Twitter

Instagram takes bite out of Vine in first week

Facebook's Instagram video announcement last week went a long way in hurting its chief competitor Vine, a new study has shown.

According to data compiled by Marketing Land using Topsy, a tool designed to analyze social media shares, the number of links shared on Twitter to Vine videos fell off a cliff after Instagram's new video-recording feature was announced on June 20. And since then, things have remained quiet for Vine.

According to Marketing Land's findings, Vine's Twitter shares hit 2.5 million on June 19. After Instagram's video service launched, that fell to 1.… Read more

Vine for Android now supports selfies

Calling all selfie-obsessed digital denizens, Vine for Android now caters to you.

The weeks-old Twitter-owned video application was updated Thursday with support for the front-facing camera, meaning Android users can switch between front and back cameras when shooting itty-bitty scenes for their videos.

The app was also gifted some major speed improvements that Dom Hofmann, one of the app's co-founders, said in a now-deleted tweet makes the app, "the fastest video app among the video apps that copied us."

Hofmann is, of course, referring to Facebook-owned Instagram, which recently launched a video option that seemed to be … Read more

Twitter adds charts to help find music you actually want to hear

Twitter is now helping guide users of its music service to the types of music they want to hear.

Thursday, Twitter Music, the 2-month-old Web and mobile streaming service powered by Twitter activity, was updated with a discovery feature called charts, which offers people a genre-based approach to music listening.

With charts, Twitter Music users can now select from Twitter-generated playlists based on music genre and find special types of charts, such as "Popular" for new music trending on Twitter or "Superstars" for new tracks from hit artists. Following the Twitter Music formula, tracks are featured … Read more

Texas senator's filibuster heats up the Internet

YouTube and Twitter provided blow-by-blow coverage of a long, heated filibuster Tuesday in Texas that the major cable networks failed to carry.

State Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) held the Texas Senate floor Tuesday in a filibuster and session that lasted almost 13 hours, the Texas Tribune reported Wednesday.

Davis was trying to prevent passage of Senate Bill 5, a controversial bill that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. It would also have required doctors to have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of an abortion facility, perform abortions in ambulatory surgical centers, and administer drugs that … Read more

Rusty the red panda was lost and found on Twitter

Rusty is safe. The little red panda that went missing roughly 24 hours ago is now back home at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. But, in the interim, he caused quite a stir.

The morning after Rusty disappeared, the National Zoo tweeted, "We are looking for a missing red panda, a male named Rusty. He was last seen at 6 p.m. last night."

News outlets across the country wrote stories about the cuddly rare breed of panda that is no bigger than a house cat and has a big bushy tail. Twitter and other social … Read more

Vine for Android gets the basics: search, mentions, and hashtags

Roughly three weeks after its debut, Vine for Android has been updated with fundamental features such as search, mentions, and hashtags that were initially left out at launch.

The Twitter-owned application for taking 6-second, looping videos launched on Android at the beginning of the month. At the time, the app arrived minus several functions that Vine for iPhone owners had been privy to for months, though it did come with a handy zoom feature.

With the Friday release, Vine for Android has mostly caught up to its iPhone predecessor and now includes basics so users can share their 6-second machinations … Read more

Carl Icahn joins Twitter with a funny plea for Dell

As the battle between activist investor Carl Icahn and Dell's board heats up, Icahn has joined Twitter.

So what? Well, his first tweet is a funny jab -- or plea -- signaling his desire to takeover Dell.

Twitter is great. I like it almost as much as I like Dell.

— Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) June 20, 2013 Icahn, who is a billionaire, is known for shaking up certain corporations by buying up lots of shares and then demanding they do things his way.

Take Dell, for example. Icahn publicly opposed the idea of taking the company private via a $24.4 billion buyout, … Read more

Vine videos provide clues to new design, features

Tinkering https://t.co/8qbqp0QLMh

— Dom Hofmann (@dhof) June 19, 2013

Vine, the popular 6-second video app from Twitter, appears to be readying the release of reworked mobile applications that look completely different and introduce new features.

Wednesday, Vine co-founders Dom Hofman and Rus Yusupov used their quirky video app to hint at what's to come. The men posted three Vine videos that seem to highlight an entirely new design with larger, full-screen videos.

Bleep boop https://t.co/zuyoAq0h3t

— Rus Yusupov (@rus) June 19, 2013

The stitched together clips also hint at curated video categories and maybe even … Read more

Twitter acquires Spindle and shows more interest in local discovery

Twitter has acquired Spindle, a mobile application for learning about what's happening nearby, the companies announced Wednesday.

"We've spent the past two and a half years building a product that helps you answer the question: 'What's happening nearby right now?'," the startup said in a blog post announcing its sale. "Every time we've experimented and looked beyond local discovery, we've been amazed by the breadth and quality of content shared on Twitter. By joining forces with Twitter, we can do so much more to help you find interesting, timely, and useful information … Read more