Twitter News Blog:
Twitter is far from new but while many people still don't 'get it', there are even more who have great potential but aren't sure how to make an impact on Twitter. Corporations are dabbling for customer support, sales offers and reputation management. Small businesses are either spamming on Twitter or having mainly personal conversations. Many people are simply broadcasting their day without any true interaction with their Twitter followers. This site will hopefully help you to make the most of Twitter
One year ago, we posted "
The Tweets Must Flow," in which we said,
“The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact … almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits.”As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.
Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.
We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page,
http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.
There’s more information in our Help pages, both on our
Policy and about
Your Account Settings.
One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user’s voice. We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can't. The Tweets must continue to flow.
Hack Week is one of the ways we actively promote innovation through experimentation around the company. This week, a wide range of folks here are taking time away from their day-to-day work to collaborate and develop ideas that they are passionate about.
Employees across the company have formed nearly 100 teams to work on a variety of projects. Some are developing ways that could make Twitter even easier to use; others are testing out a new feature or tool that people might want to see in the service. Some projects are technical, and strategic; some are fun, giving people a chance to stretch their creative muscles.
We don’t know what exactly will result, but we can’t wait to find out. One thing we do know: we’ll have a bunch of awesome new products, features, and ideas. Some may launch quickly, and others will earn more time and attention to further develop. And of course, some of what happens in Hack Week will stay in Hack Week.
Stay tuned for updates about our first Hack Week of 2012.
Beginning today, right-to-left languages are now available for volunteers to translate in the
Twitter Translation Center, starting with Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu. The Twitter Translation Center takes a crowd-sourced approach to translating and localizing Twitter for people around the world. More than 425,000 volunteers contribute to the Translation Center, and to date have helped make Twitter available in 22 languages. With their help, these will be the next four.
As we prepare to add Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu to Twitter, we’ve developed new ways to ensure that Tweets and hashtags will work properly in right-to-left languages. We’ve also made changes behind the scenes to give right-to-left language speakers a localized user experience. As soon as our volunteers have completed their translation work, we’ll make Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu available for everyone on Twitter.com later this spring.
“He shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
–The Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 3
Every year, the President of the United States delivers a kind of “status update” and his proposals for new initiatives to a joint session of Congress. In the early days, it was a private communique between two branches of government; today it’s very much a public event to which millions of Americans, as well as people around the world, tune in.
Tonight at 9pm ET/6pm PT, President
@BarackObama will deliver his fourth State of the Union address. Whether you watch it on TV or hear it on the radio, you’ll get a richer, 360-degree experience of what he says and reactions to it when you follow along live on Twitter. Here’s how:
Get your timeline ready: Look for more from the president by following
@WHLive and
@whitehouse and follow the reaction from
Republican presidential candidates. More than 450 members of the
U.S. House of Representatives and
Senate have Twitter accounts; we expect that many will be tweeting their thoughts from the chamber. And if you watch on C-SPAN2, you’ll be able to see their Tweets on screen in real time as well.
Make your voice heard: Join the conversation by adding the hashtag #SOTU to your Tweets. Immediately after the debate, a team of senior White House officials will be ready to answer your questions when you add the hashtags #WHchat and #SOTU to your Tweets. And if you have something to say about specific parts of the speech or topics, you can include one of the following official hashtags from the White House:
#jobs
#manufacturing
#energy
#education
#fairness
Republican leaders will be taking questions using #SOTUGOP. For more on #SOTU-related Q&As this week, visit
http://wh.gov/sotu and
http://gop.gov/sotu.
Get real-time analysis as the speech unfolds: Log in to Twitter and
search for the hashtag #SOTU to see comments and ideas from many perspectives about the speech. (Last year, more than 80% of Tweets about the State of the Union used the #SOTU hashtag.)
Updated:
And the results are in. Below is a visual of the Twitter activity from President Obama's entrance into the House chamber up through Mitch Daniels' response for the Republican Party. There were three-quarters of a million Tweets that specifically mentioned the State of the Union. And the moment that we saw the highest Tweets-per-minute was following the President's "spilled milk" joke (14,131 TPM).
(click to enlarge)
For other views of how the speech played out on Twitter, check out
Rick Santorum's and Gov.
Buddy Roemer's accounts who live-tweeted the event.
Finally, the Vice President took to Twitter this evening to announce his first Twitter chat later this week.
Every year at this time, film buffs from around the world converge on Park City, Utah to see more than 200 documentaries, dramas and short films at the
Sundance Film Festival (@sundancefest). To discover the next great films, directors and stars before they make it big, just follow along on Twitter. Here’s a
list of all the filmmakers at this year’s festival; you can join the conversation by sharing your opinions and comments using the hashtag #Sundance.
Throughout the festival, keep track of
guest Tweeters like screenwriter and director @MichaelMohan (“Save The Date”), hip-hop artist and actor @Common (“LUV”) and comedian-turned-screenwriter/director @Birbigs (Mike Birbiglia, “Sleepwalk With Me”).From A-list directors like @SpikeLee (“Red Hook Summer”) to
New York Times film critic @aoscott, you can tune into any perspective about what’s happening.
You can even go behind the scenes as Sundance directors talk about their films. Watch @aliklay describe her documentary about Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, and visit the @sundancefest profile page for more filmmaker videos.
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