simplifying navigation. The updates have been rolling out slowly to all Twitter users over the past two months and today, the company announced via its blog that the new design is live for everyone.

An overview of the new features:

• Click any Tweet in your timeline to expand it to see photos, videos, retweets, favorites, and more.
• Connect is your way to keep conversations going. It’s the place to see who has followed or mentioned you, or retweeted or favorited one of your Tweets.
• Discover lets you tap into a stream of useful and entertaining information, customized just for you. When you use Discover, you’ll see results reflecting your interests. These are based on your current location, what you follow and what’s happening in the world.
• Embed Tweets on your website by copying and pasting one line of code.
• Check out the new Twitter brand pages from accounts like @NPRNews, @Audi and others.

Tweetbot for iPad released

Today, Tapbots released a version of its popular iPhone Twitter client "Tweetbot" for the iPad ($2.99, App Store link). Tweetbot for iPad has a very similar interface to the iPhone version of the client and includes "Smart Gestures" for accessing tools quickly. The app is a separate purchase from the iPhone version of Tweetbot from the App Store.

Alongside this, Tweetbot 2.0 for the iPhone and iPod touch was also released, bringing an improved timeline view, user interface tweaks, and a number of small improvements.

Google and Twitter discuss Super Bowl statistics

Despite the fact that the Super Bowl is now 24 hours behind us, America and the Internet are still buzzing about last night's biggest plays, commercials, that nice new Chevrolet Corvette that Eli Manning is now a proud owner of. Both Google and Twitter have released their statistics about Super Bowl XLVI, and we've recapped them below.

Google

Google starts off by saying that 41% of searches about Super Bowl advertisements made during the game came from mobile devices, which is up from 25% last year. During the game, the following list were the most-searched terms:

1. Madonna
2. Halftime show
3. Patriots
4. Tom Brady
5. Giants

This year's Super Bowl was the first one ever that was live streamed on the Internet, and Google says that searches for "super bowl live stream" peaked at kickoff.

Finally, Google says that companies ads that were posted to YouTube, either in full or teaser mode, were watched more than 30 million times before kickoff Sunday night. "Game day searches for [super bowl ads] were 122 times higher than the same time last week," the web giant says. Acura, GoDaddy and M&M’s were the top three most popular ads in terms of Google searches made.

Twitter

Twitter says that it saw a tweets per second (TPS) spike during this year's Super Bowl in the final three minutes of the game, shortly after the Giants' final touchdown. The TPS number is being listed as 12,233. Madonna's half time performance averaged 8,000 TPS, with a peak of 10,245 tweets.

Twitter to add support for right-to-left languages this spring

Twitter announced via its official blog today that it has begun working on adding support for right-to-left languages for the microblogging website. The company is beginning translation work for Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu using volunteers in the Twitter Translation Center. 

The Twitter Translation Center takes a crowd-sourced approach to translating and localizing Twitter for people around the world. More than 425,000 volunteers contribute to the Translation Center, and to date have helped make Twitter available in 22 languages. With their help, these will be the next four.

Twitter explains that it has developed a way to make sure that tweets and hashtags will appear properly in right-to-left languages, as well as giving users a more "localized experience." 

If everything goes as planned, the company will be introducing these four new languages sometime in the spring. 

Twitter introduces ability to embed tweets onto websites

Alongside the announcement of a completely redesigned website and mobile application, and brand pages, Twitter also announced that it is introducing the ability for people to embed single tweets onto things like websites. The embeddable tweets also display the author's account name, and the ability to reply, favorite, retweet, or follow the account. 

Today, we're introducing embeddable Tweets, a new way to add any Tweet to your website just by copying and pasting a line of code. Your website visitors will see a Tweet that focuses on the content by surfacing the conversation and media. Visitors can follow the author with a single-click, and reply, retweet, or favorite the Tweet without leaving the page

The post ended with Twitter stating that it has rolled out a redesigned Tweet button and Follow button for websites. 

Twitter follows suit of Google+ and launches brand pages

Earlier today, Twitter announced a major redesign of its website and mobile applications. The new design puts heavy focus on discovery and seeing only what matters to you. Alongside the new design, Twitter also announced that it has launched the ability for brands to create pages on the microblogging service, rather than normal accounts like it has been prior to today. 

The brand pages will sport a large header image, perfect for a logo, tagline, and/or other visuals. 

You can also control the message visitors see when they first come to your profile page by promoting a Tweet to the top of your page’s timeline. This Tweet helps you highlight your most engaging and important content and better connect with your target audience. The Promoted Tweet on your profile page will appear auto-expanded so that visitors to your page can instantly see the photo or video content that you link to from your Tweet.

Twitter has launched these brand pages with 21 companies today and will slowly be rolling it out to the world in the future. @AmericanExpress and @Staples are two accounts that have brand pages setup. 

Twitter announces complete web and mobile redesign

In a somewhat unexpected move, Twitter today announced that it will soon be rolling out a completely redesigned website and mobile application to users. The company states that it has "simplified the design to make it easier than ever to follow what you care about, connect with others and discover something new."

We’ll be rolling out the redesigned Twitter over the next few weeks. You can see it immediately on the just-updated versions of mobile.twitter.com, Twitter for iPhone, and Twitter for Android. You can get early access on your computer by downloading and logging into Twitter for iPhone or Twitter for Android. We’re working on updates for other apps, such as Twitter for iPad, and will share news as they become available.

