Twitter Verified User Payola!

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Anuj Seth

DigitalTrends break a story about Twitter Payola related to Verified Users on Twitter.

Twitter has never been clear about how one can get a Verified Users badge. This story gives a completely different twist to it. From the blog post,

To summarize, it appears you need to spend a minimum of $15,000 ($5K over three months) in order to “buy” verified status from Twitter. Or you need to know someone who’s “in” with Twitter (read: spending ad dollars with them) who wants you or your business to get verified. Only Twitter won’t plainly say so and you aren’t guaranteed that notification from the site itself. After you’ve ponied up $15K, don’t expect a message alerting you that you’ve qualified for verified status. It might just show up or you might need to put in a request with your account manager. There are a lot of “mights” and “maybes” involved here – far too many for an ad platform that wants your money.

Have you faced something similar?

Innovator’s Patent Agreement: Is this how Software Patents should work?

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Anuj Seth

Twitter has introduced what they call the Innovator’s Patent Agreement (IPA), which is a formal agreement between the company and its employees that have filed patents. It is a new way to do patent assignments.

From their blog,

The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.

The IPA is available in the public domain at Github.

RWW has put down a few very apt reasons on why every software company should adopt the IPA.

What do you feel about Twitter’s IPA? Is it worth exploring as an option in your own company?

Enough of spammers on Twitter!

Posted on April 7, 2012 by Anuj Seth

Twitter has been growing by leaps and bounds over the years! There is no doubt about that. Along with that growth, there has been exponential growth in the spam tweets as well.

Twitter has finally decided to take the legal route in an attempt to cut down on the spam. Twitter has decided to go after popular tools that are used to spam. They are going straight at the source of spam — the popular tools used for spamming!

The list includes TweetAttacks, TweetAdder, and TweetBuddy. The defendants include James Lucero and Garland Harris (TweetBuddy), Skootle Corporation (TweetAdder), and JL4 Web Solutions (TweetAttacks).

Twitter for BlackBerry 3.0 available for download

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Anuj Seth

Twitter has launched a new version of its BlackBerry app – Version 3.0. The new version introduces several new features. It makes it easier to share links to web pages directly from the browser. You can also upload photos to Twitter directly from the device’s camera or when writing your tweets.

Now you can connect your Twitter account with BlackBerry Messenger. This makes it possible to share your latest Tweet as your BBM Personal Message. You can also access your contacts’ Twitter accounts right from their BBM profiles.

Twitter acquires Posterous

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Anuj Seth

Twitter has announced that it has acquired Posterous, a blogging platform known for its slick digital media-sharing interface.

Twitter said in a blog post that the Posterous staff “has built an innovative product that makes sharing across the Web and mobile devices simple — a goal we share.”

Founded in 2008, Posterous is one of the better-known companies emerging from the tech incubator Y Combinator.

Yandex is Twitter’s latest real-time search partner

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Anuj Seth

Yandex, the leading Search Engine in Russia, and the 7th largest search engine in the world, has announced a partnership with Twitter that gives it real time access to the entire Twitter firehose. As per the press release from Yandex,

In addition to Yandex’s Blog Search, users who search for something on Twitter will also find the same results via twitter.yandex.ru. Tweets of over two million users are available for search on Yandex. Twitter posts of those users who tweet in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian or Kazakh, as well as top feeds in any other language, will be included in Yandex’s Blog Search results.

The above statement clearly shows Twitter’s intent of entering non-English speaking markets to establish a stronger foothold.

Self-Service Ad Platform now open for all on Twitter

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Anuj Seth

Twitter has started rolling out its self-service ad platform to all small business users. The service is in partnership with American Express. American Express will give $100 in free Twitter advertising to the first 10,000 eligible Amex card members and merchants that register.

Twitter now available for Satellite Phone users

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Anuj Seth

Twitter has gone back to its roots where it began as an SMS service. Twitter just announced

the availability of tweeting via satellite phones by announcing a partnership with Iridium and Thuraya, two of the largest service providers in this space.

This opens up doors for publishing news (tweets) in situations where there is a natural disaster or from a war zone, where the availability of regular phone towers might not be there.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh joins Twitter

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Anuj Seth

We finally have India’s Prime Minister adopting social media. The Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, joined Twitter yesterday under the @PMOIndia handle. This stands for Prime Minister’s Office and it will be operated by his Media Team.

Let’s give him a warm welcome and looking forward to some interesting tweets!

Twitter acquires Dasient

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Anuj Seth

Dasient has announced on its blog that it has been acquired by Twitter. Dasient has focused on solving web-scale security problems including malware and other types of online abuse. In 2010, Dasient launched the industry’s first anti-malvertising service to protect ad networks and publishers from the scourge of malicious ads.

Dasient will become a part of the revenue engineering team of Twitter. We can expect to see their technology at work when Twitter launches its self-serve ads platform.

Recently Twitter had acquired Summify.

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