Filed under: Features, Social Software, Microblogging
Welcome back to Twitter Tuesday! Apple stole the spotlight this week with iPhone 4 and WWDC news, but things have been happening on the Twitter beat, too. (I mean, someone had to livetweet Steve Jobs' keynote, right?) If you'd rather hear about what's new with everybody's favorite microblog, though, you've come to the right place.
Twitter Tuesday is go!
So, it's become clear that Twitter is grabbing up a lot of territory that used to belong to third-party developers. By launching official Twitter apps and taking over in-stream advertising, Twitter has forced developers to come up with new features or lose all their business to Twitter itself.
Some developers have responded more effectively than others. Check out Brizzly's new "Picnic" feature, which lets you set up a private group chat using direct messages. It's already drawn rave reviews from TechCrunch and others, and it offers something that Twitter hasn't even announced any plans to develop. That's what it's going to take to survive in this brave new Twitter ecosystem.
If you look at how fast Twitter is growing, it's no mystery why developers are struggling to keep up. Twitter has doubled its staff since the beginning of 2010, recently passing 200 employees. Twitter's userbase has also continued to grow mightily, with the latest official count at over 190 million users -- who post over 65 million tweets every day. No wonder Twitter wanted to capitalize on that with a little advertising!10% of Twitter users now have a new feature called "You Both Follow," which shows friends you have in common with a given other Twitter user. It appears in the sidebar when you view another user's profile, and should help to add some context when you're trying to figure out why someone just followed you. Don't worry if you don't see You Both Follow yet, as it's just being tested at the moment. I really hope it becomes a permanent feature.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the International Date Line... China has released a white paper on the state of internet censorship in that country, which mentioned microblogs (in the Chinese version) and Twitter specifically (in the English verison) as technologies that allow the Chinese people to express themselves. Many news sources found this ironic, as Twitter has been blocked in China since last year.
Do we have any Chinese readers who can shed some light on the status and popularity of Twitter there? I'd love to hear from you.
Thanks for reading another Twitter Tuesday! We'll now return you to the iPhone 4 frenzy, but do come back next week to find out what's happening in the Twitter world. Bye for now!
Twitter Tuesday - Third-Party Developers Are Still Innovating originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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