Tag Archives: twitter

What in the world, did Twitter break?

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So as most of you avid Tweeters probably already noticed, Twitter has had a small breakdown. As it turns out an exploit allowing any user to force another user to follow them was found on accident when trying to follow a personal favorite on the site. One user could simply type “accept Kimkardashian” and like magic she’d be in your followers tab, without ever asking her permission.

According to different reports the man immediately started forcing famous celebrities and such to follow him, blogging about it all the way. Well, word got out and lets just say the tech department over at Twitter had an interesting day.  As of now the hack is not working, so a round of applause to the team, and a “dang it” to those of you who were hoping to have Jessica Alba follow you.  All is well in the world of Twitter, at least I know you’ll be back to sleep soundly tonight.

[Via Gizmodo]

Why crop screenshots, when you can directly embed tweets into your webpage?

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The micro blogging service Twitter has rolled out a new tool that will let users to embed tweets into their blogs or websites. Black Bird Pie , is a tool provided by twitter that asks the users, the link of a tweet and and upon hitting the  ”Bake It” button you will be provided with a full fledge ready to embed tweet and the code you need to fit it in your webpage.

Why would you prefer Embedding Tweets than actually taking a screenshot and posting? First of all, the biggest advantage is that whenever you embed a tweet, the tool recognizes your webpage styling like font family and tags from CSS and appy the same formatting on the tweets. Next all, It also copies over whatever background a person uses on Twitter. So in that regard, it is just like taking a screen grab. Well, its simply just like pasting a crop-shot of the actual page with all working links, images, etc!

Here is a screenshot of the tool :

Facebook’s Mission to take Over the Web : Battle Begins

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It’s been roughly three years or so since the word, Social Networking / Social Media / or whatever the newspaper journalists call it, has come into existence.  Market penetration is sky-high, social networks are cashing millions of dollars and advertising culture has been altered. This has made a huge impact on how corporate brands plan their advertising budgets. What are they all looking for?

Users. People. You.

It’s quite obvious, every bit of code written on Facebook is written with the intention of making a difference as to how you play yourself online or network or share stuff. Everything is targeted towards you. This means you are their biggest priority and you make them work. Simple isn’t it? Nah, not that it’s rocket science but lot of corporate boardroom stuff goes into setting a whole thing like this to work and keep more than 400 Million people connected. Let’s get to the point. What will all this result in? Web going social. A hell lot more. Facebook’s got plan to take over the whole web. If you thought Facebook’s got a brawl with Twitter, think again. It’s no more Facebook Vs. Twitter, it’s Facebook Vs. Google. Here are Facebook’s plan why they will make you reconsider your thought.

Facebook Connect : Facebook everywhere!

Facebook.com isn’t just exploding over but it’s getting everywhere. Like a injection, the rest of the web is getting successive doses. About 80,000 websites use Facebook connect to import users from facebook to their service which include services like Digg and soon, Yahoo! too. This means facebook is in charge of users not only on it’s own platform but everywhere else too. Google also has something like Facebook connect but it sucks compared to the popular facebook buddy.

Hang in there Baby!

If you thought Facebook Connect was the biggest invasion into the the huge web itself then here’s some time to alter your thoughts again. Facebook has got another master plan. It’s planning to take over that little strip of real estate in your browser bottom most with a toolbar. That means Facebook everywhere, yes, everywhere!

Like This, Share That.

The “share” and “like” buttons you might be familiar with, will now be available all over the web. Yes, all across the web just like and share any webpage, link, object you like! Facebook now wants to control everything you read and share with your friends.

Geolocation Tagging

With what people do, where they do it is also important as social networks are increasingly growing location aware, especially with the entrance of augmented reality applications. Recently, Twitter added location tagging tweets too and then, there is foursquare, a whole network setup for the location purpose. Facebook will then not only control what you do and share, but also where you do it and how. Now this sounds fun!

The invasion has begun!

Note : As you see above, the invasion has already begun and facebook has started taking the first steps!

