Twitter Blog

Retweet Limited Rollout

2009-11-05T16:50:00.000-08:00

We've just activated a feature called retweet on a very small percentage of accounts in order to see how it works in the wild. Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy. In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know.

You may remember that we shared the mechanics of this feature with developers a while back so they could think about how to work it into Twitter apps. Now we're ready to start trying it on Twitter. The plan is to see how it goes first with this small release. If it needs more work, then we'll know right away. If things look good, we'll proceed with releasing the feature in stages eventually arriving at 100%.

Get to the Point: Twitter Trends

2009-11-05T16:30:00.000-08:00

As Twitter grows and the number of tweets each day continues to astound us, we’ve noticed an increasing amount of clutter in the public timeline, especially with trending topics. Trends began as a useful way to find out what’s going on but has grown less interesting due to the noisiness of the conversation.

So, today we're starting to experiment with improvements to trends that will help you find more relevant tweets. Specifically, we're working to show higher quality results for trend queries by returning tweets that are more useful. The improvement won't be very noticeable at first, but this is a small step toward unearthing more value in search and getting you more relevant results.

¿Qué estás haciendo?

2009-11-03T15:21:00.000-08:00

A principios de mes invitamos a algunos voluntarios a traducir Twitter en más idiomas. Gracias a estos entusiastas voluntarios hispanoparlantes, Twitter está ahora oficialmente disponible en español. Puedes cambiar el idioma en la Configuración o visitar Twitter.com y cambiar la configuración del idioma en el la opción situada en la esquina inferior derecha.

Algunos usuarios hispanoparlantes como Pepe Aguilar (@PepeAguilar), Manu Ginobili (@manuginobili), José Hernández (@Astro_Jose), Andreu Buenafuente (@buenafuente), Juan Fonseca (@FONSECA) y La Moncloa en España (@desdelamoncloa) habían descubierto el valor de Twitter incluso antes de que lanzáramos esta versión traducida. Esperamos que ofrecer Twitter en español signifique más gente capaz de acceder y disfrutar de este servicio.

¡Bienvenidos!

There's a List for That

2009-10-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

We’re putting the finishing touches on our new Lists feature and we're really excited about the folks who have already taken a lot of time creating awesome lists. From the @time list of funny people to your own list of people who make you laugh—it's easy to see how this feature increases discovery and adds value in lots of ways.

Lists also make it easier to curate tweets into meaningful real-time experiences on your own sites via the Lists API. Media companies are already taking advantage: for example, check out @huffingtonpost's use of the Lists API in their World Series coverage.

@Bettydraper/rolodex: A collection of fan-created Mad Men characters
@NYTimes/staff: The colorful people behind The Gray Lady
@BBC/radio1-1xtra: Turns out BBC radio hosts are a chatty bunch
@Joesebok/poker: A list of professional poker players by a professional poker player
@jayrosen/mindcasters: A list of the some of the best new media thinkers by an NYU professor
@Stocktwits/suggested: A list of traders for stock market fanatics

We’ve been taking our time rolling out the lists feature to make sure things go smoothly and developers have a chance to begin experimenting with our Lists API. For example, TLISTS will provide tools to efficiently build, measure and distribute Lists, while Listorious hosts a directory of 'awesome lists' on Twitter.

Anyone can curate and publish lists, so if you have an idea for one, just click "New list" in the sidebar of your Twitter account and you're on your way. Add accounts to a list using the "Lists" drop drown on a profile page. We believe Lists will be a new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.

@google Nice!

2009-10-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

Our friends down in Mountain View want to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. A fast growing amount of information is coursing through Twitter very quickly, and we want there to be many ways to access that information. As part of that effort, we've partnered with Google to index the entire world of public tweets as fast as possible and present them to their users in an organized and relevant fashion.

We've always taken an open approach to how people experience Twitter, particularly in how and where tweets are read. Users have benefited greatly from the abundance of choice provided by our ecosystem partners. We're honored to take this next step with Google and tap into their expertise to support the rapid, open exchange of information.

You can read more about our collaboration on the Google Blog.

Bing Goes The Dynamite!

2009-10-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

We very firmly believe the open exchange of information can have a positive impact on the world. Every day we see evidence supporting this belief. Most Twitter accounts are public for a good reason—people find value in openness. An open approach means value for users, value for partners, and value for Twitter.

