Tag: twitter

How Big is Twitter?

Twitter has always been a highly active social media forum where a single tweet can create a conversational conflict across the globe. The microblogging platform was created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006, which means soon it will turn 16. Since then, the platform has emerged well, from allowing people to speak their hearts out to coming up with the breaking news before news stations. Over the past few years, the revenue of the ‘diary platform’ has skyrocketed, and it will only fly up in the future, thanks to the digital revolution.

Recently, when Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, announced his surprising move of stepping down from the position of chief executive officer, and Parag Agrawal took over his CEO position, everyone was in awe. The day Jack Dorsey announced his replacement, Twitter India flooded with thousands of memes on “Agrawal ji ka beta”, which shows how pleased Indians were after the announcement. The selection of an Indian-origin Parag Agrawal as CEO of Twitter creates a buzz in the social media circuit, causing us to pick Twitter for our How Big is feature.

How was Twitter Formed?

Evan Williams teamed up with his neighbour Noah Glass for a business venture and started working on a podcasting platform, Odeo. Later on, Williams convinced one of his Google co-workers and friend Biz Stone to join the team. Along the way, Engineer Jack Dorsey joined the trio and became part of the Odeo team. Unfortunately (at least for the Odeo team), in June 2005, Apple announced that they would include podcasting in one of the popular services, iTunes, cursing Odeo’s chances for success.

The announcement shook the management team of the Odeo, and Evan Williams told his Odeo employees to put their everyday tasks at Odeo on hold and work on whatever side projects they had. The results were outstanding, but the idea that Jack Dorsey tossed was the strongest one, and the management trio decided to go with it. A lot more happened in between, such as Williams firing Glass due to increased workplace tension, acquiring the majority of assets from Odeo’s investors and shareholders and then finally, in March 2007, the completed version of Twitter debuted and won the best startup honour at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas.

The Birth of the name ‘Twitter’

Every project starts with an idea, followed by a name, which identifies the brand. The original project code name was twttr, and then the founders of the company, mainly Noah Glass, came across the word Twitter for the first time and decided to go with it as it means “a short burst of inconsequential information” and “chirps from birds,” which sounds perfect for the platform. Initially, it was referred to as a social network as well as microblogging because it didn’t replace anything, but in a brief span, it became a popular social media network in the world with over 330 million daily active users.

The First-ever Tweet

Twitter co-founder typed out a simple yet effective message, “just setting up my twttr”, and posted it on Twitter. The message became the first-ever tweet, and after 15 years, it has gained over 172k likes and received over 121k retweets.

The Initial Years of the Twitter

In April 2007, Twitter became an independent company, and Twitter, Inc. was created as a corporate entity. Due to the Interactive conference at South By Southwest, Twitter gained humongous popularity, with about 60,000 tweets being sent on the day of the event. The prominent events such as election polls, FIFA World Cup, NBA Finals played a crucial role in the growth of Twitter, especially during its initial phase.

The platform was made for sharing thoughts, daily life ventures, and comprehending what people were doing based on their status updates. The company experienced rapid growth initially, from over 4,00,000 tweets per quarter in 2007 to a whopping 100 million tweets per quarter in 2008. The company moved up to the third-highest-ranking social networking site in January 2009.

The New Twitter

The company upped its game and rolled out an entirely revamped edition of twitter.com in 2011, often referred to as New Twitter in popular culture and also considered Twitter’s first big move in terms of redesigning. It features a complete overhaul of the interface and allows users to see pictures and videos, from a variety of supported websites, including Flickr and YouTube, without leaving the Twitter app website.

The new Twitter was formed to make money through promoted tweets, accounts, and trends as many brands were ready to pay considerable amounts to show their tweets at the top of search results pages. The new Twitter also introduced features like related content and mini-profiles. In late 2011, Twitter overhauled its website again to feature the Fly design, which was easier to understand, even for the new users.

Twitter Algorithm

Over the years, Twitter has established itself as a platform where brands can express themselves willingly, and that’s a selling point of the platform. The Twitter algorithm was introduced in 2016, allowing users to track tweets based on relevancy and popularity. The algorithm was criticized by many people when it underwent a significant overhaul in 2017 where it replaced the feature “while you’ve been away” with “in case you missed it.” The change is not taken lightly by Twitter users, and that’s why in 2018, Twitter allowed users an option to choose between an algorithm organized feed and a regular feed.

Twitter Valuation

Twitter ranks among the most prominent social networks worldwide, with over 330 million monthly active users. The company is funded by 36 investors, and as of January 2022, it has acquired 67 organizations. Twitter is a public, real-time, global platform, and as of 1st January 2022, its net worth is $34.37 billion.