Facebook has a 420 Character limit for status updates too

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If you never tried pushing down a huge number of words down your facebook status then here is a restriction you must know if you ever thought of trying it.

If you don’t know, Facebook has some restrictions for updating its Facebook status. You cannot type in more than 420 characters as an update. Thankfully this is 3 times more than Twitter’s character limit of 140 per tweet. If you try updating more than 420 characters, you will be greeted with an error.

Thanks Keith!

Twitter into URL shortening business too?

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Bit.ly, Is.gd, Tr.im, Hop.im and a lot more. Goo.gl too. Now? It’s Finally Twitter! Twitter, the massive microblogging platform the popularized the whole concept of URL shortening starting with TinyUrl.com because people wanted to share URLs which were well above 140 Characters and so they needed something to shrink it and they also need some space to describe it, so this gave birth to URL Shrinking revolution.

But this recently has taken a turn and as been contributing to a lot of Spam and phishing taking place on Twitter via Direct Messages because the biggest advantage of having a shortened URL is that you can hide the destination location of the url so people can be fooled easily by describing the link with some text giving a misinterpretation of what it would lead to while, it leads to some poker or a warez website which is a scam or something.

From now, all the direct messages and Email Notifications from Twitter will have links shortened from Twt.tl and this will help Twitter monitor URLs and prevent such fishing attacks. Here’s a excerpt from their blog post,

Today, we’re launching a new service to protect users that strikes a major blow against phishing and other deceitful attacks. By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.

It surely points that in no time, we will have all replies with twt.tl links too, who knows?

Yahoo partners with Twitter

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Yahoo!, the so called internet giant which is losing its vigor due to immense competition from Google and Bing. If you were following the recent news, you might know that Twitter made few bucks signing a deal with Google and Bing, allowing them to index the tweets.

Lately, we also came across the fact that even Yahoo was indexing tweets from twitter, but there was no such deal. Yahoo! was just using the most famous –  publicly accessible API (Application Programming Interface).

Here’s what the news is. Twitter confirmed that they have partnered with Yahoo on their blog.

According to this deal, Yahoo will index the public timeline from Twitter, second by second from all over the globe and will show relevant tweets in all their searches and portals. What more? Yahoo will make clients for twitter to make tweets directly from anywhere on the Yahoo! network. It’s no surprise that Yahoo still has 600 Million users which is no small figure.

Facebook, Twitter or Google Buzz- What do you choose?

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So are you confused to choose the social network that suits you the best? No problem. We are here to help you. Its very difficult to select between Facebook, Twitter and Google’s latest product Buzz.

Facebook, Twitter and is chosen because they are the top 2 social networking service. Buzz is chosen because it is the latest product and people might think is this good or bad?

The other services might have been listed here. MySpace is probably on a decline. Linkedin is a business tool and the other services don’t give a global platform with all the features.

1. Facebook

This network is the best of all. Well organized and has all the features you will need. The best way is to connect to a person is just become friends. A recent survey done shows that people who use Facebook are most addicted to it.

Another interesting feature of facebook is that you have messages same like mails and direct chat with your friends. This means that you use less of your mail and more of Facebook.

And one of the important feature of FB is that it gives you an advertising platform where you can advertise your products.

The main drawback of Facebook is that the chat and messaging feature takes a lot of time to load and mostly connectivity is bad.

2. Twitter

What makes people attract towards Twitter is its simplicity. It is a place for you to microblog with just 140 characters. Its the right place for you to share your views or even earn money from tweeting.

The friendship method is not followed in this. Twitter has followers. Making friends means following people.

This platform is for sharing tweets for all people who follow you but it won’t reach to a particular person. Even if you type @….. it will mention that person but others will be able to view your tweet. It has messaging system where its up to useless. If you follow people and they follow you, you just receive junk of spams in your mail box.

But twitter to has its worth. You can promote anything you want and it wil reach audience.