The redesigned Twitter focuses on five major sections: "Home," "Connect," "Discover," "Me," and "Tweet." "Home is where you view Tweets from the people you have chosen to follow. It’s your personal collection of Tweets, featuring the latest news, commentary and information from the sources you care about," Twitter said. 

The Connect section allows users of the microblogging service to see who has followed or mentioned them, as well as retweets and favorited tweets. 

When you use Discover, you’ll see results reflecting your interests—based on your current location, what you follow and what’s happening in the world. As you use Twitter more, Discover gets even better at serving up more content just for you.

To begin using the new Twitter on your desktop computer, you must download either the Twitter for iOS or Twitter for Android application and sign in. If you choose not to do that, you'll have to wait a few weeks while Twitter rolls out the redesign to every user. 

PostPost allows you to strip search your Twitter timeline

Say hello to PostPost. It's a service that allows you to, simply put, "strip search" your Twitter timeline. To simplify that statement even more, PostPost allows Twitter users to see information from only the top 200 people the service believes is most relevant to them. You can track comments, posts, links, videos, etc. from those 200 people. 

Why 200 people? Well, PostPost explained to us that the service is based off of Dunbar's Number, the theoretical limit of people that one person can maintain a "significant social relationship with."

"The deluge of real-time data on Twitter can be overwhelming – somewhat akin to drinking from a fire hose if you’re following hundreds or even thousands of people. As such, I wanted to introduce you to a new Twitter search engine that was designed to strip out the noise from your timeline – and help you find relevant news, products, images, etc. only from the 200 people you are most connected with," the company explained. 

Homepage of PostPost

Using the search box above, PostPost users simply have to type in a query (for example, "Apple") and then all tweets that have to do with Apple from the 200 people are displayed. The search can be drilled-down even further to links, photos, and videos as well. 

PostPost seems like a very good tool if you'd like to use Twitter as an information source or if you'd like to track down specific tweets. 

What do you think about it? 

Apple shows off iCloud, camera, Siri in new iPhone 4S ads

Apple aired three new iPhone 4S ads Sunday featuring the new camera, iCloud functionality and Siri. The new Siri ad shows off more responses the phone can give, rather than mostly inputs which were demoed in an ad earlier this month. 

Apple's new iPhone 4S camera ad shows off the 8-megapixel camera and editing features the phone will do.  With iOS 5 you can crop and edit your pictures with enhancements such as red-eye reduction. In addition, Twitter is built right into the OS so you can tweet pictures straight from the Photos application. 

The third ad Apple released Sunday showed off iCloud and the way it can keep everything, everywhere you want them. Automatic Downloads in iTunes if featured along with, iWork, iBooks and Photostream. 

How To: Tweet from Siri

Siri may be the most exciting feature of Apple's new iPhone 4S but there's one thing it won't do, tweet. Well officially it won't tweet for you but you can trick it if you have a Twitter account synchronized with your phone number for SMS updates. 

Siri can send text messages to people just by listening to you so it is possible to tweet, you just have it send a text message to Twitter's short code. 

1.  Qualifications: A Twitter account associated with your mobile phone number, an iPhone 4S and internet connection.

2.  Activate Siri on the iPhone 4S by holding down the Home button. Say "text [your message]."
For example, here I said: "Text this tweet was sent from Siri period."

3.  Siri will now ask you who to send the message to. Say the Twitter short code for your country/carrier. In the U.S. it is 40404. Say "40404."

4.  After address Siri to send the message to Twitter she'll ask your to confirm. You can tap the buttons on the screen or say "send" or "cancel." You may even say "edit" if you want to edit the message. 

This may not be the fastest method for sending regular text messages through Siri, but I believe it is the only way to send SMS updates to Twitter. You may find yourself attempting to say "text Twitter this tweet was send from Siri period" but you'll receive a message that Siri cannot help with Twitter. In addition, when Siri asks to whom to send the message if you say Twitter, even if it is in your contacts, it'll just keep asking. 

After all, Twitter is integrated into iOS 5, here's to hoping Apple adds the functionality to officially tweet from Siri. 

Twitter updates iOS app with new features

Earlier today, Twitter released an update to its iOS application (App Store link), bringing new features such as a refreshed user interface for direct messages on the iPad, improved sign ups, and support for Twitter's official photo uploading service, pic.twitter.com. The update, which brings the app's version number to 3.5.0, is available via the App Store on your iOS device 

• Enhanced sign up experience
• Upload photos to Twitter (pic.twitter.com)
• Updated Direct Messages design on iPad
• Tap a location on iPad to show Tweets nearby
• Bug fixes and minor enhancements

Apple is scheduled to release iOS 5 tomorrow, October 12, 2011, which features system-level integration with Twitter's services. 

[UPDATE] World stops spinning as Twitter goes down for the masses

We've begun receiving several reports that Twitter.com and all of its services are currently suffering a downtime. According to downrightnow.com, Twitter is indeed suffering a service interruption but a majority of the information is not accessible because it is gathered directly from Twitter. No official comment has been released by the company at this time. 

We're currently unable to send out tweets from any third-party applications and we cannot load Twitter.com.

Are you seeing similar issues? Let us know in the comments below!

UPDATE: Twitter seems to be back up and recovering. A cause for the downtime is unknown at this time.