Compass Labs looks at Twitter streams and tries to determine when someone has an intent to purchase a product, then it serves up related ads either through direct messages or through banner ads on third-party Twitter clients. So if you Tweet, “I’m looking for a Canon camera” it will reply in stream or on a banner with an ad from a camera retailer for that camera. Compass Labs uses natural language processing to parse out the Tweets that have serious intent versus just talking about a product generally. Campaigns can be set to target people at different parts of the purchasing cycle, from exploratory to ready to buy right now.

Of course, advertising on Twitter recently came into question after Twitter revised its Terms of Service, prohibiting any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API. But Compass Labs says that it complies with Twitter’s TOS because it serves display ads, which are not in-stream and simply uses real-estate on a publisher site, much like an ad network. In fact, the startup expects that Twitter will actually embrace Compass Labs’ solution as an example of how to monetize while benefiting the entire Twitter ecosystem.

Founded by Google and Yahoo veteran Dilip Venkatachari (he led Google’s mobile ad business), Compass Labs will use the funding for product development as well as bulding out sales and business development channels. The company now has a number of advertisers and publishers using its platform (Venkatachari declined name these partners) and is starting to see revenue from its network.

TechCrunch

You never know where you are going to see something innovative—even right here the heart of the “Sili-corn Valley” that is Central Ohio. This week, I met a gentleman by the name of Dan Rockwell at the local Mobile Monday gathering, and we had a short conversation about his company’s latest mobile app called Chump Dump.

The somewhat irreverent concept is both funny and serious; gain points for ceasing to follow people on twitter. The app recalls Crispin Porter’s Whopper Sacrifice campaign for unfriending people on Facebook, but has a much purer and utilitarian result in mind—clean up the list of people you follow on Twitter using game mechanics, actual metrics and crowdsourced conversation. As funny or rebellious as the app seems on the surface, when you get down to it, its goal is functionally sound and it gets people to ask the real question “why am I following this chump on Twitter?”

Read more…

TechCrunch

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.

Not only did Twitter more than double the number of people that go to its site in a single month, but it accelerated its growth from the 55 percent rate it experienced in February. These numbers do not include international visitors, nor do they include all the usage on desktop and mobile clients, which is significant in Twitter’s case. But it is a useful proxy.

So to just to give a sense of the type of growth Twitter is going through, here is the month-to-month growth in U.S. unique visitors so far this year:

March, 2009: 131%
February, 2009: 55%
January, 2009: 33%

In February, comScore estimated that Twitter.com had worldwide 9.8 million visitors worldwide and 4 million U.S. visitors. If that 41 percent ratio of U.S. visitors to total worldwide visitors still holds (in January it was about the same), it would mean that Twitter.com attracted more than 20 million unique visitors worldwide. ComScore releases international figures later in the month.

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Here is the original:
Boom! Twitter More Than Doubles Unique U.S. Visitors To 9.3 Million In March

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.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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.

The dashboard also offers a historical view, and even lets you play the dashboard through time like a movie so that you can see for instance what was going on during a particular peak—where was traffic coming from and what were visitors looking at. If you choose, you can also share your dashboard and make it public. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson has done so for his blog A VC. Click through to his blog, and then you can see the results on his Chartbeat here. The video below also shows what it looks like.

Chartbeat is offering a free 30-day trial and then wants to charge $10 a month for the service. Competing real-time Web analytics services include Get Clicky and Woopra (which we covered here).

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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.

Why would Google want Twitter? We’ve been arguing for some time that Twitter’s real value is in search. It holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn’t even have a horse in the game. In a post last month called It’s Time To Start Thinking Of Twitter As A Search Engine, I wrote:

More and more people are starting to use Twitter to talk about brands in real time as they interact with them. And those brands want to know all about it, whether to respond individually (The W Hotel pestered me until I told them to just leave me alone), or simply gather the information to see what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong.

And all of it is discoverable at search.twitter.com, the search engine that Twitter acquired last summer.

People searching for news. Brands searching for feedback. That’s valuable stuff.

Twitter knows it, too. They’re going to build their business model on it. Forget small time payments from users for pro accounts and other features, all they have to do is keep growing the base and gather more and more of those emotional grunts. In aggregate it’s extremely valuable. And as Google has shown, search is vastly monetizable – somewhere around 40% of all online advertising revenue goes to ads on search listings today.