3. Google Buzz

This network is too soon to be explained. This doomed into the INTERNET with a heavy promotion from Google. This one interestingly automatically comes with your Google Account. All those who you have in your contacts automatically will become your followers.

With Google promoting it, Buzz has skyrocketed. This is because it has been included in GMail. Buzz has integration with other medias like Flickr, Picasa and even the Twitter.

It has easy use and simple interface. People can just send their messages privately or even publicly. But Google Buzz is only up to Gmail. You cannot find friends and follow them if they are not on the contact list. The features are surely not like other social networking site but has some content in it.

Image Credit : Mashable

Google Buzz to Buzz up your social networking experience online

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Google rules all the market except one, Social Networking. They did try to tap it using Orkut which worked out only in Brazil and India and few other parts of the world. Facebook gained 400 Million users this week which proves Social Networking is a massive market and Google does not want to leave it.

There they come. No, not with a new product, but with new features! It’s Google Buzz that is making all the buzz in the town. Google buzz is a new Social Addon to Google’s existing product Gmail which is used by masses.

I would term it a very smart move, and the biggest reason being that Google doesn’t need a new user base to make up for the social network, they already have the Gmail users. So existing users can get into the network. Another great concept of Google Buzz is that it’s directly from the Inbox so no hazzles of logging into seperate websites. Just log into Gmail and you are there!

Social Web is huge and every second there is something or the other to know. Too many tweets, messages would make one go haywire. Google claims that it will cure all the problems, or perhaps the social disease and sort it the right way. Google Buzz will arrange all the social happenings in the timeline systematically and the best feature is that you can integrate it with service like Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, and Google Reader. (Where’s Facebook?)

Everything here is real time, so no F5 required. Your content can be private or public, as simple as this. Another key feature is the inbox integration of this service. Comment’s are sent into your inbox so you can easily keep track of conversations. This is photo friendly and will show all thumbnails and full screen pictures for service using them.

It’s like a huge timeline with updates from people you follow. You can comment, like and email a reply too. Seems like a mashup of all service around! Google’s timeline aggregater promises that it will include only the stuff you might care about and neglect crappy useless stuff like “brb” messages.

Google Buzz would be surely concentrating on the mobile market too so they are iPhone, Android ready from the beginning. As we said, the location aware internet is on the rise and geo tagging with every post is automatically done with every post. Now this is the complete mashup of all good parts of the best services on the web!

Tweeting from outer space : It did happen!

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Those days are gone when we used to tell twitter is an Earth friendly service. No, its proved wrong now. TJ Creamer, a NASA scientist made history by sending the first tweet directly from the International Space Station.

His first tweet is as follows:

Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station — the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s

TJ Creamer has made history only because of NASA’s efforts to upgrade their software. This upgrade gave the International Space Station for direct access to the Web which has never happened before with what NASA calls the “Ultimate Wireless Connection”.

Before this upgrade tweets were sent down to the station in Earth and then had posted to twitter. There are many people who tweeted this way but with the software upgrade now astronauts can send it directly to twitter.

TJ Creamer was first to do so and rightly will be remembered for this!!

Facebook and Twitter to be school subjects soon!

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As I said, it is exciting to know, its a superb news for the School students in Britain. The Government is planning to include Facebook and Twitter to their curriculum.

The subject is called ‘English Studies: Digital Communication’ where students will have to study the websites as per school curriculum plans for a new English GCSE.

“This qualification builds on students’ interests in digital texts and proved to excite and engage both boys and girls in our pilot. It reflects the changing needs and interests of learners,” a government spokesman said.

Students could take on the subject as stand alone or study it along with English and other subjects.

Editors Note (Monik Pamecha) : This is surely very interesting because students, i mean most of writers on our blog, Etiole are youngsters from age 13-19 so if we get a chance to study them, we would surely score pretty high marks as we spend most of our time on it!  Another advantage of teaching students such things would be actually preparing them for the practical world and if one knows how to use social networks properly, one can surely build a strong PR!

Via Telegraph and image credit : thebrandbuilder.