Meerkat reminds users that it has a points system
Did you know Meerkat has a points system? Yup, it’s been around since launch, and there’s even a Leaderboard that shows streamers with the highest scores, similar to the ones you see in games. Since it was pretty easy to miss unless you went live at least once — or if you quickly jumped ship to Twitter-owned rival Periscope — Meerkat has decided to make its score system available to all its users. Now, it’s not just streamers who can earn points: viewers can, as well, by participating (commenting, Liking, retweeting, et cetera) in live broadcasts. The announcement’s wording also makes it sound like the team is retroactively awarding points for previous interactions. Will this entice old users to ditch Periscope and come back to Meerkat? Probably not. But it’s a fun little feature for people who decided to stick around.
Source: Meerkat
Twitter says that running a company is a full-time job, tells us absolutely nothing
It’s been a little over a week since former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo announced stepping down from his position, effective July 1, and Jack Dorsey took over as interim CEO. And now, Twitter’s board of directors is letting everyone know that being CEO of Twitter is a full-time job. You know, just in case you thought it was a part-time job.
It’s interesting that Twitter’s board of directors took a little over a week to come out and say what most people already know–running a company is a full-time job. Even more thought-provoking is that this update tells us absolutely nothing beyond what we already know: a search committee is actively searching out a new CEO to present before the board.
Thanks for rehashing the hash, Twitter.
Twitter Board of Directors Provides Update on CEO Search
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – June 22, 2015 – The Board of Directors of Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) today provided an update on its CEO search process.On June 11, 2015, Twitter announced that current CEO Dick Costolo would step down effective July 1, 2015. The Board has established a Search Committee to identify candidates to become Twitter’s next CEO. The Committee has retained Spencer Stuart, a leading global executive search firm, to assist in a thorough search process that will include both internal and external candidates.
The Committee will only consider candidates for recommendation to the full Board who are in a position to make a full-time commitment to Twitter. The search is proceeding with a sense of urgency but the Committee will take the time necessary to find the right CEO to lead the next phase of Twitter’s growth.
Peter Currie, Twitter’s Lead Independent Director and Chair of the Search Committee, said, “The Board has the utmost confidence in the strong management team Dick has assembled and in Jack Dorsey’s ability to lead the company on an interim basis while we identify a permanent CEO. We are confident in Twitter’s product roadmap and excited by the current pipeline. We also believe much more can be done to realize Twitter’s enormous unmet long-term potential. In our next CEO, we are looking for a bold thinker and proven leader capable of helping Twitter fully capitalize on its unique platform for the benefit of users, advertisers and employees, and to maximize value for investors in the years ahead.”
via: ReCode
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Twitter is testing new ways to better discover relevant products and places
Twitter today announced its initiative to dish out “timely and relevant” pages, products, and places on your new feed. These new pages will feature video and images about the product, along with other helpful information, such as a description, price, and an avenue of purchase.
Products and places work differently, actually showing you a top curator’s collection over a full blown ad like pages seem to do. Twitter says you will be able to “browse rich collections from influencers you care about and get more information about the products or places you find interesting.”
Twitter invited a few top curators on the social networking service to demonstrate how it works, such as HBO’s Game of Thrones and Nike’s LeBron Elite collection. From the looks of it, these collections wont pop up in your Twitter feed, but are something you can find on your favorite curator’s profile.
Twitter said in its blog that users will be able to view collections like these on Android, iOS, and the web. There’s only a handful of top curators that have been invited for testing this new avenue for advertising, but more will be added over time.
These new features seem to be apart of Twitter’s new initiative to enhance the users experience over catering to advertisers, which it has done very blatantly in the past. However, between the Project Lightning announcement and what they’ve revealed today, it seems like they’re truly going back to focusing on the user.
The beautiful thing about these new features is that Twitter is integrating in a way that isn’t intrusive to the user experience. If you’re interested, make sure you’re running the latest version of Twitter for Android.
What do you think of this new way to curate content? Sound off in the comments!
source Twitter
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Twitter tests pages that collect tweets about places and products
Twitter started life as a way to let your friends know what you were doing and thinking. But everyday the glorified status update service evolves in an attempt to be all things to all people and, more importantly for its bottom line, all companies. Twitter is experimenting with pages dedicated to specific products and places. This is a little different from the new event specific feeds and the dedicated buy button that debuted last year. Rather than just a button a company can embed in a tweet, this is basically a profile dedicated complete to a product. That includes a photo or a video about it, plus a description, price and, obviously, the option to buy it. But, just as important, below that you’ll find a bunch of relevant tweets, including posts about the product from people you follow, news updates from the company itself or other related content. And of course, similar pages can be built for places such as restaurants or museums. Twitter is also allowing tastemakers and brands to curate their own collections of places and goods. So, if you needed to find all of the products that Demi Lovato has endorsed you could in one quick trip to Twitter.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Source: Twitter
Twitter reveals Project Lightning in demo
Twitter has a big, new feature in the works called Project Lightning that is scheduled to be released later this year. The idea behind Project Lightning is to bring event-based curated content to Twitter along with the ability to embed this content around the web. According to Twitter’s Katie Jacobs Stanton, who runs the company’s global media operations,
“the challenge we’ve had over the years is, although we have the world’s greatest content, it’s like having a television without a channel guide or even a remote control. There’s no way to really find it or contextualize that content. So [Project Lightning] is this beautiful vessel for us to surface great content and make it more delightful.”
Stanton will be leading a team of editors who will put together the curated collections at the heart of Project Lightning. The content could be composed of images and videos, including Vines and Periscope videos, to go with tweets. All fo this will be packaged up and accessible via a new button on the Twitter platform. Users will then be able to swipe through this content separate from their timeline. One of the benefits Twitter thinks the collections will afford users is the ability to access tweets without having to follow a user they may not otherwise be interested in following.
