Twitter Cards with link to mobile app

Twitter had a developer meetup and announced upcoming Twitter Cards.  The concept of Twitter Cards have not changed much.  It allowed third party developers to embed their rich content, such as summary of content, photo or video clip as part of the expanded tweet.  But what's new was the link to mobile app where viewers can download the mobile app.

new @twitter card types: #Summary #Image #Player twitter.com/davemcclure/st…
— Dave McClure (@davemcclure) April 3, 2013

This means as tweets get passed around, so does the link to the original app through which the content was shared.  Just like Facebook users clicked on click to play FarmVille link, Twitter third party developers can use Twitter to spread their adoption and maintain active user base.

Twitter has all grown up.  It has come full circle and realized that it now has to compete with Facebook to compete for mobile user's eyeball time.  As its final act to demonstrate that it's now fully claiming itself as its own social network, Twitter wants to be a social network that is friendly to app developers again.

Twitter is retiring TweetDeck mobile

TweetDeck iPhone and Android app are going away.  If you have been following Twitter, they have been making series of changes.  They are replacing Twitter API 1.0 with API 1.1 to put tighter control on API rate limit.  They stopped their support for posting tweets to Facebook.  Speaking of end of Facebook support, TweetDeck will no longer be supporting posting to Facebook either.  (Facebook still continues to support posting from Facebook status update to Twitter.)

Au revoir, TweetDeck.
Interesting that the last update was support of Instagram,
the network that could have been Twitter's.

What do all these mean to Twitter users?

Twitter bets on Vine

I somehow missed this news earlier that Twitter acquired Vine around October last year.  Apparently Jack Dorsey liked the Vine demo so much that he pushed for Twitter execs to acquire near-launch Vine.

Since the acquisition last year, the team Vine has been polishing their app and integrating it with Twitter for native display.  Just the other day Vine iPhone app has just hit the market.

The concept is really simple.  Vine lets you record video snippets up to 6 seconds, and share it with other users.  It acts and feels much like GIF animation in that it loops the video, but different from it in that it adds sounds.

Twitter community is starting to debate whether this is a good move for Twitter.  Some are concerned that adding video will complicate Twitter UX and cause Twitter to lose one of its key asset, simplicity.  Some believe that it is a brilliant move that readies Twitter for upcoming IPO (I don't think there is much disagreement in inevitability of its IPO).

HootSuite += Seesmic

HootSuite just announced that they are acquiring Seesmic.  This is not an acquisition for talents or technology, but primarily to absorb Seesmic's paying customer base and to eliminate a competitor.

HootSuite gets Seesmic users;
or one may say HootSuite owl gobbles up Seesmic raccoon.

Twitter's wrong turn away from developers

Just read Twitter's announcement on Michael Sippey's further developer's guideline to Twitter API.  Their basic message can be summed up as this: Please do not look to support Twitter as social media channel from your cool new app.  Twitter is big enough, and is more interested in making money than attracting more users.

Of course you cannot say that directly.  So Sippey uses a 2x2 chart to illustrate how small impact the new API guideline will have to developers according to the third party app universe seen by Twitter.

Twitter developers can be creative and do things in upper left, lower left and lower right quadrant.  But upper right where individual tweets are displayed and new tweets can be posted by consumers, no developer creativity will be permitted by Twitter.

Will social network federate?

There are a few horror stories on developing apps on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn's public API.  Among them Dalton Caldwell's recent experience dealing with Facebook has been making Hacker News headlines.  Caldwell wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg and posted it on his blog after he has been advised to either join Facebook or stop using Facebook Open API.  Caldwell created an app that looked similar to Facebook App Center using API, and he believed that Facebook changed their tactic from supporting his efforts to cutting his access off to his project unless he joins Facebook on acqui-hire term.

This story reminded me of the question that I posed to myself earlier: Will social network like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn federate to create network of social networks?

Twitter followers for sale: Not good for building trust

It is no secret that you can buy Twitter followers.  There are several services that offer thousands of quick Twitter followers for a nominal charge.  On the surface it looks like harmless things to allow.  After all, Twitter follower count is built on top of game mechanics.  Everyone is invited to increase their follower base as if those who have signed up for frequent flyer miles.  Since airlines allow miles to be purchased, what is wrong with allowing Twitter users to buy followers?

Nothing.  As long as it's clear to everyone that followers are status that can be bought.

app.net: Will it fly?

There is an interesting project getting started.  It's called app.net.  It's about creating public-owned Twitter-like service without advertiser support, but with user subscription.  Its mission is to build third party application ecosystem and promote its success.  It's headed by Dalton Caldwell who ran Imeem earlier.  

Caldwell is betting that there will be 10,000 people who are willing to fork off $50 per year to fund app.net service.  And he's promising that he won't ever turn his back on third party application developers, unlike Twitter has done in recent years.



Dalton Caldwell makes app.net pitch.
You can find more information here.

It's an interesting idea.  I'm sure anyone who has been frustrated with the way Twitter has been treating third party developers will be happy with what Caldwell is promising.

Twitter: bye-bye LinkedIn, hello Facebook

LinkedIn announced today that it will no longer display tweets in its home page.  LinkedIn will continue to support posting its network updates to Twitter, however.  On the surface this sounds like LinkedIn's decision to stop displaying tweets.  But there is more happening here than meets the eyes.

Twitter is changing its dance partner;
bye-bye LinkedIn, hello Facebook.

Menshn: Twitter gets a political copycat

It was interesting to see negative reactions to Menshn, twitter-like political social network.  It was founded by Louise Mensch, British conservative member of Parliament, and Luke Bozier.  The site went live first in U.S., and is launched with ambition of creating open dialogue platform for U.S. presidential political discussions.

After reading sharply negative post about Menshn on Gigaom (here's another critical review of Menshn), I decided to take a look around myself.

Brits are setting up U.S. politics discussion platform.
In order to become viable, I see lot of challenges ahead, though.

Humblebrag: Twitter-only phenomenon?

Have you seen humblebrag?  Urban Dictionary defines humblebrag as following:

Humblebrag: When you, usually consciously, try to get away with bragging about yourself by couching it in a phony show of humility.

It's like someone is pretending to be humble on the surface, but in reality bragging about how remarkable her life is.  Let me show you some examples of humblebrag:

Facebook, Twitter and DNT

It should be no news to anyone that Facebook went IPO today.  In spite of much anticipated IPO debut, Facebook hardly budged from original price of $38.  It will be interesting to see how Facebook can maintain its market cap once underwriting banks stop propping the stock price.

Out of many analysts' reporting, one of the Facebook news was class action lawsuit brought by Facebook users seeking $15 billion.  It alleges that Facebook has been tracking user behavior even after user leaves Facebook site.

Twitter IPA: good start to fix a big problem

Last week Twitter announced that they will start implementing Innovator's Patent Agreement (IPA).  Core idea of IPA is a novel one.  It's Twitter's attempt at addressing broken software patent system.  Instead of seeking legislative overhaul of our current patent system, Twitter is declaring that they will use their software patents only as defensive measure, and the control of patent, if used in other than "Defensive Purpose", will remain with inventors, not with Twitter.  Twitter is encouraging other software companies to follow suit.

I like the idea.  There are way too much resources being wasted because of patent trolls suing companies just to monetize their patent portfolio.  Many of these patent trolls are not even original inventors.  They buy broadly applicable software patents from inventors or companies with sole purpose of suing others.

Patent infringement suits have real cost.  Just yesterday Facebook announced that they are buying about 650 patents that Microsoft acquired from AOL recently for $550 million in cash.  Earlier Microsoft bought hundreds of these patents at $1.06 billion from AOL.  This is a good example of how one bad actor (Yahoo suing Facebook for software infringement) can have ripple effect on how all other players in the market.

Current software patent system is broken.  The right thing is to fix the current system which creates drag for everyone in the tech industry.  Company should not be allowed to use software patent to sue others unless they have implemented a product using the patent and using software patent to protect themselves.  There are many cases that still fall outside this category (like Apple suing Samsung and other smartphone makers), but it would eliminate many obvious patent trolls.

I applaud Twitter for taking leadership role in improving software patent system.

Twitter: suing spammer - step forward or sidestep?

It's no secret that most Twitter users don't tweet.  Just the other day Ask Your Target Market (AYTM) released survey of 200 Twitter users in U.S.  According to the survey, only 20% of Twitter users make at least one tweet a day, and vast majority of users either don't tweet at all (13.5%) or rarely tweet (42.5%).  If you look closely at daily active users, only about half of users are making multiple tweets a day.  That means most of traffic is generated by only about 10% of users.

AYTM released survey data of 200 Twitter users from March;
but this is not news, it's been well known fact.

Facebook and Twitter as mobile news curation platform

Pew Research Center has released an article outlining what Facebook and Twitter mean for news.  They conducted telephone surveys with a nationally representative sample of 3,016 adults in U.S. back in January 12 through 29.

We all know Facebook has much more active and larger user base.  When reading the below stats, you should keep in mind that Facebook has about 425 million monthly active users on mobile as of Dec 2011 while Twitter has about 100 million monthly active users as of Oct 2011.  Given the difference in user base, it's natural to expect that makeup of Facebook and Twitter users are different.  The article talks a bit about that, and it's not surprising.

Facebook Interest: why it is important to Facebook, Twitter and marketeers

It is astonishing to see how fast Facebook can move and introduce new things considering their scale.  They have 500+ million daily active users, yet at the speed they can churn out new features and roll them out to all user base is truly remarkable.

All Things D: Dick Costolo

All Things D had an interview with Dick Costolo the other day.  He talked about how Twitter is butting heads with Google about Google search ranking of Twitter results, and spent several minutes clarifying recent Twitter's announcement withheld tweets based on country location.

Twitter's tough balancing act

Twitter users everywhere are reacting to the news, and I've read several articles taking stance on the latest decision by Twitter.  They ranged from good to really bad, and you can find plenty of examples a last couple of days.  After sleeping on Twitter censorship announcement, I wanted to share a few more perspectives on the news.

Tweet withheld

Yesterday Twitter announced on its blog that they will start implementing selective tweet censoring based on geographical location.

Idea is to hide certain tweets in the requested country "only when required to do so in response to what we [Twitter] believe to be a valid and applicable legal request."

From their blog announcement, Twitter suggests that they are implementing this tweet "withholding" to meet legal requirements such as copyright infringement.  But it's not clear whether they will start censoring tweets based on government's request.  What if Syrian government requests Twitter to block all tweets that are related to anti-government movement?  Will Twitter apply their censoring to all regimes' requests?

It's a very slippery slope.  By setting up the precedence of censorship, Twitter will lose user's confidence as the global microblogging media that helped bring about 2011 Arab Spring.

Update 10:43PM PST 1/28: I've slept on this topic, and shared a few perspectives on Twitter's censorship announcement.  You can read them here.

Twitter Malware: It's Coming After You

Most of readers of this blog are sophisticated social media users. I would include myself in that category. Well, I would have until last Sunday.

I may need to wear a shirt like this in the office.

Yes, I will come out and admit it for once. I got suckered into clicking on Twitter malware link that was forwarded to me by one of my trusted venture friends. Now that I got that off my chest, and demonstrated that I could be just as naive as thousands of users out in the internet, I think I can talk about this incident somewhat objectively.

It turns out that this particular malware spreads by getting Twitter user to click on the shorten t.co URL that was sent via private message. When unsuspecting recipient clicks on the link, it automatically sends the same tweet to all of the recipient's followers as private message. Very sneaky.

It was quite an embarrassing moment when I realized what just happened (I even had to update the new Twitter app to follow the link on my iPhone). Thanks to a couple of my co-workers and good Twitter citizen @DevonAlderton, I came to my senses only after a few hours later. Once a few seconds of disillusionment of my malware detect-o-meter had passed, I regained enough composure to delete all my private tweets to all my followers (thank goodness I don't have Kim Kardashian's follower base), and took remedial actions to shore up my defense.