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By Ben Popper 1/03/12 9:28am

ATwitter

We can all look back and laugh

We’ve Been Had! Rupert Murdoch Is Really On Twitter, But Wendi Deng Is Fake

Yesterday we had a blast going over Rupert Murdoch’s first foray into Twitter, the scolding he got from his wife and his spat with Jack Dorsey. But this morning it turned out Wendi Deng’s Twitter account was a fake, even though it had been verified by Twitter for a time yesterday.

“You might ask ‘why didn’t I tell them?’ But surely Twitter should be checking out its Verified status more carefully? No?” the user behind the parody account tweeted this morning. “It might be only a small matter, but you have to worry about the management of News International and Twitter if they can both readily confirm, for a while at least, that this was the account of a very noted personality.” Read More

By Ben Popper 12/26/11 8:38am

ATwitter

Mr. Kravitz works his magic.

When Your Twitter Account Becomes Your 401K

All journalists, social media rockstars and PR gurus take note: Your Twitter account is apparently far more valuable than you thought.

As the New York Times reported this weekend, Noah Kravitz quit his job at Phonedog after spending four years at the site, a combination blog and ecommerce site.

While working at the site Mr. Kravitz built up 17,000 followers for the handle Phonedog_Noah. He parted with the company amicably and transferred those followers to a new handle, NoahKravitz, with the agreement that he would tweet on behalf of Phonedog.

But eight months later things soured, when Phonedog decided to sue, asking for $2.50 in damages per follower per month. 17,000 followers for eight months worked out to a hefty $340,000.  Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 11/15/11 11:53am

ATwitter

Can a Fail Whale shed tears?

We Might Need to Invent a Word for Former Twitter Employees

Despite the growing number of tweets (250 million a day) and ballooning valuation ($8 billion), a brewing exodus at Twitter doesn’t seem to be limited to Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet’s departure from the company’s board or shuffling in the C-suite.

Fortune.com put together a round-up of some key positions that have left, including former head of communications Sean Garrett the company’s first ever PR hire, Chief Scientist Abdur Chowdhury, VP of engineering Mike Abbott, down to Loren Britcher, who created the iOS app Tweetie.

The moves haven’t been lost on recruiters. Betabeat spoke to one last Friday who said Twitter employees’s LinkedIn mailboxes were overloaded in both directions since the CEO switch with Jack Dorsey earlier this year. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 10/10/11 4:32pm

ATwitter

The chiefly scientific Ms. Mason

Hilary Mason Says Twitter’s URL Wrapping Won’t Have Any Effect On Bit.ly [Updated]

Twitter tweeted out a post today spreading the word that, “We’re about to start wrapping all URLs regardless of their length with the t.co URL wrapper.” But chief scientist Hilary Mason told Betabeat it’s no big deal for bit.ly. “We don’t expect to see any changes,” she emailed.

Ms. Mason pointed out that Twitter has essentially been doing the same thing since August 24th. “The only change is that they will now wrap links under twenty characters, which means that there will actually be tweets longer than 140 characters,” she wrote, adding, “It hasn’t had much of an effect on bitly. We provide public analytics that people love!” Read More

By Ben Popper 10/10/11 12:11pm

ATwitter

Sometimes a pickle is a just a pickle

Former Porn Star Bree Olson Visits Fortnighter’s Alexander Basek In New York

A few months back Betabeat reported on a budding Twitter romance between former porn star “goddess” Bree Olson and Alexander Basek, travel writer and co-founder of startup Fortnighter.

It was an online affair that emerged in from the digital wake of Hurricane Irene. Ms. Olson was at home feeling bored and sick, Mr. Basek was on Twitter cracking wise. Since Mr. Basek was taken, it seemed like things would stay online only.

But According to The New York Flash, the pair met up IRL while Ms. Olsen was in New York celebrating her 25th birthday: Read More

By Ben Popper 9/26/11 3:48pm

ATwitter

Big time multi-tasker

Twitter Hosting Tea Time With NYC Engineers at betaworks

Twitter just acquired a bunch of top-notch Silicon Alley engineering talent with their purchase of real time search firm Julpan, adding about a dozen staffers, including some high level Xooglers. The company also opened up an official NYC office a few months back.

Now they are making New York part of their whistle stop developer tour, hosting a Twitter “Tea Time” at betaworks with some help from the folks at SocialFlow. Read More

By Ben Popper 9/21/11 4:52pm

ATwitter

Ori Allon - Image via JTA

Twitter Acquires Some Serious Search Talent At Julpan

Twitter has acquired real-time search startup Julpan. The founder Ori Allon and his dozen or so co-workers will continue to operate out of New York, but will integrate their search product into Twitter.

As MG Siegler notes, back in 2006 Mr. Allon incited a bidding war between Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, all of whom wanted to own the algorithm he had developed for his PhD thesis. Google triumphed and Mr. Allon worked there for several years on search before leaving to start Julpan.

Twitter recently opened a New York office and the purchase of Julpan will give them a solid base of engineering talent in Silicon Alley.  Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 8/08/11 2:10pm

ATwitter

Someone looks pleased with their Twitter inches.

How Many Times Does Peter Shankman Have To Tell You Twitter Followers Are the New Penis Size?

“The number of Twitter followers you have is the new penis envy. If that sounds familiar, it should – I’ve said it before,” social media entrepreneur, CEO, and master networker Peter Shankman writes today on his blog P.S. So why is he repeating himself? Because with the crop of “consultants” (scare quotes courtesy of Mr. Shankman) promising tens of thousands of follows in exchange for your credit card digits, it bears repeating.

Under the headline, “How Many Inches of Twitter Followers Do You Have?,” Mr. Shankman makes the argument, as many men have before him that, “Quality will always trump quantity” only in this instance, it refers to Twitter followers. So how do you get that lasting organic growth? Not by self-promotion, but by respecting the people looking back at you across your follower feed. Read More

By Ben Popper 7/13/11 8:35am

ATwitter

Image by Carrot Creative

Tweet Relief: Twitter Addicts Get Their 140 Fix

Diana Adams dreams in tweets. One hundred and forty characters at a time, the Atlanta-based computer consultant’s subconscious bubbles up. “Sometimes I am literally sending someone a message on Twitter and sometimes the ideas just kind of come out that way,” she told Betabeat recently.

On most nights Ms. Adams wakes up two or three times to check her Twitter stream and reply to @ messages from her nearly 50,000 followers. “I sleep with my phone under my pillow,” she confessed. “But if you think that’s bad, you don’t know any real Twitterholics.”

Living among media-obsessed New Yorkers, including some who employ two computers, one for work and one for TweetDeck, Betabeat assured her we did know a little something about the siren song of the micro-messaging service. “If I’m away from Twitter for more than an hour or two, I get nervous and break into a sweat,” she countered. O.K., we admitted, you win. Read More