Twitter Controversies & Top 5 Tweets that Hit Differently

Being an open social media platform, Twitter generally attracts several controversies very often, and it happens due to the nature of the platform. The popular social media platform allows users to post about everything except images or videos depicting graphic violence, hate-group imagery and pornography. Though Twitter’s latest policy on pornography permits users with verified accounts to share explicit content within their tweets by marking it “this media is sensitive.”

Also, in the last couple of years, we have witnessed many controversial tweets from all around the world, be it on #blacklivesmatter or #metoo movement and in the case of our country, most of these tweets are coming from a few celebrities and stand up comedians who tweeted their blunt views on patriotism or government strategies, but we’re not going to focus more on controversial tweets because, over the years, Twitter has blessed us with a few good tweets too and before walking into 2022, let’s take a look at the positive side of the platform.

Barack Obama

Let’s begin with the tweet of Barack Obama, who’s a two-term President of the United States and the most followed individual currently on Twitter with over 130 million followers. The ex-president mostly tweets about his activities and work related to his Obama Foundation, but the tweet that went viral and caught everyone’s eyes was “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion…”

The tweet, which quotes a line from Nelson Mandela’s autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom”, came after the violence in Charlottesville where a 32-year-old woman was killed, and 19 others were injured when a man allegedly accelerated his car into a crowd of counter-protesters. The tweet stayed on the top as the most-liked tweet until Chadwick Boseman’s family disclosed the news of his demise with the tweet from his account.

Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is known for his contradictory work, theories, tweets and comments. When coronavirus was at its peak in foreign countries like the United States, United Kingdom and China, a tweet from Elon Musk caught everyone’s attention. In a tweet, the SpaceX founder said, “The coronavirus panic is dumb,” even though he doesn’t have a background in medicine or virology. The tweet didn’t age well as globally coronavirus infections crossed over 27.5Cr while killing over 53.5L people and counting.

Breaking the news of Osama bin Laden’s Death

One of the reasons behind Twitter getting popular after 2010 was its news breaking culture. The platform has unveiled a number of top news’ through its wide base of users, and one of them was the news of Osama bin Laden’s death which came out from a tweet of Keith Urbahn, a former chief of staff to defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Before this tweet, one more tweet provided a hint of the news, and it came from a Pakistan-based IT consultant, Sohaib Athar, which reads, “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1 AM is a rare event”.

#BlackLivesMatter

The hashtags #BlackLivesMatter first came into the limelight during 2013 as the movement to curb police violence gained steam but arose like a spaceship missile during May 2020, when George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was murdered in the Powderhorn Park. The protest was against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people.

While protesting physically, the protestors also started using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media platforms, especially on Twitter, to gain the world’s attention and support. Since 2013, more than 41 million tweets have been tagged with #BlackLivesMatter, but one of the tweets that went viral during this phase was from Femi Koleoso, and it mentions a quote from Will Smith, “Racism isn’t getting worse, it’s getting filmed.”

Oreo Cookie & Super Bowl Blackout

If you want to win at social media, you have to focus on creative marketing as people might usually don’t care about the brand, but if you do the marketing job well, they’ll surely remember your brand and then eventually end up having it. One such great marketing tweet came during a Super Bowl XLVII in 2013 when a surprise blackout delayed the game of the National Football League for 34 minutes. A quick-moving tweet from Oreo reads, Power out? No problem, followed by an image that shows a text, “you can still dunk in the dark.”

Did you know these 16 Interesting Facts about Twitter?

  1. The iconic bird logo of the social media platform Twitter is named Larry as a tribute to NBA player Larry Bird, who played for the Boston Celtics, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s home-state team.

  2. In 2009, Evan Williams and Biz Stone were listed in Time’s 100 most influential people in the world, even before Jack Dorsey.

  3. As of January 2022, the most-liked tweet has over 7.2 million likes, and it was tweeted from the late American actor Chadwick Boseman’s account by his family, informing the world about his demise.

  4. Only the South Korean band BTS has more than three most-liked tweets in the top 30. The band has 21 tweets in the list of top 30 most-liked tweets.

  5. Twitter is blocked in China because Chinese authorities prefer their homegrown social networks as they can have complete control over them, which Twitter doesn’t permit. 

  6. Justin Bieber is the most followed celebrity on Twitter with over 114m followers, only behind former United States President Barack Obama.