Analysts watching the company will likely see this as a way for Twitter to bring new users to the service. Twitter says Project Lightning has been in the works for a long time and is not in response to any pressure from Wall Street.
According to outgoing CEO Dick Costolo, the long-term goal of the project is to open it up to other organizations to be able to build their own collections. Until then, Twitter hopes to produce seven to ten collections per day to plant the seeds of interest for users.
source: BuzzFeed
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Twitter will start curating the best tweets about daily events
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo will officially leave the building next month, but one of his ambitious pet projects – codenamed “Project Lightning” – just might change the way people interact with Twitter even after he’s gone. According to a report from BuzzFeed’s Mat Honan, Lightning will highlight specific events or conversations happening that very moment with the help of editors who’ll weave a sort of visual tapestry from textual tweets, photos and videos.
Let’s say you dive into one of these events. Instead of poking around the traditional timeline, those chosen tweets will take up your entire screen (and, in the case of video, will start playing automatically). If everything goes according to plan, you might see between seven and ten such “events” a day, too, which means Twitter’s got some media-savvy hiring to do. Twitter has almost always been a facilitator, an engine for news and organizations that package it up. Now, with Lightning as part of the mix, it’s going to turn that unending stream of noise into something dramatically more digestible without anyone else’s help. But here’s the kicker: It seems like you’ll be able to dig into those events even if you don’t have a Twitter account. For a company that catches flack whenever it announces disappointing user numbers and desperately needs fresh eyes that’ll keep coming back, this is a bold — and necessary — move. With any luck, Lightning and its immediate (hopefully thoughtful) context just might be the thing that turns the Twitter-averse into people who can’t get enough.
Source: BuzzFeed
Twitter buys a machine learning company to better study your tweets
Twitter thrives on its ability to understand both your tweets and the hot topic of the day, and it needs every bit of help it can get — including from computers. Accordingly, the social network just snapped up Whetlab, a startup that makes it easier to implement machine learning (aka a form of artificial intelligence). The two companies are shy about what the acquisition means besides an improvement to Twitter’s “internal machine learning efforts.” However, the likely focus is on highlighting the content that’s most relevant to you based on your activity and who you follow, as well as hiding abusive tweets before you have to reach for the “block” option. Whetlab’s technology could get the ball rolling on these robotic discovery techniques much faster than before, and give you a custom-tailored Twitter experience that requires little effort on your part.
Filed under: Internet
Source: Twitter Engineering, Whetlab
Twitter update allows auto-play feature for videos
T
he fight for social media users attention has gotten more intense lately. Social networks like Facebook and now Twitter have been relentlessly attempting to gain some of the video space from the industry leader Youtube.
Today’s Twitter update introduces a more seamless video experience. It is now easier to enjoy videos on Twitter as native videos, Vines and GIFs will begin to play back automatically. So you can keep up with the action without missing a Tweet and get a better sense of what’s been shared instantly.
Previously on Twitter, in order to watch a video, you had to physically tap the video to enable it to play. Now once you tap the video, the video and sound will play automatically in an expanded view. Also, if you flip your device to landscape mode, the sound will also automatically turn on and expand the video to fill the screen.
Yes Twitter, this is a cool concept. Although I can imagine what your thinking (your being our lovely AndroidGuys readers), that you don’t really want to watch every video of your friends kids, or cats, doing backflips automatically.
Thankfully you still have ultimate control over the playback settings. You have the option to choose the previous click-to-play option or have videos autoplay only when you are connected to WiFi. If you are at a location with high data rates or have low bandwidth on your device, Twitter will automatically opt you out of autoplay and you will only see click-to-play option.
Who does this Update benefit?
Twitter and it’s advertisers of course. The logic behind it is simple, most people will not click to watch an ad, though if it plays automatically you are more likely to watch it.
Autoplay can be a useful feature to have for sure, although only in moderation. There have been multiple occurrences on Instagram where I have attempted to tap-to-play and inadvertently double tapped instead, causing me to like a post. So let’s be thankful we have been given more customization’s options this time around with the option to turn the feature off.
Updates began rolling out to everyone today on Twitter for iOS and Twitter.com with an Android version coming soon.
Tell us if you like the new auto-play feature by leaving a comment below!
The post Twitter update allows auto-play feature for videos appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Twitter automatically plays videos on iOS and the web
Facebook isn’t the only big social network automatically playing most videos these days — Twitter is hopping on that bandwagon, too. Visit your feed on iOS or the web and any GIFs, Vines and native Twitter video will start playing as soon as you look at them. On iOS, clips will go full-screen if you switch to landscape mode. The move is meant to both save you a clip and, of course, keep you using Twitter’s services as much as possible.
Before you ask: yes, Twitter is well aware that automatic video playback could murder your capped mobile data plan. You can turn off the feature when you’re away from WiFi (or altogether, if you prefer), and it won’t kick in if you either have a slow connection or live in an area with especially high bandwidth costs. That’s still going to be annoying if you didn’t want autoplay in the first place, but at least you won’t have to wake up to a gigantic phone bill because of your friend’s concert footage.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile
Source: Twitter Blog
Twitter will remove the 140-character limit for DMs next month
Earlier today, Twitter took to its official blog to announce that it will finally remove the very frustrating 140-character limit on all Direct Messages (DMs) sent through the platform. It will, instead, replace it with a whopping 10,000-character restriction.
This very welcome feature is ready to go live now, but the folks over at Twitter are waiting until next month to start the rollout, in order to give third-party developers a fair chance at optimizing their applications to work with the new character cut off.
If you’d like to find out more about this change, hit the source link below.
Source: Twitter
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AIVAnet 