A feature test with businesses

My name is Anamitra and I work in the product team at Twitter. For some time now, businesses of all sizes have been using Twitter to deepen their engagement with customers. The simple features that Twitter has offered to all users has worked for business users as well. As Twitter becomes more integral to businesses, they will need more business specific features from Twitter – both on the web and API. We have been working on some of these features and are ready to start a limited beta test of one that's further along in development.

The feature we are beta testing is called 'Contributors' – it enables users to engage in more authentic conversations with businesses by allowing those organizations to manage multiple contributors to their account. The feature appends the contributor's username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal; e.g. if @Twitter invites @Biz to tweet on its behalf, then a tweet from @Twitter would include @Biz in the byline so that users know more about the real people behind organizations.



Its functionality will be fully supported by the API and will enhance the many Twitter business apps, such as CoTweet and HootSuite.

It's Not Ready For Prime Time

This feature is one of several in development; some of them will be visible to regular users and some of them will not. Our goal at this time is to get basic feedback from business users and ecosystem partners. The beta will be released to a limited subset of folks for some time so that we can get an idea of how the features work from a system perspective. After we kick the tires a bit, we'll do a full launch to all business users and ecosystem partners. Stay tuned!

Ed ecco l'italiano!

Siamo emozionati perché oggi con il lancio della versione italiana del nostro sito diventiamo ancora di più una piattaforma di comunicazione globale. Come sempre, desideriamo ringraziare tutti i traduttori che hanno partecipato al progetto e che ci hanno mostrato la loro bravura.

Potrete seguire famosi giornalisti come @beppesevergnini oppure radio come @radiodeejay, la radio di Linus & C. o ancora una delle più famose cantanti italiane, Laura Pausini (@officialpausini).

Ora che le conversazioni su Twitter si arricchiscono di punti di vista sempre più diversificati a livello globale, il network di informazioni continuerà a crescere in ogni angolo e fessura del pianeta. Più eventi saranno condivisi, più conoscenza e consapevolezza si diffonderà e i milioni di persone che alimentano Twitter influenzeranno altri milioni di persone con i loro tweet.

E quale modo migliore di festeggiare il lancio di Twitter in Italia? Un bel Tweetup a base di pizza, amici e tweet. I nostri amici di @pizzatwit saranno felici di organizzare un pizza party e se volete incontrare un sacco di nuovi amici e twittare tutta notte, vi consigliamo di seguire il loro account e di aiutarli ad organizzare uno dei loro famosi Twitter Pizza Party!

Per usare Twitter in italiano, andate nelle vostre impostazioni e selezionate la lingua dal menù a tendina. Buon divertimento!

A Tool for Business

It’s not uncommon to stumble upon a store that encourages its customers to follow them on Twitter. Without even looking I see this happening more and more, which says a lot about the wonderfully simple concept of doing business on Twitter.

Today, Citysearch has integrated Twitter into their service so local businesses can display Tweets right within their Citysearch profile, and customers viewing the profile can even Tweet back right from there. Potential customers can make smarter decisions with the fresh information being shared with them in real time, and businesses can manage closer connections with audiences across the Web.

Simplicity along with the smart creations from third parties like Citysearch are making it more than handy for businesses to have a presence on Twitter.

Takeout dogfood

Hi all, this is @leland, user experience lead on the @twittermobile team. I wanted to share a little bit of what we've been working on and thinking about.

It’s probably no secret that Twitter has an active developer community, using our APIs to create fantastically innovative apps. Nor is it a secret that Twitter and mobile phones go together like birds and flight.

What may be a less known fact is: Lots of people access Twitter on their phones via our good ol’ mobile website, and trusty ‘m’ has been delivering tweets faithfully. However, ‘m’ doesn’t fully feel like Twitter, and could probably do a bit more things for you.

‘M’ should also be fantastically innovative — naturally the best way to do that is use our own APIs. So, the mobile team here built a brand new mobile web client from scratch, using only Twitter APIs, and we'd like to share the results with you.

Our new mobile web site is previewing today, just point your phone’s browser to http://mobile.twitter.com. Its got a great new look, and has some great new touches that will make your mobile experience on Twitter a bit more fun and a lot more helpful. Let us know if you agree and especially tell us how we can make it better.

This preview works best on @Webkit browsers – Android, iPhone, Nokia S60 and Palm Web OS phones all come with these browsers installed. Other browsers like @BlackBerry work too, but we haven't done all the fine tuning yet.

As this preview becomes ready for prime-time, we will start switching everyone who uses ‘m’ in phases to automatically receive the new mobile web client.

This is just the start, we’re excited about the new APIs launching at Twitter, and have been busy tinkering with some neat ways to use them. We look forward to sharing more cool things with you soon.

AIDS is Preventable and Treatable

Over the course of several meetings with the dedicated people behind (RED) we have learned a lot about fighting AIDS in Africa. Personally, I was struck by how effective treatment can be—someone on death's door can be brought back to life in as little as 90 days. This transformation is called the Lazarus Effect and it has more impact than you can imagine. When someone is treated, they can go back to being a mom, they can go back to their job, or to school. Fighting the disease at a large scale means positive changes not just for individuals but also socially and economically as people return to productive lives.

This amazing transformation comes from two pills daily at a cost of forty cents per day. Our friends at (Product)Red are making it easy for us to help fight AIDS by partnering with companies that make the products we buy already. For example, these red laces Nike designed to both raise awareness and help financially. At Twitter, we're making it fun and easy to spread the word about this preventable and treatable disease that is hitting Africa the hardest. If you use any of the following terms below today on Twitter your tweet will turn red. Today is World AIDS day, help us spread the word.