  7. Twitter has enough money in the bank to survive approximately 412 years.

  8. The official Twitter account of @Sweden is given to a random Swedish citizen every week to manage with the expressed goal to manifest Swedish diversity and progressiveness.

  9. Twitter first made a profit in the fourth quarter of 2017, earning $91m (£65m).

  10. Out of 1.3 billion Twitter accounts, over 391 million accounts have no followers at all.

  11. Taylor Swift is the most influential person on Twitter, followed by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Katy Perry.

  12. The Face with Tears of Joy emoji “😂” is the most popular emoji on Twitter.

  13. The hashtag was first brought to Twitter on 23rd August 2007. Chris Messina introduced it in order to filter the tweets and help the existing users connect with a particular theme.

  14. The Twitter logo consists of overlaying 15 different symmetrical circles, which signifies giving everyone a voice.

  15. Out of all the Americans on Twitter, 71% use the platform only to read the news, and 42% use the platform to discuss politics.

  16. The statistical data shows over 75% of emojis tweeted on Twitter are positive, and the number increases by about 2% during Friday and Saturday.

Twitter ‘Communities’ Features Lets You Form Group: On Testing Mode

Twitter is all set to test out its new feature called Communities, which, as the name suggests, allow people with similar interests to connect and exchange conversations. 

This is somewhat a similar feature to Facebook Group, which lets people chat about specific topics and can be set to either public or private. 

Twitter explains through a blog post, that only members will be allowed to post and reply to conversations in communities, which is similar to what Facebook does. However, the difference between Facebook groups and Twitter communities is that the conversations in communities will be visible to everyone. That means everyone on Twitter will be able to read or even Quote Tweet posts from a Community even if they aren’t a member of it.

Twitter says users can also report a chat if it goes against Twitter’s rules. Each Community will also have moderators approved by Twitter. These moderators set the rules for the Community and can also invite others to join the chat. Twitter users will have to be invited through a direct message to join a Community. 

Twitter says that during the early stages of testing, Community communications will just be restricted to a handful of topics such as: dogs, weather, sneakers, skincare, and astrology. Twitter users will need to be invited by either moderators or existing members before they can join a certain Community, but Twitter says that it will open up more ways to join and recruit in the future.

Twitter doesn’t have a say yet on how many users will have access to Twitter Communities but it noted that a “limited group” of people in the US will be able to create these group chats. Anyone globally can receive an invite to a Community.

Twitter Is Testing New Edge-To-Edge Design For The Timeline

Microblogging giant Twitter has consistently been adding new features to its platform to enhance the user experience. Twitter has recently announced that it is testing edge-to-edge media in tweets on iOS, creating a more fullscreen for the photos and videos in your timeline.

If you open Twitter on your iPhone today, you might notice a new design that puts the focus on photos, videos, and GIFs. Twitter is planning to create an Instagram-like experience for its users. 

Twitter says,

“Now testing on iOS: Edge to edge Tweets that span the width of the timeline so your photos, GIFs, and videos can have more room to shine.”

For now, it is unclear if Twitter plans to roll out this new design to all users, but currently, it is just in the testing phase. However, if it rolls out beyond a selected group of iOS users, it will help Twitter address concerns over image cropping that it’s been dealing with over the last few years. 

Image cropping algorithms have been informally shown to have a bias toward white faces, something Twitter confirmed earlier this year. To counter this, Twitter is now planning to eliminate image cropping, but this design test takes things a step further with an Instagram-style emphasis on visuals.

The new design is also bringing up few complaints like the edge-to-edge screenshots of tweets that can confusingly look like an actual tweet. Clearly, Twitter needs to do some more tweaking before it can officially pull the feature out.

Twitter Launches New Process To Flag False Information

On Tuesday, Twitter reported that it will allow selected users in the US, South Korea, Australia to flag tweets for misinformation. It is safe to assume that the feature will eventually be expanded if successful. 

The test basically adds another category under the ‘Report Tweet’ section. Click on those three dots in the top right corner of a tweet, select “Report Tweet,” and the option to flag it for being “misleading” is there right between the existing options “It’s abusive or harmful” and “It expresses intentions of self-harm or suicide.”

“We’re testing a feature for you to report Tweets that seem misleading—as you see them,” Twitter explained. “We’re assessing if this is an effective approach so we’re starting small.”

The newly added feature will allow users to report any tweet that they think is misleading or serves half-truth. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll see anything actually happen, a fact that Twitter fully acknowledges.

