Twitter wants you to DM brands about your problems
Ever since brands started proliferating on Twitter, angry users have been shouting at them when they have problems. Naturally, brands have long Twitter accounts dedicated to supporting users with problems, but most of those interactions were publicly seen on Twitter for everyone to see. Now, Twitter has made a slight change to the way profiles are displayed on mobile to encourage users to use direct messages rather than public tweets.
Some users (including this one) see a large, prominent “message” button when visiting the support accounts for brands including Apple, Beats, Uber, Activision and a few others. According to TechCrunch, this isn’t rolling out to everyone yet — it’s just a design test.
There’s also a new detail included in the profile page that says when the companies are most responsive, a handy thing to know if you’re trying to get help quickly. Apple’s support account says its most responsive from 5AM to 8PM PT, for example.
We’ve reached out to Twitter to see if it has any other details on its new profile feature, including when it’ll roll out to more support accounts and when more users will start seeing it.
Via: TechCrunch
Twitter for iOS Gets Shortcut Keys for Smart and Bluetooth Keyboards
Twitter has quietly introduced new keyboard shortcuts for iPad owners using Bluetooth and Smart Keyboards, in the latest update to its iOS app.
The new shortcuts were revealed in a series of tweets by Twitter app developer Amro Mousa yesterday. Mousa let it be known that holding down the Command key brings up a shortcut sheet on connected devices running iOS 9 or later.
Holding down the key shows shortcuts for a new tweet (Command+N), move left one tab (Shift+Command+[), and move right one tab (Shift+Command+]), but there are others available, as Mousa later highlighted.
@amdev CMD+R to reply in tweet details or a DM conversation. And CMD+Enter to send. 😋
— Amro Mousa (@amdev) August 2, 2016
The additional shortcuts are for closing a tweet dialog (Command+W), replying in tweet details or a DM conversation (Command+R), sending a tweet (Command+Enter), and another way of cycling through Home, Notifications, Moments, Messages, and Me screens in the app (Command+1 through 5).
Twitter can be downloaded from the iOS App Store for free. [Direct Link]
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Twitter’s Olympics coverage includes live Moments and Periscope
Much like Google, Twitter is going all-out to make itself a one-stop shop for summer Olympics coverage… and this year, there’s a distinct focus on live action. The social network has revealed that there will be an Olympics-specific Moments section (shown below) that will help you keep track of your home country or individual sports as they happen, one tweet at a time. There will also be an Olympics-oriented Periscope channel — no, you probably won’t see someone broadcasting an event from their phone, but you may just get a feel for Rio de Janeiro from someone who’s there.
Twitter isn’t stopping there, as you might guess. You can use hashtags to trigger Olympics-related emoji (such as national flags and medals), while Vine’s Explore section will have related videos. And if you happen to be visiting Rio yourself, you’ll see live tweets on the city’s Arcos de Lapa aqueduct. Overkill? Maybe, but there’s no question that you’ll know when a favorite athlete gets a podium finish.
Source: Twitter Blog, PR Newswire
Twitter Extends Functionality of ‘Moments’ for Users to Easily Follow Olympics
Twitter today revealed a change in how its “Moments” feature will work during the weeks of the Summer Olympic Games being held in Rio de Janeiro beginning August 5. A new tab for the Rio Olympics will be added to Moments — and every platform the Twitter feature is available for — but now users will be able to pipe news from the tab and into their own timeline for the entirety of the Olympic Games, which run until August 21.
Previously, Moments would only fill up a user’s timeline with news from any particular channel for a couple of hours, sometimes as long as a few days, but the Rio Olympics mark the first time the feature has been extended to nearly a month (via TechCrunch). Like with traditional Moments, when the event is over, the tweets and news disappear from your timeline completely.
Twitter hopes that this will allow those interested in the Olympics to follow along with news and updates coming out of the ceremony with minimal hassle, since they won’t need to go in and specifically follow individual news personalities, media companies, and olympians — whom they might just end up unfollowing when it’s all over anyway.
You’ll see the option to follow country specific Moments, which will last throughout the Games, so the best of what’s happening with your team will appear in your timeline for the entirety of the Olympics. You can also just opt to follow your favorite sports and events to see these Tweets in your timeline, or catch up on what you missed every day with recap Moments that will highlight results, medal counts and more. Of course, when a Moment that you follow ends, so do the Tweets, leaving your timeline the way it was before.
