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If it seems like Twitter is growing faster and faster each day, that is because it is. ComScore has released its March numbers for the U.S., and it estimates that unique visitors to Twitter.com grew 131 percent between February and March to 9.3 million visitors. No wonder Twitter is more popular than Britney. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not like we didn’t see this one coming: Microsoft and Google are apparently chomping at the bit in an attempt to make a search-advertising deal with Twitter, AllThingsD reported Thursday.

“Many think Twitter’s real-time search of its 140-character ‘tweets’ posted by users on the service will …

What goes well with a communication-enabled water dish? Why, a Twitter / RFID-enabled kitty door, of course! The so-called Tweeting Cat Door is undoubtedly the most hilarious, insightful and useful DIY contraption we’ve ever seen to wed RFID, social networking and computer programming. Essentially, this homegrown cat door was crafted to only open when Gus or Penny walks up with their super special RFID tags; once they approach, a mounted camera snaps a picture and uploads it (along with a quip) to Twitter. Don’t deny it — your feline is steaming with envy from the corner of your desk right now.

[Via Switched]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Household

Intelligent cat door utilizes Twitter, RFID masterfully originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Twitter has been regularly featured on a number of television shows for some time now (I’ve always found CNN’s anchors to be a bit too enamored of the service), but this looks like the first time it’s been featured prominently in a commercial. As Biz Stone writes in the Twitter blog Sprint has just released a new ad called “What’s Happening”, during which an announcer spouts off a number of totally made-up statistics describing how people are using the Sprint network.

Nestled in the middle of the ad, the commercial’s speaker states “233,000 people just Twittered on Twitter. 26% of you viewing this have no idea what that means” as a few dozen 3D blue Twitter birds fly around. I think the 26% figure is on the low side (many people who hear about Twitter every day still have no idea what it really means, and some people who have actually used the service still don’t really get it). But those 3D birds sure look cool.

Oh, and that phone shown at the end? That’s a Palm Pre.

Unfortunately Twitter doesn’t seem to be coping too well with its growth at the moment. The service was well known for its shoddy performance during the first half of 2008, but it has become quite stable since then (coping admirably with such large events as the Election). But in the last two days it has been reverting to its old ways – yesterday users noticed as they lost avatars and messages, which brought the service down for about an hour. This morning more issues are popping up with delayed tweets and errors. This is one of the first times that Twitter has really faced extended issues since it really started approaching the mainstream.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

The default mode for Google Analytics and other Website tracking software often makes you wait an entire day to find out what is happening on your site. There is a 24-hour delay (although this can often be changed in settings). Speed up the feedback loop, and Websites in theory could become even more responsive to traffic and attention peaks or to unexpected sluggishness. Betaworks, John Borthwick’s startup holding company which has stakes in Twitter and Tweetdeck, and spun off bit.ly, has just launched Chartbeat.

Keeping with Betaworks’ focus on real-time data services, Chartbeat offers a dashboard for Website owners that monitors how many people are on their site at any given second, where they are coming from, which pages visitors are looking at the most, as well as conversations and links from Twitter. It also shows average load times, what percentage of current visitors are returning, how many are reading, how many are actively writing in comments or engaging with the site in some other way, and how many are simply idle. All it requires is one line of Javascript to be inserted on a site and then it pings Chartbeat every 10 seconds. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a heck of a rumor that we’ve sourced from two separate people close to the negotiations: Google is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter. We don’t know the price but can assume its well, well north of the $250 million valuation that they saw in their recent funding.

Twitter turned down an offer to be bought by Facebook just a few months ago for half a billion dollars, although that was based partially on overvalued Facebook stock. Google would be paying in cash and/or publicly valued stock, which is equivalent to cash. So whatever the final acquisition value might be, it can’t be compared apples-to-apples with the Facebook deal. Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone sent out an Email earlier this afternoon to a number of users who had previously enabled ‘autofollowing’, stating that the company is planning to shut the feature down. Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah Evans is the director of communications at Elgin Community College (ECC) in Elgin, Illinois. She also authors a PR and social media blog and is the founder of #journchat.

Tough economic times call for innovative approaches. An estimated 51 million people internationally are expected to lose their jobs in 2009, and with the unemployment rate on the rise, how does one find career opportunities fast? One great option is Twitter.

Twitter is evolving as another resource, in addition to traditional methods, for both job searching and recruiting. Read the rest of this entry »

Jennifer Aniston reportedly dumped boyfriend John Mayer because of his obsession with social networking website Twitter.

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Nielsen’s five fastest-growing community sites in the U.S.

(Credit: Nielsen)

A small new survey from Nielsen about the five fastest growing “member community destinations” in the U.S. reveals what we all kind of knew already: Twitter is at the top. From February 2008 to February 2009, …