If this is accurate, it’s a brilliant deal for Google – the value of Twitter is only going to go up over time. And it will be Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone’s second sale to Goolge – they sold Blogger to them just five years ago. But there’s one big question – where’s Microsoft in all this? Letting Twitter go to Google only hurts them, badly, in the long term search game. This is an asset they need to be competing for aggressively.

Of course, it’ll be sad to see Twitter become just another subsidiary of Google, if this happens. I would have liked to have seen the company spread its wings a little longer to see what it could do.

Updated: Yet another source says the acquisition discussions are still fairly early stage, and the two companies are also considering working together on a Google real time search engine.

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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. ‘Autofollowing’ allows users to automatically reciprocate whenever another Twitter user follows them. The feature has never been widely available to the public (at least not through Twitter’s site), and was only enabled by sending a request to Twitter support.

While Stone ackowledges that the autofollow feature does have some uses (such as for applications built on the Twitter API or simply to be polite), generally speaking most of these autofollows are disingenuous. Many of the more popular Twitter users who have autofollow enabled are now following tweets from thousands of people at a time, the vast majority of which they clearly aren’t paying attention to.

This is probably a good move on Twitter’s part, as I’ve always found the practice to be pretty spammy. Of course, there are still a number of third party services that help users accomplish the same thing. What remains to be seen is if Twitter will try to disable these third party services, or if it simply doesn’t want to be officially condoning the practice.

Below is the letter in its entirety:

Hi There,

I’m contacting you because you have a Twitter account for which
we enabled something called “autofollow.” This is not a public
feature, it’s something we did for a limited set of accounts
such that they automatically follow any account that follows
them.

We’re going to discontinue autofollow because this behavior
sends the wrong message. Namely, it is unlikely that anyone can
actually read tweets from thousands of accounts which makes
this activity disingenuous.

However, we understand that there may be exceptions such as
applications built using our API or the ability to exchange
direct messages. There are also some who think it’s simply
polite to follow back other accounts.

While we’re going to stop supporting autofollow, we’d like to
find a way to support the other goals folks are really trying
to accomplish. Please feel free to reply to this email and let
us know how we can do this better together.

Thanks,
Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.

Thanks to Kent Nichols for the tip.

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

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.

Get the most out of your page

o Put your job pitch in your Twitter bio (which is 160 characters)
o Use a professional looking avatar
o Tweet about your job search

• Utilize your Twitter background. There’s lots of space you can use to promote yourself. Don’t know how to create a professional-looking Twitter background? Use this free template to design your own.

• Include a link to an online CV or resume in your bio. Use a tool like VisualCV. (For more information on building an online resume, see Dan Schawbel’s post HOW TO: Build the Ultimate Social Media Resume)

• Establish yourself as an expert in your field on Twitter. It’s important to note that you should not misrepresent yourself. If you’re not a medical doctor, don’t play one on Twitter. As those on Twitter become interested in your content, when employers are looking at you, you’ll have more than just your resume to back up your knowledge and experience.

“It’s about who you know”

There are many job recruiters who use Twitter to look for potential candidates. Before contacting a recruiter via Twitter, check out:

• Their bio
• Follower/Following ratio (Have they been around a while? Do they follow people back?)
• Click the link to their website
• Ask others in your network whether or not the recruiter is a credible source

Here are a few recruiters representing different professions and industries on Twitter:

Christa Foley a.k.a. @electra – Christa is the recruiting manager and recruiter at Zappos.com. Christa gives followers an inside look into her career at Zappos. She tweets out examples of negative recruiting interactions with potential clients, outreach she does with high school and college students, and ultimately looks for potential Zappos candidates.

Craig Fisher a.k.a. @Fishdogs – Craig is an IT and executive recruiter who co-founded A-List Solutions staffing firm. On Twitter he offers tweets on how to find a job in the web industry, hiring tips and tricks, along with professional career advice.

Jim Durbin a.k.a. @smheadhunter – A social media recruiter, Jim is active on the Twitter scene. His goal is to partner “social media gurus” with the right companies. Jim responds to followers’ questions, offers general recruiting advice and sends out “teaser” tweets for positions he thinks followers might be interested in.

Jennifer McClure a.k.a. @CincyRecruiter – Jennifer is an executive recruiter/coach. She often tweets out specific advice for job seekers, including words not to use on a resume. Jennifer is accessible to her followers and tweets about non-recruiting topics as well.

Laurie DesAutels a.k.a. @biotechjobs – Laurie recruits a specific niche, looking for senior level leaders in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. Her tweet stream includes links to other job search resources and lots of Twitter information.

Job search tools & resources

@Microjobs

Started by well-known PR professional, Brian Solis, @Microjobs was developed to bring together job seekers and recruiters through tweets.

How does it work?
Recruiters begin their tweets with @Microjobs, and then submit. The @Microjobs account automatically tweets out requests to its growing network of job seekers.

TweetMyJobs

Another tool born out of Twitter for job seekers and recruiters. Follow the hashtag #Tweetmyjobs and visit the website. This is a very simple (and free) tool for job seekers. You can subscribe to desired job channels and even have new openings automatically sent to your mobile phone. Even better? You can specify which cities you want notifications from.

Job search accounts

There are a variety of Twitter accounts dedicated to providing job listings by field, company, region, and more. Once you’ve decided which best match your job search, consider turning on mobile alerts for these accounts to be among the first to receive messages (if your mobile phone plan includes SMS messages).

By company

@attjobs – Jobs at AT&T
@mtvnetworksjobs – Jobs at MTV
@TRCareers – Jobs from Thomson Reuters

By field

@alldevjobs – Developer jobs
@ArtDirectorJobs – Art director jobs
@cwjobs – Copywriter jobs
@jobsinhiphop – Jobs in Hip-Hop
@journalism_jobs – Jobs in journalism
@juicyjobs – Green jobs
@libgig_jobs – Library Jobs
@mediabistrojobs – Media job listings from mediabistro.com
@medical_jobs – Medical jobs
@media_pros – Jobs for media professionals
@narmsjobs – Retail marketing jobs
@PRSAjobcenter – Jobs in public relations, communications and marketing
@reflectx – Physical Therapy jobs
@seojobs – SEO job listings
@socialmediajob – Jobs in social media
@travelmaxallied – Healthcare jobs
@travelnursejob – Jobs for traveling nurses
@usmusicjobs – US Music Jobs
@web_design_jobs – Web design and other graphics jobs

By job type

@findinternships – Internships and entry level jobs for college students
@freelance_jobs – Freelance jobs
@heatherhuhman – Entry level jobs and internships
@Project4Hire – Freelance and temporary jobs
@jewish_jobs – Jewish job listings

By region

@MyBristolJobs – Job listings from mybristoljobs.co.uk
@chicagowebjobs – Web-related jobs in Chicago
@ChicagoTechJobs – Technology jobs in the greater Chicago area
@ITJobsLondon – IT jobs in London
@ITJobsSydney – IT jobs in Sydney, Australia
@JobsBoston – Jobs in the greater Boston area
@jobshawaii – Jobs in Hawaii
@NewYorkTechJobs – Technology jobs in the greater New York area
@PDXJobs – Jobs in Portland, Oregon
@sdjobs – San Diego technology jobs
@sfmobilejobs – Mobile Web and Digital Media jobs in Silicon Valley
@mtltweetjobs – PR/marketing/social media/tech jobs in Montreal
@TopJobsInLondon – Top jobs in London, UK
@web20jobs – UK-based web 2.0 jobs

General

@JobAngels – Helping the unemployed find jobs
@indeed – One search. All jobs.
@jobshouts – General job postings
@simplyhired – Job search site
@StartUpHire – Jobs at VC backed companies
@twithire – Job board service

To find additional Twitter job resources, use the Twitter search function and type in keywords important in your job search. For example, “job openings,” “looking for a job,” or “healthcare career.” Additionally, you can search out others in your desired career field on sites like Twellow, Just tweet it, and TwitterTroll.

Your next job could be just a tweet away.

Have more tips, accounts, or stories of your own to add? Tell us about them in the comments.

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More job resources from Mashable:

- 30+ Websites to Visit When You’re Laid Off
- 7 Secrets to Getting Your Next Job Using Social Media
- 10 Ning Networks to Help You Land Your Next Job
- CAREER TOOLBOX: 100+ Places to Find Jobs
- Top 10 Social Sites for Finding a Job
- Mashable’s Job Board

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, narvikk

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