We have a team focused on delivering value from a search and discovery perspective at Twitter and they're just getting started. Twitter is earning a reputation for delivering real-time results to queries about things that are happening right now. Moreover, there are already tens of thousands of Twitter apps and more to come because people want the choice to consume and create tweets wherever and whenever they prefer. The folks over at Bing took a keen interest in Twitter and worked fast to establish a working relationship with us in line with our open approach.

You can read more about Bing's new Twitter search on their blog or just try it out. Twitter is providing Bing access to the overwhelming deluge of public, real-time tweets rushing in from all around the world so they can help you find those that make the most sense right now. While Twitter currently presents tweets based simply on timeliness, Bing is experimenting with new solutions such as "best match." We hope more working relationships with organizations in the search business will mean even more variety for users.

Because of our open approach there are many ways to interact with Twitter, and there will be many more to come. As we work to mature our service and platform offerings, we also hope to develop meaningful relationships with companies that share our vision of creating value for everyone involved—especially users. Whether it's emerging startups, big companies, or people simply sharing information, we're establishing successful partnerships. Also, it's fun.

Good Wine and Books

2009-10-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

We're just getting started as a company, but we believe thinking long term about making a positive impact will allow us to grow in the right direction to make a difference as both a technology and a business.

For Twitter to be at its peak in utility, people who would have never had access to the world's information need to be able to not only receive it but engage with it, too. Room to Read, a San Francisco based non-profit, will help us make that happen by bringing libraries and literacy to the world's poorest regions.

Together we'll be making some awesome wine over the course of a year to benefit @roomtoread, and with each case sold they'll be able to supply about 60 local language children's books to educate the 300 million kids around the world who can't read.

You can follow us throughout this initiative and even participate in barrel tastings and other activities along the way thanks to the folks at Crushpad. If you want to get a bottle of our limited Pinot Noir or Chardonnay, visit the Fledgling Initiative and contribute. Good wine has never been better!

Hello, Bharti Airtel

2009-10-14T11:14:00.000-07:00

Twitter is committed to fostering the open exchange of information because we passionately believe it can have a positive global impact. When people can exchange information freely and publicly they are able to accomplish great things. As powerful as the Internet has become for the democratization of information, its range is limited when compared to mobile texting—a format uniquely native to Twitter. There are over one billion people with internet access on the planet but there are more than four billion people with mobile phones and Twitter can work on all of them because even the simplest of these devices feature SMS.

We have seen people use Twitter to help each other during fuel shortages, track the spread of wildfires, check in during earthquakes, organize major charitable events, spread urgent news efficiently around the world, and much more. In many of these scenarios, texting has been the key. People exchanging information quickly and efficiently with the device that has become essential to everyday life, their mobile phone. In many parts of the world people do not have Internet access but they can text—and that means they can access Twitter.

As we grow, we seek to partner with organizations that share our vision for positive global impact. Our partnership with Bharti Airtel, the largest mobile operator in India, means a huge population of people can now send tweets at standard rates and receive tweets for free. Bharti Airtel is offering people in every city, every village, every remote taluk and even the smallest panchayat the opportunity to connect to Twitter and enjoy the open exchange of information with no added fees. We are proud to have Bharti Airtel as our partner. Give Twitter a try with your Airtel phone by sending START to 53000. And spread the word!

Twitter is not about technology, it's about people. We worked quickly to establish full SMS service in India with the largest operator because organic growth in the region has been unusually strong and there is huge potential for positive impact. India already shines brightly with Twitter advocates like film stars Priyanka Chopra @priyankachopra Gul Panag @gulpanag, and Mallika Sherawat @mallikala, director Karan Johar @kjohar25, Minister of State Shashi Tharoor @shashitharoor, upper house member Pritish Nandy @pritishnandy, news anchors Barkha Dutt @bdutt and Vir Sanghvi @virsanghvi, plus media outlets MTV India @MTVindia and NDTV @ndtv just to name a few.

Despite growing global awareness, Twitter has under 80 employees altogether but our little mobile team packs a punch. Kevin Thau with help from Tim Huske have built a mobile team of six people within Twitter and they've made considerable strides bringing full SMS service to the US, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and now India. As long as you keep asking for Twitter, we'll keep working to activate full service in your region with no extra charges. Don't forget to activate your mobile—visit the Devices page or text START to Twitter.

Help us nail spammers

2009-10-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

Today we've added another tool to our spam fighting toolbox that will give users the ability to flag bad accounts on Twitter.

