social media

Twitter today updated its Windows Phone app, adding a slew of new discovery features that had been included in the social network's iOS and Android apps for some time.

In a blog post, Twitter said that it had fundamentally redesigned the Windows Phone version of its app to be "in line with other Twitter apps," in part by adding an all-new navigation structure for those on Microsoft's mobile OS.

That structure is built around the Home, Connect, Discovery, and Me tabs that have been used for Twitter's iOS and Android apps for a while. The … Read more

The Onion has deleted a tweet that called 9-year-old Best Actress Oscar nominee Quvenzhane Wallis an extremely offensive name.

In its original tweet, the parody publication -- which is known for its dark humor and for regularly skewering public figures and institutions -- wrote that, "Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhane Wallis is kind of a c---, right?"

Normally, The Onion is known by its many fans to be joking about almost everything it publishes -- even though its satire is often seen as legitimate commentary on a wide range of issues. But in … Read more

If you get an e-mail saying it's from Twitter, the social-networking company wants to assure you that it's really from Twitter and that there's no need to worry that someone's out to steal your password.

At least, it's almost certain that the e-mail you just got from a Twitter.com address is not a phishing attack, the company said in a blog post today.

Twitter said it has adopted a new security protocol known as DMARC that was designed by a consortium in order to cut way down on phishing attempts.

Death is never popular, even in social media: the poor guy behind @death on Twitter has zero followers.

You might think your online fans will lose interest when you kick the bucket, but an upcoming app says it will let you keep tweeting from beyond the grave.

LivesOn will host Twitter accounts that continue to post updates when users shed this mortal coil. … Read more

Twitter today unveiled its advertising API, a step it hopes will make it easier for companies to create ad campaigns on Twitter, and that's aimed at showing users the most relevant promoted tweets.

Since Twitter's earliest days, one of the criticisms about the company's business model was that it wasn't built to generate significant revenue -- especially not enough to reward investors who have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Twitter. But in recent years, the microblogging service has been bolstering its advertising business, and Twitter is now considered a bona fide advertising platform for … Read more

Twitter said today that it has added new search filters to its TweetDeck Web and Chrome apps that let users choose precisely which words and phases they want to show or exclude in their columns.

The idea, Twitter wrote in a blog post today is that the new filters will allow users to easily "focus on a particular element of a column." That also means being able to see -- or not see -- tweets containing specific kinds of media like images and/or videos.

Users can select the drop-down menu at the top of a column to … Read more

There are lots of Twitter presentations on the web, but the one below is one of the best I've ever seen. It's by Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry), who has the cool title of digital transformation editor at Digital First Media (I last wrote about him in my blog when he shared very useful Facebook tips: "Figuring out what kind of content works on Facebook").

Here's how I shared his slides the first time, during my Social Media Weekend/#smwknd conference yesterday.

USEFUL: Twitter for journos (and others) - awesome, #mustread presentation by @stevebuttry - bit.ly/YpUzrw … Read more

President Obama's State of the Union speech didn't generate any memes, but Florida Sen. Marco Rubio gave the Twitterverse something to shout about: his awkward reach for a tiny bottle of Poland Spring water during his official Republican rebuttal address. Almost instantly, the moment was a trending topic.

Unfortunately for Poland Spring, its social media people -- if it even has any -- dropped the ball. What appear to be its official Twitter accounts, @PolandSpringWtr, and @PolandSpringInc, were both dormant after Rubio's instantly panned water break. In fact, the most recent tweet from either account came in … Read more

Twitter and American Express today launched a partnership that will allow Amex card holders to make certain purchases simply by tweeting.

According to an Amex Web page, the arrangement works like this. Amex cardholders first sync their card with Twitter. Then, when they come across products that are eligible to purchase under the plan -- products that American Express will promote through a Twitter feed -- they simply send out a tweet that includes a special hashtag. Amex will then send them an @-reply with a confirming hashtag. Finally, the buyer has to send out a second tweet with the … Read more