“Although we may not take action on this report or respond to you directly, we will use this report to develop new ways to reduce misleading info,” Twitter tells you when you go to report a misleading tweet. “This could include limiting its visibility, providing additional context, and creating new policies.”

You can flag the tweet in question under ‘Politics’, ‘Health’ or ‘Something else’, giving users more capacity to address misinformation on the platform. This might also become a new avenue for misuse, or for reporting tweets simply because they run counter to your opinion.

The idea, therefore, is not to stamp out specific tweets that each user reports. But if say 100 or 1000 people flag the same tweet, then it is likely to go under Twitter’s surveillance. It will help Twitter to take action against such tweets, hence improving the tweet process.

Companies like Facebook and Twitter and consistently working on improving their algorithms to avoid amplifying false information or misinformation. 

 

Snapchat App is Expanding: Fastest Way to Share Moments

Use Signal. This tweet came from Tesla and SpaceX’s CEO, Elon Musk when the questions came up to find alternatives to WhatsApp. The Snapchat team must have thought to connect with Elon Musk to know he didn’t take their name. Anyways, let the bygones be bygones. Snapchat has challenged the space of the social media messaging app market through its rapid surge in the past few months. Some reports state that Snapchat now has almost 293 million users. Let’s go through this Exhibit blog to know more on this latest update that has cheered the entire Snapchat app team. 

Snapchat App’s Growth in 2020-2021

The news coming out is that Snapchat has added 13 million users in the last quarter, which is quite phenomenal considering the birth of Snapchat in 2017. Through this, Snapchat has registered a growth of almost 23% in its user base from the last year. Snapchat, through this, has surpassed Twitter which has 209 million users as of now. Snapchat has one more surprise for you in terms of its revenue. Yeah, the business of Snapchat is about to touch a billion-mark. Hence, it should raise some concerns for Mark Zuckerburg and Jack Dorsey as with this Snapchat has become a faster-growing business than Facebook and Twitter. 

About Snapchat App

The best thing I remember when it comes to Stanford is the power-pack dialogue thrown by Douglas Urbanski in The Social Network movie. Stanford really has the tradition where people come and do something to express their form of innovation. Yeah, three tech nerds from Stanford, Bobby Murphy, Evan Spiegel, and Reggie Brown, developed this messaging charm – Snapchat. The tagline of this app is simply awesome – the fastest way to share a moment. I guess Snapchat was thought to be close to journalism. That’s why they call the messages as snap, somewhere related to a journalist’s scoop. Do you know that by using this social media messaging app, you can become a millionaire? Last year, the Snapchat team announced that they would pay 1 million $ (around 7.4 Crore INR) for posting viral videos. 

Conclusion

Maybe this millionaire news has brought so many Snapchat users. But, this growth in the Asian region as Snapchat has more outreach in Europe and America. Snapchat may have accomplished good results, but they are far behind the reputation of other messaging apps. Only time will tell what’s the fate of Snapchat. However, you should think about this a million offer by the Snapchat team. 

 

Twitter Tests Upvote And Downvote Feature On Tweets

Twitter’s Chief Product Officer Kayvon Keykpour, last year confirmed that Twitter is ‘exploring’ the idea of adding a dislike button to the app. The social media app is now working on adding a new upvote and downvote reactions to tweets.

 

The company confirmed that it is testing the feature for a small group of iOS users through a tweet. Twitter said that the new feature might be available to the users in several different styles(up and down arrows, a heart icon, and thumbs up and thumbs down icons). The app is testing the feature to ‘understand the types of replies you find relevant in a convo, so we can work on ways to show more of them.’

 

 

However, downvotes will not be shown publicly, and the upvotes will be displayed as likes since the feature is intended only for internal metrics.
Twitter has clarified that the feature is just for research purposes and hasn’t finalised rolling it out yet. The company hasn’t yet defined how voting will affect what you see in your feed since the feature can draw parallels to Reddit. Upvoting or downvoting on Reddit is a way of surfacing a Redditor’s favourite replies, responses or posts.
Many users have noticed this similarity, including Reddit itself, who tweeted this in response:

 

 

Twitter has also recently announced that it is testing a new set of features for TweetDeck. The company is revamping its often-ignored dashboard with updates such as a full tweet composer, new advanced search features, new column types, and a new way to group columns into new workspaces.
This feature is being tested with a few US, Canada, and Australia users. The social media giant is consistently working upon bringing new and desirable changes to its app so more and more users can connect conveniently.

 

Of course, the application of these features will depend upon the reviews that Twitter gets during the research process.