#red 100% of the monies generated by (RED) partners and events goes directly to fund programs to fight AIDS in Africa
@joinred is the official account of the (RED) campaign
40 cents a day can keep someone with AIDS alive
World AIDS Day is the perfect day to tweet for a cause
AIDS is preventable and treatable
HIV affects 33 million people around the world
#laceupsavelives is Nike's own campaign

We've also created a red theme which you can switch to in your profile settings. Don't forget to follow @joinred to stay informed. Here are some of the success stories.

Movember!

Once a year there is a very special and potentially awkward event: Movember. Here's what it's all about according to Movember.com:

Movember is an annual, month-long celebration of the moustache, highlighting men’s health issues - specifically prostate and testicular cancer. A Mo Bro starts Movember – the month formerly known as November – clean shaven, and grows a moustache all month long, garnering support from friends and family in the form of donations. What’s more, a Mo Bro is a walking billboard for the cause as his new look opens the door for him to talk about cancers affecting men – making the moustache a symbol, much like the pink ribbon is for breast cancer.

Prostate cancer will strike 1 in 6 men in their lifetime. Testicular cancer is the most common cancer for men aged 18-35. This Movember, the money raised in the U.S. will be split between the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation will use the money raised by Movember to fund research to find better treatments and a cure for prostate cancer.
The Lance Armstrong Foundation will use the money raised by Movember to fund:

• the LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance program which has the goal of improving survival rates and quality of life for young adults with cancer between the ages of 15 and 40.

• research initiatives to further understand the biology of adolescent and young adult cancers.

At Twitter HQ, a group of us mo-bros have been spending the month making everyone uncomfortable because we believe in the importance of raising awareness around men's health.

If you'd like to join us in support, please check out our Twustache Team!

Nouvelle saveur : Twitter en Français!

Avec l'ajout de la version espagnole du site le mois dernier, de nombreuses personnes ont rejoint les conversations sur Twitter. De plus en plus de personnes twittent en dehors des États-Unis et nous sommes à présent en mesure d'accueillir les utilisateurs de près de 30 pays francophones. Il est maintenant possible de changer les paramètres de langue en français grâce à la participation des traducteurs qui ont contribué à transformer Twitter en une plate-forme de communication véritablement mondiale.

Les twitteurs français peuvent d'ors et déjà suivre des personnes et des sociétés qui leur sont familières. Que vous fréquentiez @lepicerie ou @lopera pour vos sorties gastronomiques, que vous lisiez @LeMondeFR en allant au travail ou que vous écoutiez @theteenagers sur le chemin du retour ou encore que vous soyez fan des @CanadiensMTL, il y a une multitude d'informations utiles à découvrir à tout moment.

Pour voir Twitter en français, il suffit de consulter vos paramètres et sélectionner "français" dans le menu déroulant.

Une dernière chose : une partie de l'équipe Twitter sera à Paris les 9 et 10 decembré pour la conférence Le Web, présentée par @loic. Les spécialistes de notre plate-forme, Ryan Sarver (@rsarver) et Marcel Molina (@noradio) y présenteront, entre autres choses, une session développeurs. Si vous êtes dans la région ces jours-là, n'hésitez pas à nous rejoindre!

Think Globally, Tweet Locally

In August we announced that we were working on a new API that would provide developers with the ability to geotag tweets. Today, the Geotagging API is officially available.

This release is unique in that it's API-only which means you won't see any changes on twitter.com, yet. Instead, Twitter applications like Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro and others are already supporting this new functionality (go try them out now!) in interesting ways that include geotagging your tweets and displaying the location from where a tweet was posted. The added information provides valuable context when reading your friends tweets and allows you to better focus in on local conversations. Now you can find out what live music is playing right now in your neighborhood or what people visiting Checkpoint Charlie are saying today about the anniversary of the Berlin Wall. These are only the beginning and we are really looking forward to seeing the creative uses emerge from the developer community.

It's important to note geotagging is disabled by default for all users which means you will need to opt-in in order to use it. To activate the new geotagging functionality, go to your Settings page and click "Enable Geotagging".

Refreshed Privacy Policy

As part of rolling out geotagging today we've updated our privacy policy to explicitly include geotagging and to describe the public nature of most of what people post to Twitter. We've tried to keep it short and sweet with lots of real life examples so it's simple to read through. We'll also be letting people know about the new policy via email and @twitter.

Please give the new policy a read and contact us at privacy@twitter.com if you have comments or suggestions.

What's Happening?

Twitter was originally conceived as a mobile status update service—an easy way to keep in touch with people in your life by sending and receiving short, frequent answers to one question, "What are you doing?" However, when we implemented the service, we chose to leave something out. To stay simple, Twitter did not require individuals to confirm relationships. Instead, we left things open.

People, organizations, and businesses quickly began leveraging the open nature of the network to share anything they wanted, completely ignoring the original question, seemingly on a quest to both ask and answer a different, more immediate question, "What's happening?" A simple text input field limited to 140 characters of text was all it took for creativity and ingenuity to thrive.

Sure, someone in San Francisco may be answering "What are you doing?" with "Enjoying an excellent cup of coffee," at this very moment. However, a birds-eye view of Twitter reveals that it's not exclusively about these personal musings. Between those cups of coffee, people are witnessing accidents, organizing events, sharing links, breaking news, reporting stuff their dad says, and so much more.

The fundamentally open model of Twitter created a new kind of information network and it has long outgrown the concept of personal status updates. Twitter helps you share and discover what's happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. "What are you doing?" isn't the right question anymore—starting today, we've shortened it by two characters. Twitter now asks, "What's happening?"

We don't expect this to change how anyone uses Twitter, but maybe it'll make it easier to explain to your dad.