Folks can now help us conquer spam by calling our attention to a profile they find questionable. Click the “Report as spam” button under the Actions section of a profile’s sidebar and our Trust and Safety team will check it out to see what needs to be done. No automated action will be taken as a result of reporting a user as spam (in other words, it can't be used to incite an angry mob against an account you don't like.) And once you report a profile it will automatically be blocked from following or replying to you. You nailed it!

Our spam fighting tools will continue to evolve as new behaviors emerge, and as always, we'll keep trust and safety at the top of our list.

Coming Soon: Twitter in More Languages

2009-10-08T15:05:00.000-07:00

Photo: Sandy's Photos

Twitter is currently available only in English and Japanese. With some help, we will soon be rolling out support for French, Italian, German, and Spanish. These languages are commonly referred to using the acronym FIGS and are often the starting point for services like Twitter when its time for more language support. Later, we hope to offer Twitter in several other languages. No matter how sophisticated technology gets, we're reminded daily that it's about people and that's something we've taken to heart regarding translating Twitter.

People Make Twitter Better

The variety of Twitter applications exist today because developers took advantage of this simple, open platform. Protocols like @mentions and retweet were invented by users to get more out of their Twitter experience and we are able to follow up with a technical response to make them actual features. Starting today, we are offering a simple tool for people with experience in other languages to suggest translations for the Twitter web site. Then, we'll follow up technically.

Twitter Translate users can make suggestions.

We are inviting a small group of people to become volunteer translators at first. As more folks volunteer, the translation suggestions should accumulate faster and we'll have enough material to respond by making Twitter available not only in English and Japanese but also French, Italian, German, and Spanish. We will distribute the translations to Twitter platform developers making it easier for them to offer multiple language support as well.

If yours isn't one of the six languages we're going to be available in soon, we thank you for bearing with us—we'll get there as soon as we can. Our tiny, five person team of Andy Lorek, Matt Sanford, Alex McCauley, Sean Bell, and Yukari Matsuzawa from Twitter has done great work putting this plan together. We're very excited that more people will be able to use Twitter in their native language!

Join the 'Philanthropic Throwdown'

2009-10-04T18:14:00.000-07:00

Donorschoose.org is running a Social Media Challenge and it's easy to get involved. You can pick a Twitterer to support or you can create a giving page of your own. Last year this program raised $270,000 to provide 65,000 students with the resources needed to learn. Make sure you add yourself to the Twitter group—if you get stuck, visit the help page.

One of the proposals among several I'm personally hoping to get funded is Making Science Fun! Ms. M's Classroom is a high poverty school in Arkansas. The fourth graders need sets of books about simple machines, properties of the earth, electricity, and matter as well as hands-on activity tubs for each topic. The letters the kids write to you after donating are their own reward.

Soon to Launch: Lists

2009-09-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

My name is Nick Kallen (@nk) and I'm the project lead on Lists, a new feature we're testing with a small subset of users. The idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.

Lists are public by default (but can be made private) and the lists you've created are linked from your profile. Other Twitter users can then subscribe to your lists. This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.

We started working on this feature because of the frequent requests we received from people who were looking for a better way to organize information on Twitter. Of course, that means not just twitter.com—the Platform team will follow up in a few days with information on the Lists API. This will allow developers to add support for Lists into your favorite Twitter apps.

We're just doing limited testing for now. But once we've tested the feature out a bit, we'll launch it for all accounts!

Thanks to @rael, @vl and the rest of the team who worked to get this limited release out today.

New Twitter Funding

2009-09-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of talk today about our financing. Yesterday we closed a significant round of funding with a group of investment firms that we're excited to publicly thank: Insight Venture Partners, T. Rowe Price, Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Benchmark Capital, and Morgan Stanley.

It was important to us that we find investment partners who share our vision for building a company of enduring value. Twitter's journey has just begun and we are committed to building the best product, technology, and company possible. I'm proud of the team we've built so far and I'm confident in the future we'll build together.

One More Thing: Twitter+AOL

2009-09-23T18:15:00.000-07:00

Like we said earlier today, people should read or write tweets wherever they prefer and there's a large portion of Internet users who prefer AOL. As a proud partner in AOL Lifestream, Twitter will be smoothly integrated into AIM, Bebo, and AOL.com. Some of your other favorite services like YouTube, Flickr, Digg, and Facebook are also part of the action. Did I mention that our Platform team has working overtime lately? We love those guys!

MySpace Gets Twitterized!

2009-09-23T13:02:00.000-07:00

There are tens of thousands of mobile, desktop, and web applications creating a variety of ways to interact with Twitter on your favorite device or service. We think people should read or write tweets wherever they prefer so we work with social networks, mobile networks, television networks, and search engines to make that happen. This week, fans of MySpace have started taking their @usernames with them by syncing their accounts with Twitter.