The following mechanic in Moments isn’t restricted to blanketed “Olympics” coverage either, since users will be able to temporarily subscribe to “their favorite sports and events,” like coverage of a specific country’s results or news out of the Gymnastics finals. In addition, when users visit Moments during the Olympic Games, each day it will be updated to include recaps of event results, medal wins, “and other notable newsworthy items.”
The Moments tab is currently available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom and the United States. These countries, in addition to Germany, France, and Japan, will also get “country specific Moments” during the Rio Olympics this year. The bolstered Olympics tab in Moments will begin rolling out “in the coming days,” but users can already prepare for the Olympics by reading its dedicated tab in Twitter’s lightning bolt Moments menu right now.
In order to take advantage of the massive influx of tweets and users during the Olympics, and battle some recent negative growth statistics, Twitter is also preparing 207 team emojis for the social network, activated when users tweet with the appropriate hashtag of their favorite country. Of course, the company’s own Periscope and Vine apps will have featured Rio-related channels and content to keep fans engaged throughout the month of August.
Twitter can be downloaded from the iOS App Store for free. [Direct Link]
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Twitter will livestream the ‘Suicide Squad’ NYC premiere
After livestreaming the Democratic National Convention, Wimbledon and MLB and NHL games, Twitter is diving into the entertainment space with a stream of the Suicide Squad red carpet premiere in NYC. It’ll kick off at 6 PM tonight from the Beacon Theater, Variety reports,and the stream itself will be displayed on a special page alongside realtime tweets. The streaming event is being produced by Buzzfeed Motion Pictures, and you can expect chatter from Buzzfeed’s Try Guys personalities Keith Habersberger and Zach Kornfeld. Given Twitter’s big push into live video, it makes sense for it to start with one of the biggest film premieres of the year. It also reemphasizes the company’s new branding, which centers on what’s happening now.
Source: Variety
Facebook and Twitter try to attract YouTube stars with ad money
Ask a YouTube star why they don’t share videos directly to Facebook or Twitter and they’ll probably tell you that there’s no money in it — they make far more from YouTube ads and sponsored clips. The social networks are doing something about that, though. Bloomberg understands that both Facebook and Twitter are working on ad models that would give internet celebrities an incentive to post directly to their services.
To start, Facebook has confirmed that it will test a “bunch of different formats” that give creators a cut of the ad revenue. In one case, they’d get the same 55 percent as they would on YouTube. You should see this in the “coming months,” Facebook says. Twitter is already offering a slice of revenue through its Amplify program, but a Bloomberg source claims that it’ll give individual creators the same 70 percent of sales revenue that it would offer to big-name media outlets. Both sites, meanwhile, want makers to label sponsored videos as ads and get cash from the brands they’re pitching.
There’s no guarantee that major YouTubers like Ricky Dillon (above) or Miranda Sings will embrace the concept. Their audiences know where to go to find them, and they could just as easily post links to their YouTube videos. However, this might give them an incentive to repackage clips specifically for social networks and boost their overall income. That’s good for Facebook and Twitter, of course, but it would also help stars both expand their audiences and reduce their dependency on one site — if YouTube ever shrank their revenue or kicked them off, they could still make a living.
Source: Bloomberg
Twitter streams its first eSports tournament this weekend
Twitter is expanding beyond traditional stick-and-ball streams and moving into the lucrative eSports realm this weekend. As part of a partnership with Eleague and Turner Broadcasting, the microblogging service will air two days of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive play from Atlanta. The action starts today at 5pm Eastern with semi-finals. Eleague’s end-of-season championship play starts Saturday afternoon at 4 Eastern with two teams going head to head in a best-of-three series.
Of course, streams on Twitter or Twitch won’t replace this weekend’s traditional broadcast on the TBS cable network, but will serve as a different venue for a much different audience than TV. It’s a bit surprising that this will be the first time Twitter has streamed eSports, but hey, everyone has to start somewhere.
Source: Eleague
Twitter’s Snapchat-like stickers are now available to all
After announcing its intentions late last month, Twitter has finally jumped on the sticker bandwagon. The company announced it has completed the rollout of its “visual spin on hashtags,” allowing you to furnish your photos with strategically-placed emoji and other custom-made cartoons. They’re searchable too, just in case you want to see other people’s crazy creations.
