Filed under: Features, Web services, Social Software, Microblogging, Twitter
In a big personnel move at Twitter, co-founder Evan Williams is stepping down as CEO. @ev has been one of the faces of Twitter, along with Biz Stone, but he's ready to focus more on product development and hand the reins of Twitter over to COO Dick Costolo. The change makes a lot of sense: Ev didn't get into Twitter to monetize, he got into Twitter to build something cool.
Costolo has done a great job figuring out how Twitter can make money, so he's the right CEO to lead the company forward into its new, more profitable form. Meanwhile, Ev will be free to do nothing but brainstorm and build new ideas for Twitter itself, or maybe invest in something new, like Twitter cohort Jack Dorsey did with mobile payment app Square.Promoted Accounts Go Live
Twitter has announced that Promoted Accounts are now live, so you may see a few companies showing up in your Who to Follow recommendations. Twitter still uses an algorithm to figure out whether you might be interested in a Promoted Account, though, so the ones you see aren't just arbitrary spam. Some third-party apps, including HootSuite, will also be displaying promotions as part of a deal with Twitter.
Author Malcolm Gladwell Criticizes Twitter
Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker writer and author of The Tipping Point, just published an article called "Small Change: Why The Revolution Will Not Be Twittered," discounting the potential of Twitter (and social media in general) as tools for social change or revolution. The American civil rights movement wouldn't have been the same if Martin Luther King, Jr. had merely tweeted from prison, he argues. The piece has social media evangelists up in arms, and Gladwell even drew a response from Here Comes Everybody author Clay Shirky, who he mentioned by name in his Twitter hit piece.
Is this just the media old guard defending its rapidly-weakening position, or does Gladwell have a point about Twitter?
Twitter Will Be Available on Google TV
Google and Twitter have teamed up to create an official Google TV Twitter app. The app will ship with Google's new device, and the Offficial Twitter Blog has spilled the details on what it can do. Despite opening with some talk about how watching TV has become a social activity thanks to Twitter, the post describes a pretty standard Twitter app, with no special sauce beyond the standard mix of reply/retweet/share features. However, sharing via Twitter will be integrated into other Google TV apps.
Tweetmeme Evolves into Datasift
When Tweetmeme was essentially made obsolete by Twitter's official Tweet button, Tweetmeme founder Nick Halstead decided to take his link-indexing service in a new direction with Datasift, a product mainly targeted at pro marketers and firms. Datasift can slice and dice Tweets any way you want them, factoring in topics, whether the Tweet is positive or negative, or even sorting by popularity and influence according to third-party service Klout. Basically, Datasift is aiming to be the creme de la creme of the Twitter analytics world. That's not something Twitter has an incentive to do on its own any time soon, so it looks like Halstead might have more long-term success with Datasift than he did with Tweetmeme.
... and that's Twitter Tuesday for this week. Tune in again next week to see where Twitter decides to take things under the leadership of their ambitious new CEO, plus more apps and news.Twitter Tuesday - Dick Costolo, Twitter's money man, becomes CEO originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 16:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments
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