Because apparently there aren’t enough music apps in existence, Twitter announced today on ABC gigglefest Good Morning America that it will be making its highly anticipated foray into the crowded music market. Along with a website, Twitter #Music (hashtag!) is a new, separate app for your iPhone that’s slated to be released later this afternoon. Read More
Links on Twitter are currently broken. Read More
It’s almost as if you have to get a job at BuzzFeed or start a viral Tumblr to be verified on Twitter these days. Read More
In light of the recent hacks of big brand Twitter accounts like Burger King and Jeep, Twitter has finally announced two-factor authentication. Haha JK, they just published a condescending blog post blaming their security vulnerabilities on your shitty passwords.
Spam accounts are nothing new on Twitter, as anyone who has ever tweeted the words “iPad” or “sex” can attest. But another spam ring has recently cropped up on the platform, and it uses the name cache of prominent journalists, techies and celebrities in an attempt to attract followers. Read More
Jared Leto, seminal ’90s crush who enjoys rubbing elbows with the international tech elite, has an urgent request for his Twitter followers. The 30 Seconds to Mars frontman is shooting a new music video, and he desperately needs “albinos” for it. Read More
Remember when Twitter was a mere fringe hobby, beloved by early adopters but mystifying to everyone else? Well, today we got a clear-as-a-bell reminder that those days are long gone, when the company took to the Today Show to introduce a new look.
Users can now add a header photo, and recent images have been relocated into their own snazzy box.
“What we’ve heard over and over again from our users is they want to bring more of their personality to the profile pages,” explained CEO Dick Costolo. “So today’s changes are all about bringing that personality forward, more media forward, more photos forward, so it’s much easier to see these media experiences and flip through them.” Read More
With the news that Google employee #20 and well-known GOOG cheerleader Marissa Mayer will be decamping from her home company of 10+ years to take the CEO role at Yahoo, the Twitersphere erupted into a mix of shock, excitement and stale Yahoo jokes.
It seems that not even a strong female computer engineer can salvage the flailing search company’s flaccid reputation. Just as cries of joy rang out from our feed, so, too, did the jokes about Yahoo’s incompetence. Behold, some of our favorite one liners from this afternoon’s news. Read More
After six years, Twitter announced today that it will be updating its little blue bird. In fact, the company is dispensing with bubbled typefaces and lower-case t’s altogether for a more symbolic logo. “From now on, this bird will be the universally recognizable symbol of Twitter. (Twitter is the bird, the bird is Twitter.),” writes creative director Doug Bowman.
Some likened the more aerodynamic redesign to Twitter’s new business model. With a rumored $1 billion in sales expected in 2014, “It’s fitting that the Twitter bird is looking skyward and has a new professional haircut,” says TechCrunch.
But on careful reading, the oddly high-minded announcement (about lopping off a few feathers) could also be read like a coded plea to Twitter’s most curmudgeonly critic, noted bird obsessive Jonathan Franzen. Read More
But alas, we cannot. Jennifer Aaron, a kindergarten teacher at PS-150 in Tribeca, has made her class’s account private. At the end of every day, she sits down with the five-year-olds and asks them to summarize what they did that day to the 35 parents and friends who follow her. “We added more days in school stickers. We didn’t have any lame reflections. We had snack outside. Ask us about time,” was the tweet recorded by the New York Times parenting blog SchoolBook.
The story notes that Ms. Aaron did not have as much success bringing Twitter into the classroom at her last school in the South Bronx, where few parents had Internet connections.