Twitter Revamps TweetDeck And Shares The First Look

TweetDeck provides a column layout that allows users to keep a tab on tweets from different accounts at once. Twitter made an announcement today that it will begin testing a new set of features for TweetDeck.

The company is looking forward to revamping its often-ignored dashboard with a few US, Canada, and Australia users. Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter’s Product Head said that the updated TweetDeck would include ‘a full tweet composer, new advanced search features, new column types, and a new way to group columns into clean workspaces.’ 

Previously in an interview with The Verge, Beykpour had admitted that Twitter ‘hadn’t given a lot of love to TweetDeck recently.’ He then described the revamp as a ‘pretty big overhaul from the ground up.

Notable changes are being promised with the recent update. The new tweet composer will allow the user to add GIFs, polls, or emojis to their tweets. This will also include scheduled tweets and not just photos and videos as it was before the update. You will also be able to write threads and tag your images. 

The old column types, including Activity, Followers, Likes, and Outbox, have been removed. At the expense of these, new column types such as Profile, Topics, Explore, Events, Moments, and Bookmarks have been added. 

The new features also allow you to use Boolean queries. You can easily choose between viewing either the top tweets or the latest tweets. 

Additionally, the ‘Decks’ feature allows you to organize a set of columns into separate workspaces. It is helpful for people who want to create workspaces based on different themes or interests or if they want to organize tweets related to their clients.

Are We Getting Along?

These features undoubtedly provide many benefits, but the testers are concerned about losing the ‘Activity’ option that shows whenever someone you follow on Twitter follows another person or ‘favourites’ a tweet. The messages column is also perhaps a big miss.

Many users also complained about how it is difficult to resize the columns and the problems occurring while using it with multiple accounts. 

Remember that the feature is still in its testing stage, and there are chances of better updates when TweetDeck rolls out more broadly. Beykpour wrote in a tweet,

“Through these tests, we’re exploring how we can give people more customization and control using TweetDeck.”

Rumours also suggest that TweetDeck might become part of Twitter Blue, which is the company’s subscription service. 

 

Twitter Blue Tick Degrading: True or False?

As if the politicians in India want more than Article 105 and 194 of the Indian Constitution. Gone were the days when you used to count the number of likes on your profile picture, and that used to be called status quo and privilege for many. These days, some of them like to get the Twitter privilege by having a blue tick on their account. However, the recent tussle between the Government of India and Twitter has brought this gossip to a central stage. This Exhibit article talks about the Twitter blue tick issue. 

Twitter Buzz

1999 Adelaide Test Match. A unique thing happened. Tendulkar got out as shoulder before wicket by Glenn McGrath. Take a move to one year ahead. 2000 Nairobi. Champions Trophy Tournament. India vs Australia. Sachin blasted for a six against McGrath’s delivery. Take another leap to 2003. Sachin hit a four and then got out in the next ball by Glenn McGrath in the CWC 2003 Final. This battle never ended unless these two champions retired. So, this is the case for GoI vs Twitter. Unprecedented combat. The MeitY brought IT Rules, 2021, which demanded some new arrangements. However, Twitter didn’t follow to comply with it. Rest is history. Twitter started its action and removed the Vice-President from the verified list. The issue came on the floor again due to a tweet.

Why Twitter provides Blue Tick?

Well, the simplest answer is authenticity. You can also use other terms related to it – legitimacy as one example. Twitter offers this to some profiles considering the high interest they bring through their posts. It shows that these posts will be quite genuine and represent that particular reputed and renowned person if a tweet is coming from these profiles. Hence, if you are thinking to create a new account on Twitter, you can follow these highly authenticated accounts. 

Why the problem with this Blue Tick?

The Economic Survey 2020-21 talked about forbearance and regulations. It clearly signaled that in case the State feels that anything is not creating a positive impact, they can opt for regulated and restricted activities. But, that was for a state and not for a private player like Twitter. Well, it seems Twitter has added more eligibility criteria to award these blue ticks to anyone after a roughly tied match like Euro 2020 Final. Now, it seems Twitter wants to prove itself as Italy who can take the opponents in the Penalty shootout. Twitter is coming hard on those who are seeking a verified account. 

What can Twitter do?

Be Liberal. Ahh! isn’t that what you need? Okay, let’s change it to be liberal like John Locke. Yeah, it’s everything. Well, Twitter needs to find the loopholes to monitor the legitimacy of a person constantly who has applied for a verified and authenticated account. For this, all they have to do is to take a sneak into their policies and amend them to strengthen the indicatory of being important. With this, the way people are questioning blue tick may fade away soon.

Exit mobile version