When you sync your MySpace account with Twitter, you'll be able to update your status as you normally would from your home page, status and mood page, or mobile phone. When you update your status on MySpace it will also update Twitter—and, the reverse is true. We're already seeing many accounts syncing up and we expect more to follow. Kudos to Ryan Sarver and the Twitter platform team for helping to get this worked out with our friends at MySpace.

Four More Themes

2009-09-14T18:06:00.000-07:00

If you like using Twitter.com as your Twitter client, then you might be interested to know that we've added four more themes to the design collection. We've also updated the default theme and avatar to match our front page. If you prefer the classic default theme, it's still there and you can change it back. To change your Twitter page design, visit Settings > Design.

Twitter's New Terms of Service

2009-09-10T16:15:00.000-07:00

At the start, critics often said, "Twitter is fun, but it's not useful." At one point @ev responded dryly with, "Neither is ice cream." Things have come a long way in a short time. We recognized potential early but users and platform developers would demonstrate how much more Twitter could be. Fostering an open and increasingly important network is not as easily dismissed as it once was—but it's still fun!

Now that we know more about how Twitter is being used, we've made changes to our Terms of Service—these are the basic rules that go along with using Twitter. The revisions more appropriately reflect the nature of Twitter and convey key issues such as ownership. For example, your tweets belong to you, not to Twitter. With these revisions, we expect some discussion so here are a few highlights from the updated page.

Advertising—In the Terms, we leave the door open for advertising. We'd like to keep our options open as we've said before.

Ownership—Twitter is allowed to "use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute" your tweets because that's what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you.

APIs—The apps that have grown around the Twitter platform are flourishing and adding value to the ecosystem. You authorize us to make content available via our APIs. We're also working on guidelines for use of the API.

SPAM—Abusive behavior and spam is also outlined in these terms according to the rules we've been operating under for some time.

These updates complement the spirit of Twitter. If we've left something out, or the nature of the service changes, then we'll revisit the Terms—there's a feedback link on the page. We're in the process of sending an email about the revisions now. It's important that everyone who tweets, develops apps, or is simply interested in Twitter understands that it's not about the technology, it's about how we all use the service that matters most.

140: The Twitter Conference LA

2009-08-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

Alex Payne, Ryan Sarver myself, and a whole bunch of Twitter enthusiasts ranging from businesses to celebrities will be gathering at a Twitter conference in Los Angeles later next month. If you're interested in joining us, check it out. The exact date is September 22nd-23rd, 2009, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Alex and Ryan work on our platform team without which all the cool Twitter apps we use and love would not be possible. We're looking forward to sharing information, discussing ideas, and hanging out a bit. If that's not enough, there's an open bar on the first night.

Twitter Sesh

2009-08-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

Check out this funny video Ben Stiller (@redhourBen) made with Ryan Seacrest (@RyanSeacrest). "Yeah, why don't you come on Idol because that will help me. You showing up on American Idol. Again."

Twitter Wit

2009-08-25T12:18:00.000-07:00

There's a new book out called Twitter Wit featuring "the Funniest Tweets of All Time." When Nick Douglas asked us about his ambitious plan to curate this collection it sounded good provided the right permissions were in place—and only if it was funny! After reading a draft, we bought copies for everyone at Twitter HQ. The tweets are irreverent, inappropriate, geeky, and pretty much hilarious. If you don't like one, you'll like the next. Twitter Wit is one of those books you can't help reading aloud to friends. Like this: "Why should I be the one to take the kids to see the their psychologist? I don't even love them!" via @fireland.

We have no financial arrangement with the publisher but Nick invited me to write the book's foreward. The first few pages of Twitter Wit provided an opportunity to share some behind the scenes perspective and highlight the significance of humor as a meaningful part of communication. The most important contribution I could make was to celebrate the team here at Twitter HQ as well as everyone around the world sharing, discovering, and building on the service. Nevertheless, @pagecrusher's question remains unanswered: "Why aren't martini glasses shaped so that they don’t spill so easily on the bus?" Also, there's a contest.

Location, Location, Location

2009-08-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

Twitter platform developers have been doing innovative work with location for some time despite having access to only a rudimentary level of API support. Most of the location-based projects we see are built using the simple, account-level location field folks can fill out as part of their profile. Since anything can be written in this field, it's interesting but not very dependable.

