Twitip

I first saw the news on Twitter, with a link from @blogherald to their post Twitter Kills “Pay Per Tweet” Companies (The Twitterverse Rejoices).

It looks like Twitter has finally made up its mind regarding third party tweet ad services (like Be-A-Magpie, BeTweeted and the infamous Sponsored Tweets via IZEA) and the verdict is “no ads for you!”

Then I head over to Sponsored Tweets and check out what they’ve got to say: Changes Coming to Sponsored Tweets

We are going to make some changes to the way Sponsored Tweets works. We will no longer be publishing directly to your account through the Twitter API. Instead you will have to write the tweet yourself in whatever Twitter client you see fit.

Yes, it will be a more manual process. Yes, we liked the old way better too. But we want to comply with Twitters guidelines and be a good ecosystem partner. We have always made adjustments to our system to remain in compliance. Twitter has allotted 30 days to make this change, we will try to get it out as soon as we can. Until then it is business as usual.

Seems some people are thrilled, and some are absolutely irate. Basically, Twitter seems to not be telling us what we can and can’t post, but rather HOW we post it.

… we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API. We are updating our Terms of Service to articulate clearly what we mean by this statement, and we encourage you to read the updated API Terms of Service to be released shortly. (Twitter Blog)

So it’s not that you can’t, it’s just that by doing things this way, it makes it more annoying for you and they’re hoping you give up entirely.

They claim it’s for the “long term health of the Twitter ecosystem”. Some feel that it’s simply because they don’t want anyone making money until they do.

What are your thoughts?

Over the past few weeks, the Twitterverse has been rocked by events that might have as much an impact on the Twitter ecosystem as asteroids did on dinosaurs. For better or worse, when the history of Twitter is written, these events will be remembered for either the birth of Twitter 2.0 or the beginning of the end.

Just over a year ago, I wrote Twipocalypse Now: Warnings of a Twitter Bubble and Twitter Fatigue: Rumors of Twitter’s Demise May Not Be Greatly Exaggerated for Twitip. In those posts, I suggested that Twitter and their third-party developers faced significant threats that would need to be addressed in order for Twitter and its ecosystem to not just survive, but to continue to flourish.

I had originally planned on revisiting those topics 6 months later to see how accurate my predictions were. However, Twitter’s rapid growth and evolution suggested something dramatic was on the horizon, so I decided to wait and see what would happen. (more…)

With Twitter’s much-anticipated advertising platform underway, it’ll be interesting to see where this takes their user base and their financial standing. This brings Twitter another step closer to becoming know as a major, real-time search engine. With that said, here is a look at Twitter’s value from its inception.

On Wednesday at Chirp, Twitter’s developer conference, Apigee launched new developer tools for the Twitter API.

Developers and beginners can use the Apigee console to learn, experiment, test, or explore the Twitter API.

As you can see, each API method is listed down the left hand side. You can use these methods to explore different aspects and functions of the Twitter API. Choose the method you want to use, customize any parameter values, such as screen_name and ID, and hit the Test button. The Apigee console will then issue an API call and you’ll then see a cleanly-formatted response as well as the original request and response headers for the call. What does this mean for the developer? Well, it gives them unprecedented ease of use.

For API methods that require authentication, you can use HTTP basic authentication (a straight username and password). Better still, you can even sign in to Twitter and use that same authentication to sign API calls using OAuth (the system under “sign in with Twitter”). This is incredibly helpful for developers using the Twitter API because no other free tools support OAuth for Twitter methods.

But, possibly the best feature of all is the Snapshot. With Snapshot, any request and response you make with the API Console can be cached and shared with anyone else without your credentials. This is really helpful because it means that when you are trying to get help from someone else for a particular API response, you can just share your Snapshot of the call with them. Fabulous!

Start playing (for free) with the Apigee Console for Twitter!

As many of you recently heard Twitter has just released it’s own client application for Blackberry platform and only days later – acquired Tweetie, one of the popular iPhone Twitter apps. What could it mean for an average Twitter user? (more…)

In June 2009 Twitter launched ‘verified Twitter accounts’. As someone who had had numerous instances of people impersonating my brands (and myself personally) I was really pleased with the new feature and immediately applied to become verified.

Since that time there’s been no word from Twitter. I’ve seen a few accounts ‘verified’ since that time but they are largely fairly sizeable businesses or celebrities. Fair enough I guess – the amount of people applying to be verified must have been pretty large and to verify someone must be a pretty manual process – I put it down to Twitter biting off a bit more than they could chew….

Today I got an email from Twitter with a subject line of – ‘Account verification status update‘. Yay – an update!

I opened the email to see this:

OK – so I’m not verified and there are problems with my request. But what I find odd is that there is no way for me to address the issues. The email says that if I’m a business I can go to a ‘Business Center Page’ for more information – but I have no idea what such a page is or where to find it. I do run a business and my Twitter account is used in conjunction with that business – but I’ve never registered as a business and have never been told about any such ‘Business Center’.

Of course I Googled for more information – only to find others have had the same message in the last few hours.

Not sure what is going on but it leaves me feeling a little confused and disillusioned. In the scheme of things it doesn’t matter too much whether I’m verified or not – however to refer people to some mystical business center when no-one seems to be aware of what it is doesn’t really help anyone.

For most of us, Twitter has become part of our day to day life.

Twitter has made it’s way on to Google’s SERPs as “real time search”.

Even celebrities are using Twitter and tweeting away.

Recent Discovery
I just got this update when trying to login to my Gmail account:

Without looking at it more, these were my first questions:

5 Initial Questions About Google Buzz

1. Is this Google’s attempt to take over Twitter?
2. How messy will this make my email account?
3. I’m sure I can opt out of this, right?
4. At what point do I need to worry about my identity with Google?
5. What FREE tool will Google “acquire” next?

What do you know about Google Buzz? Is it a Twitter replacement? (more…)

Okay, so hopefully everyone’s gotten used to the new design and layout around here by now! Honestly, we’re really loving it. We did “tone down” the graph paper background a bit, after some feedback from readers that said it was a bit too dizzying. Hope everyone agrees that things look great here now!

So this post is to outline the newest way we’re accepting articles from you. A few things have changed, and there have been a few submissions that don’t quite seem to be working properly, so I wanted to put this out there to help out some. (more…)

by Chris Allison (@neboweb) Social Media Strategist at NeboWeb.

I’ll cut to the chase. Twitter isn’t a fad. It’s not going away. Let me tell you why:

They Have Industry Recognition

Industry giants can be intimidating for any new business, especially on the web. Since Twitter’s inception, we’ve seen multiple companies make offers to acquire the young service, and we’ve seen multiple companies get turned down. A lot of people were thinking, “Hey, why didn’t they take the money and run?” I know I was. But, it seems the folks at Twitter had bigger and better things on their mind. (more…)

By Kalvin “Dr. Kal” Chinyere, M.D. of Dr. Kal’s Weight Loss Tips. Follow him @DrKal.

TwitPic is an excellent application that further boosts Twitter’s usefulness. However, so many people use TwitPic incorrectly. Tweeters use TwitPic to tweet pictures of their children at Disney World or pictures of their grandmother at her 100th Birthday Party. C’mon! Your kids are not that cute, and your grandmother??? I don’t even want to see a picture of Halle Berry when she’s 100 years old.

Using TwitPic as if it were Flickr is similar to using your iPhone as if it were an iPod. You are missing out on all of its capabilities.

Below are 10 ways to use TwitPic to improve the quality of your life and the lives of those around you. (more…)