In the past year, apps like Snapchat and Facebook Messenger have helped popularize stickers, at least in the west. Asian messaging services like Line have been on board for some time and sell branded packs from popular franchises like Hello Kitty. It’s logical to assume that, like custom emoji, Twitter will seek to monetize its graphics and allow brands to pay cold hard cash to add their own.
If you’ve been looking to up your sticker game, or just think your dog could use a nice pair of cartoon sunglasses, Twitter will now place a small smiley icon on the bottom-right part of a photo you wish to attach. Once you hit the button, you’ll be presented with a menu of available stickers that are loosely grouped by category, allowing you to select, quickly place and post to your followers.
Source: Twitter
Twitter Debuts ‘Stickers’ as it Faces Slowest Revenue Growth in Three Years
Twitter today will begin rolling out its new “Stickers” feature for iOS and Android devices, which it first announced in June, letting users choose from a set of custom-made stickers in order to customize photos before posting them to the micro-blogging social network. The update brings Twitter a step closer to the comical editing capabilities of Snapchat, where users can place, enlarge, and filter emojis layered on top of their pictures.
But, ahead of the official launch of Stickers, Twitter reported “its slowest revenue growth since going public in 2013.” As reported by Reuters earlier this week, Twitter’s most recent earnings forecast referenced a “disappointing” near future for the company as it struggles to keep pace with services that are catching fire, like Snapchat and Instagram.
Now, everyone can use #Stickers on photos! Celebrate with us tomorrow as we #StickTogether . pic.twitter.com/LOh2jygRno
— Twitter (@twitter) July 27, 2016
Overall, this year the company’s user base expanded 1 percent from Q1 (310 million monthly active users) to Q2 (313 million MAU). Revenue during the second quarter also hit below expectations, as the company’s current quarter forecast of between $590 million and $610 million fell below analyst estimates of about $678.18 million.
The question now for investors, and executives at Twitter, is whether the service should pivot into a “niche product,” now that its days of booming growth are behind it, and most people sticking around are longtime, loyal users. Either way, the company is said to have a plan in mind to turn things around, focusing on five key areas: its core service, live-streaming video, the site’s “creators and influencers,” safety, and developers.
“Clearly, the turnaround is still a work in progress and the question of whether being a platform for a mass audience versus a niche audience needs to be answered,” said James Cakmak, analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co.
“We are a year into Dorsey coming back and there is really no end in sight of when it is going to start picking up to where investors are going to be happy,” said Patrick Moorhead, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.
During the earnings call (which the company has streamed on its own live-streaming app Periscope in the past), CEO Jack Dorsey pointed out small, incremental changes brought to Twitter that he believes will help make bigger differences in public opinion in the long run. These amount to gaining the most out of its 140 character limit, including not counting links and mentions — and soon media links — in a tweet’s character count. Presumably, beginning today, he and Twitter also hope Stickers will help bridge the divide between potential new users and their reluctance to commit to the service.
Those interested can learn more about Stickers here, and anyone who has yet to do so can get the Twitter app for free from the App Store. [Direct Link]
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Sky Sports will share Premier League goals on Twitter as they happen
After spending a record £4.2 billion on securing the rights to 126 live games over the next next three Premier League seasons, Sky wants more people tuning into coverage regardless of where they are (as long as it’s not on Vine). It’s already announced that it will show highlights on-demand from this season — including extended replays on TV, the web and mobile through Sky Go — but the broadcaster confirmed today that it will soon push real-time video clips direct to Twitter for anyone to view.
In partnership with Twitter, Sky Sports will show a “selection of the key goals and moments from every Premier League game broadcast during the season” and detailed post-match analysis. Clips will be pushed to Sky Sports’ @SkyFootball account, which looks set to build on its already-impressive three million followers.
Sky Sports customers will also get access to more clips from every match shown. They’ll be available through the Sky Sports Football Score app, which will also show full highlights of all Premier League and Football League games from every match, including those shown live on BT Sport, right after the final whistle. From this season, lucky viewers in Ireland can watch 3pm kick-offs too, which really rubs it in the noses of their UK counterparts.
AIVAnet 