Twitter’s timeline option puts important tweets up top

Twitter is doing its best to make sure you see the best content in your timeline. At least that’s what it’s hoping it’s doing with today’s announcement of a new timeline option. The new feature drops what Twitter determines are the best tweets at the top of your timeline. Now before you lose your mind, the feature is opt-in and even if you turn it on today, the company is slowly roll it out so it might take weeks before you see the new feature.

The new nameless-feature algorithmically determines which tweets are important to you (based on who you follow and engage with) and moves them to the top of your timeline when you open the app or launch the site. The featured updates will be presented in reverse chronological order in case you were worried Twitter was turning into Facebook. Twitter is hoping this will keep you from missing important updates. Michelle Haq, Twitter timeline project manager told Engadget, “we realized there’s a ton of great content on Twitter and it’s not always easy to find that great content.”

While this seems like a super-charged version of While You Were Away, Haq insists that they are two different features. “While You Were Away only shows when you been away for a very long time,” Haq told Engadget. While this new timeline feature will be there whenever you open the app or load the site. After a quick refresh, the timeline goes back to showing all your full timeline in reverse chronological order.

Vine update lets you reorder an account’s videos

While Twitter is firmly behind keeping things in chronological order, Vine announced that users could reorder the videos of their favorite accounts from newest to oldest, oldest to newest and most importantly by the account’s most popular videos. You can also hide revines while perusing the account. The updated app is available for iOS and Android right now while the actual feature is still rolling out.

The short-video division of Twitter also introduced the ability to edit captions for a brief period. Hopefully this ability to change what you post will make its way to Twitter proper in the future. This feature is available for Android now and will be coming soon to iOS according to Vine.

And finally, the app now supports 3D Touch on iOS. Owners of new iPhones can tap and hold to make a vine and open the Explore feature.

Source: Vine

Twitter introudces new First View ad campaign to aid plummeting stocks

As Twitter’s stocks plummet to an all-time low, the social networking giant has today released a new advertising platform, it hopes will generate some new revenue. The scheme is called First View and provides advertisers with the facility to host their adverts at the top of a user’s timeline for 24-hours, which means every time you sign into your account, the first post you’ll see will be a promoted video.

This announcement comes just a day before Twitter is set to release its Fourth Quarter and full-year earnings. We can only presume that the figures weren’t quite what the company expected and has been forced to introduce a somewhat controversial feature to generate additional funds.

First View is set to roll out in the United States later this month and will only be available to “managed clients”, who are essentially advertisers that work directly with Twitter’s sales team. It will then make its way to additional markets over the course of the next few months, with international companies being offered the opportunity to claim a top ad spot.

Here’s what Deepak Rao, Revenue Product Manager at Twitter, had to say about First View:

“Each day, millions of people come to Twitter to engage in conversations about their passions and every topic of interest that continually shapes culture. At the same time, marketers come to Twitter to reach this live, premium audience through Promoted Trends and Promoted Moments, creating significant brand moments for their product launches, event sponsorships, and film premieres.”

We’re not entirely sure how well this new advertising platform will catch on, though. Twitter appears to be losing regular users on a daily basis, and this is clearly reflected in its trends participation. During Super Bowl 49, the site raked in 28 million posts related to the Big Game and this year a mere 5.93 million tweets rolled in.

Source: Twitter

Come comment on this article: Twitter introudces new First View ad campaign to aid plummeting stocks

Twitter’s ‘First View’ ads put videos at the top of your feed

For Twitter, a lot can happen in a week. After it was reported to be readying a change that would shift the placement of tweets, the company has pushed forward with a new feature that changes what you’ll see in your feed. It’s called “First View” and it allows brands to pay more to position a video ad at the top of every timeline.

Twitter markets the feature as an “engaging and highly visible way to share your brand story with compelling video creative across Twitter’s massive audience.” It operates in a similar way to Facebook’s Suggested Videos or Suggested Posts, in that it will sit between legitimate content on Twitter.com or the official apps and will attempt to catch your eye every time you visit.

It’s no surprise that the company calls the spot its “most valuable advertising real estate.” When brands buy the placement, which sits between the first and third tweets, they’ll own it for 24 hours and you won’t be able to escape it (like you would a Promoted Tweet). Twitter says the feature is already rolling out to a number of selected partners in the US and will expand globally “in the coming months.”

Source: Twitter

Twitter is setting up a safety council to tackle abuse

If there’s one thing that’s hampering Twitter’s adoption in the wider world, it’s that it’s become a pretty toxic place for some people. The firm has decided to tackle this problem by announcing the formation of the Twitter Trust and Safety Council, a group tasked with reforming the service. The council’s stated intention is to ensure the social network is a platform where “anyone, anywhere can express themselves safely and confidently.” The site’s head of global policy, Patricia Cartes, revealed that the body has recruited advocates from a wide network of advocacy groups. There are more than 40 listed contributors, many of which are legitimate anti-abuse organizations like GLAAD, the National Network to End Domestic Violence and the Samaritans.

Twitter has also sought out representatives from child protection agencies, anti-racism / anti-semitism groups and one of the service’s biggest targets: Feminist Frequency. Frequency, led by critic Anita Sarkeesian, is more experienced than most at seeing what Twitter’s ugly side looks like. Her series, Tropes vs. Women — an examination on how women are treated in video games — led to a series of threats ranging from assassination through to acts of domestic terrorism.

The site’s abuse problem has been growing for a while, with the site seemingly incapable of taking positive steps to mitigate it. Recently, Canadian journalist Veerender Jubbal was advised by law enforcement to stay off Twitter after an anonymous figure turned up at his former home with a gun. Jubbal, another games journalist, has been previously targeted by gamergaters who objected to his call for greater ethical standards in the industry. Those with long memories will recall that a picture of him was photoshopped to make him appear to be a terrorist, accused of perpetrating the Paris attacks.

I’d like to clear that up really quick. On Christmas Eve of 2015, an abuser posted Veerender’s old home address with a picture of a gun.

— Little Fat Girl (@KivaBay) January 26, 2016

Twitter has often been accused of not doing enough to deal with online abuse, with former CEO Dick Costolo admitting that “we suck at dealing with trolls.” It’s a state of affairs that may have only now reached the site’s rank-and-file staff after developer Brandon Carpenter felt the full full force of the site’s ire. He tweeted a message in response to the #RIPTwitter meme and was met with a hurricane of piss and vinegar and led him to the following conclusion:

Wow people on Twitter are mean

— Brandon Carpenter (@bhcarpenter) February 6, 2016

Yup, they are.

The formation of the safety board does seem like a strong, positive step to remedying one of Twitter’s least-desirable facets. But, an advisory panel can only suggest so many things and there’s no guarantee that their advice will be heard. Much like Uber’s safety panel — formed to tackle the company’s dwindling reputation — it remains to be seen if any action will actually come out of the move.

Source: Twitter

Twitter says your timeline isn’t changing

Were you panicking at the thought of Twitter messing with your timeline order? Were you declaring #RIPTwitter and getting ready to move to Peach? Relax. Twitter chief Jack Dorsey has piped up to say that there’s no truth to the rumors of a Facebook-like feed arriving next week. It was “never planned,” he says. In fact, Dorsey adds that the company hopes to make Twitter “feel more, not less, live” — he knows full well that you want that steady stream of updates.

It’s not clear where the rumor came from if it wasn’t true, but it’s not shocking that Twitter would largely stick to a chronological feed. That feature is precisely what separates it from other social networks — despite Facebook’s attempts to improve its handling of live events, Twitter is still where you go to find breaking news, share reactions to a TV show or watch the latest music beef unfold. Out-of-order features like “while you were away” can help you catch up on things you missed, but they wouldn’t make much sense if they were your primary gateway to Twitter.

Source: Jack Dorsey (Twitter 1), (2), (3)

Twitter needs searchable GIFs for fun and profit

This week, a group of Android users noticed a new feature in the Twitter app: a GIF button that can be used to search through trending GIFs to drop into status updates. As you’d expect, the internet lost its collective mind. Twitter is the unofficial home of GIFs. Whether you’re sharing a quick moment in time or trying to make a point without words, bite-size animated images are a perfect match for the social network’s dynamic timeline.

If people aren’t seeing it yet twttr is testing way cool gif feature. cc @bluechoochoo pic.twitter.com/LuTsVeUiSs

— Phil Pearlman (@ppearlman) February 4, 2016

Introducing a native way to search and add GIFs to tweets seems like a no-brainer. It’s what the people want, which is good, because Twitter is desperately trying to create a service that more people want. If the company pulls this off, it’ll appease the will of animated-image aficionados, gain some new users and (gasp) give the not quite profitable company another source of revenue.