We're gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won't be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.

For example, with accurate, tweet-level location data you could switch from reading the tweets of accounts you follow to reading tweets from anyone in your neighborhood or city—whether you follow them or not. It's easy to imagine how this might be interesting at an event like a concert or even something more dramatic like an earthquake. There will likely be many use cases we haven't even thought of yet which is part of what makes this so exciting.

Developer Preview

We're going to release geolocation to platform developers before we add the feature to Twitter.com. Most of the mobile applications people use and love are built by Twitter platform developers. Developers will have access to this new geolocation feature early which means it will most likely be available on your app of choice before it's available on Twitter's web site. Later, we'll add it to our mobile web site and Twitter.com as well.

We're very excited about the potential of location metadata combined with Twitter. Our platform team has been on a roll lately. Geolocation lead @rsarver is particularly enthusiastic about location given his personal interest and involvement in events such as WhereCamp and his career history with location-aware services.

Project Retweet: Phase One

2009-08-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

Some of Twitter's best features are emergent—people inventing simple but creative ways to share, discover, and communicate. One such convention is retweeting. When you want to call more attention to a particular tweet, you copy/paste it as your own, reference the original author with an @mention, and finally, indicate that it's a retweet. The process works although it's a bit cumbersome and not everyone knows about it.

Retweeting is a great example of Twitter teaching us what it wants to be. The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact and the more efficient dissemination of information across the entire Twitter ecosystem is something we very much want to support. That's why we're planning to formalize retweeting by officially adding it to our platform and Twitter.com.

It's Not Ready Just Yet

Phase one of project retweet is to show the developer community how it will work from an API perspective as well as a user perspective. We're still working out the final details, but this sketch gives you the basic idea. Let's say you follow @jessverr, @biz (that's me), and @gregpass but you don't follow @ev. However, I do follow @ev and the birth of his baby boy was so momentous that I retweeted it to all my followers.

Note "retweeted by" attribution and "retweet" option.

Imagine that my simple sketch is your Twitter timeline. You'd see @ev's tweet even though you don't follow him because you follow me and I really wanted you to have the information that I have. (The star, reply, and retweet options only show up when you hover over a row on Twitter.com which is why you don't see them all the time.) Also, if you find my retweets annoying, then you'll be able to turn them off.

When Will It Launch?

We are still sketching out exactly how this feature and its API counterpart works. Sharing our thoughts before launching means developers will have the opportunity to prepare their applications. In a few weeks or so we'll launch the feature on our web site and because app developers had a chance to prepare, it should become available across most of the Twitter ecosystem about the same time. This way, we can all enjoy retweeting—however we choose to access Twitter.

The first launch of this feature will probably be a limited subset of folks for a short period of time so we can get an idea of how it works from a system perspective. After we kick the tires a bit, we'll do a full launch to everyone. As you can see, there are still some details to be worked out but congrats to @zhanna and her team for the awesome work done so far—it's looking really good and we can't wait to start using the feature!

The Adventure Continues

2009-08-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

In the past 24 hours, we've been contending with a variety of attacks that continue to change in nature and intensity. We're working to restore access to apps built on the Twitter platform that were affected by defensive measures—there was some overcompensation on our part as we tune our system to deal with this scale of attack.

The ongoing, massively coordinated attacks on Twitter this week appear to have been geopolitical in motivation. However, we don't feel it's appropriate to engage in speculative discussion about these motivations. The open exchange of information can have a positive impact globally and our job is to keep Twitter services running reliably to the best of our ability.

As a reminder, no data or personal information of any kind has been compromised. Denial of Service attacks are a known quantity on the web and they are not going away any time soon. Nevertheless, we can and will improve system response to these assaults such that they don't interfere with our normal, everyday Twittering.

Update on Today's DoS Attacks

2009-08-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

As noted earlier on our Status Blog, Twitter is back in action. The continuing denial of service attack is being mitigated although there is still degraded service for some folks while we recover completely.

Over the last few hours, Twitter has been working closely with other companies and services affected by what appears to be a single, massively coordinated attack. As to the motivation behind this event, we prefer not to speculate.

Please note that no user data was compromised in this attack. This activity is about saturating a service with so many requests that it cannot respond to legitimate requests thereby denying service to intended customers or users.

We've worked hard to achieve technical stability and we're proud of our Engineering and Operations teams. Nevertheless, today's massive, globally distributed attack was a reminder that there's still lots of work ahead.

Denial of Service Attack

2009-08-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack. Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users. We are defending against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate.