As cheap, powerful automatic cameras and camera phones proliferate, the music industry–and its sports counterpart–have had to realize they can’t control fans’ ability to take pictures.
Peek, a New York mobile start-up, has begun selling TwitterPeek, a new device for posting and reading Twitter updates.
TwitterPeek became available on Amazon and Peek’s Web site Tuesday. Its $100 price includes a full keyboard, always-on tweet delivery and nationwide Internet coverage, plus six months of service.
Twitter has turned out to be a useful tool for some small businesses coping with customer-service or public-relations crises.
The social-media service–where users send short “tweets” to followers who have signed up to receive the messages–came in handy for Innovative Beverage Group Holdings Inc., whose drankbeverage.com site crashed last month after a surge in traffic following a segment on Fox News for the company’s so-called relaxation beverage, which contains “calming” ingredients like valerian root and melatonin.
SB Nation, the network of sporting sites owned by Sportsblogs Inc., is getting a makeover focused on real-time updates, a bid to increase traffic between its Web properties.
The redesign went into effect late Wednesday and includes a “storystream,” similar to Facebook’s news feed, that wraps up articles, blog posts, videos and other content about hot topics like Melanie Oudin’s U.S. Open advance and Brady Quinn’s starting for the Browns on Sunday. Editors monitor news outlets, Twitter feeds and SB Nation’s sites for each storystream and keep them frequently updated, said Jim Bankoff, the company’s chief executive.
After examining some 300,000 Twitter accounts, a Harvard Business School professor reported last week that 10 percent of the service’s users account for more than 90 percent of tweets.
Ashton, Oprah, Britney, when will it end?
Now Twitter is taking on a distinctly political bent, with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom using the service to announce his bid for governor of California. On Tuesday, he wrote: “It’s official- running for Gov of CA. Wanted you to be the first to know. Need your help. Check out video: http://tr.im/iOCN and ReTweet.”
We’ve been waiting a long time for political upheaval to follow in the wake of technological change, and on April 7, it seemed to have arrived.
Ford is betting the success of the Fiesta subcompact on the blogs, tweets and Facebook updates of 100 people who will live with the cars and share their experiences online.
There was a time when all you needed was a good record review in Rolling Stone or a stellar book review in the New York Times to get a boost in sales and popularity. But as those old gatekeepers lose their cachet in the digital age, a new set of gatekeepers has sprung up and they don’t have bylines. These are the editors who pick featured artists and apps at the Apple iTunes store, who choose videos to spotlight on YouTube, and who highlight Suggested Users on Twitter.
Twitter may not have figured out a way to turn a profit yet, but that hasn’t stopped its users from monetizing the site.
Sponsored tweets are becoming more popular. Brands are recruiting well-known Twitterers to spread the word about a specific product or service. For example, Marcelo Tas, a Brazilian television personality, signed a deal with Telefonica to help pitch its new Internet and phone service.
For many fans of the hit TV series “Mad Men,” one of the biggest events of 2008 was the sudden emergence of a number of the show’s characters on Twitter.
At first, it seemed as though whoever was posting regular tweets from within the fictionalized 1960s world of the AMC network show was doing so on behalf of the producers. But as is well known now, they were a group of people who had taken on the task themselves, and who quickly found their project shut down.
The golfing star Natalie Gulbis recently joined the microblogging site Twitter, where she gives the public frequent updates of her life in short text messages, or tweets. First, though, there had to be a meeting between her media consultant, Kathleen Hessert, and other advisers.
Hollywood has the Oscars. Broadway has the Tonys. Now Twitter has the…Shorty Awards? The awards, announced last week by the Brooklyn Internet company Sawhorse Media, aim to honor the best Twitterers of 2008 in categories like humor, news and food.
One of the hottest technologies in Silicon Valley is also one of the simplest. The online service from Web start-up Twitter Inc. prompts users to do one thing: answer the question, “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less.
This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."
We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.
The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.
That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.
So here is exactly what we do: Read more »
Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
Don't miss a post! Sign up for our Daily Email and get AllThingsD.com delivered each day.
Get columns, blogs and video from D and All Things Digital on your iPhone. Download now »