A few years ago, developers and brands tried to convince us that “second-screen” apps were the ideal way to follow along with our favorite TV shows. For the most part, they sucked. In the end, the ultimate second-screen application was Twitter. Whenever there’s a TV event, you don’t go to Facebook to see how people are reacting; you head to Twitter. Sporting events, awards shows, premieres or even episodes of Game of Thrones see more juice on Twitter than they ever would on Facebook.

Twitter is in the moment; Facebook is “Hey, did you see that thing that happened a few hours ago?” Twitter knows this and plays up its part of the right-now aspect of its service. For the upcoming Super Bowl, the social network is going all out to remind users that it’s the destination for real-time information.

Now Twitter has the opportunity to partner with networks to offer up nearly real-time GIFs of these events to add to the conversation. During last week’s hilarious X-Files episode, for instance, it could have surfaced the following image:

It was a turning point in the episode, and if it had been available within the Twitter app, it would have been tweeted out almost immediately. Then retweeted again and again. As it currently stands, a GIF like this would be created after the show aired, by someone in the audience, from a recording. Instead Fox could have created this GIF with its branding beforehand and let the entirety of Twitter handle its advertising.

To get these animated images into its system, Twitter could partner with consumer and entertainment brands. The GIF button would not only allow users to search for GIFs but would also surface trending and featured images. For example: The NFL could sponsor the featured area and fill it with GIFs of big plays from the game immediately after they happen. The trending section would have the top GIFs being shared at the moment, and the search field would offer up a library of GIFs for any situation. All of this in the Twitter app ready to go at a moment’s notice.

This weekend’s Super Bowl will be watched, as always, by billions. Twitter will light up with play-by-play commentary of not just the game, but the pregame, the commercials and the halftime show. Those comments could be accompanied by GIFs of amazing plays and halftime shenanigans. (Oh, I hope Left Shark returns.)

In 2014, Twitter purchased SnappyTV to help it quickly create short videos of live TV events. Going that extra step to create a GIF from those videos is simple enough.

Twitter could make sharing animated images easier — something that’s quite cumbersome on mobile right now. The by-product of that is relevancy. If it can get more people to join the conversation with these images, maybe, just maybe, new users will jump aboard for the chance to send GIFs about their favorite show or movie.

These topical GIFs can easily become the reaction GIFs of the future. The Abe Simpson snippet below is from Simpsons episode “Bart After Dark,” which aired nearly 20 years ago. Maybe we’re not all walking into a brothel and seeing our grandson working the front desk, but the bit works when you want to convey the feeling of walking into a situation and realizing you should leave right away. It’s timeless and will outlast the actual show for as long as we use GIFs to communicate.

Plus, these GIFs could equal money. Twitter is not a profitable enterprise. Sure, it makes more money than ever, but it’s not enough to cover the costs of all our 140-character tirades.

The NFL doesn’t want you livestreaming its games from Periscope, but it might be open to feeding branded GIFs to Twitter. The UFC isn’t a fan of you making GIFs of its fights, but it might want to create and serve its own.

Then of course there are the brands. Yes, Starbucks, Taco Bell, Honda, H&R Block and others will want in on this. But the beauty of the implementation is that users will determine which tiny ad will end up in their timeline. Most ads are lame, but there are some gems out there. I mean, come on, who doesn’t want a Night Vision Top Hat?

Twitter selling your tweets as ad space seems, well, icky. But we’re already making GIFs from commercials, movies, TV shows and sporting events. Users are pulling in video from streams and their cable boxes, using a variety of apps to create GIFs on their own, and uploading them to Twitter, Imgur, Giphy and Reddit. Twitter could step in and make it as simple as a search. Brands (ugh, brands) have the opportunity to control the message Twitter users see by creating content that works in a snack-size format.

In fact, it’s already happening. PopKey offers up searchable and featured GIFs for text messaging, Slack and Twitter. It’s also partnering with companies like Starbucks to create tiny, looping ads.

At the end of the day, users just want an easier way to tweet out GIFs. It’ll be up to Twitter to figure out if it can make money off that desire.