Twitter Stocks, Down

Twitter shares are down more than 24% today following the release of the social media network's first quarterly earnings statement since its initial public offering.

Shares closed at $50.03. Shares had traded above $66 the day before.

Although the company reported earnings of $0.02 per share — above analysts' consensus estimate of a loss of $0.02 per share — and revenues came in at $242.7 million (also above expectations), investors are honing in on weak user growth.

New Twitter Rules Spur Online Protests

Shortly after Twitter announced a stricter set of rules for its application programming interface (API), developers and engineers turned to platform to use the #OccupyTwitter hashtag in protest.

“Twitter’s API has more rules than North Korea,” said Aaron Levie, CEO of Box.

Nova Spivack, CEO of Bottlenose.com, started a Change.org petition to urge Twitter to keep its developer API ecosystem open. He said, “Twitter, what kind of bird are you becoming? Are you still that cute little bird that everyone loved, or are you becoming a scary bird of prey?”

“Blind people use special third party Twitter apps,” Spivack added on Twitter. “If Twitter closes its APIs they will be cut off.”

While Spivack’s fears might be overblown, it’s clear that Twitter seeks to limit the number of third-party app users by barring apps from supporting more than 100,000 users. If they already over the limit, they will not be allowed to grow beyond 200% of their user base without Twitter’s permission.

Aside from limiting user growth, Twitter will be imposing more stringent authentication rules. It will also compel developers to take a different direction in creating apps by “encouraging” them to focus on engagement and analytics. After the updated API is launched, developers will have a six-month deadline to to migrate to the new version.

Tom Scott, creator of Klouchebag, predicted that the changes would cause his site’s death in six months. “They’re steadily squeezing out third-party clients like Tweetbot, Echofon and Dabr, and they’re removing unauthenticated API calls,” Scott said in a blog entry. “The latter means that every Twitter app, no matter how minor, will require a ‘Sign in with Twitter’ button. For me, the immediate effect of this is that my Klout parody Klouchebag, along with a few other things I’ve designed, will die.”

What do you think of using Twitter as a way to protest against Twitter’s new API? Should developers just accept the new rules without complaint? Let us know in the comments. (Mashable.com)

Hashtags Help Coordinate Relief Efforts in Philippine Floods

In the midst of widespread flooding in Manila, which displaced more than 80,000 residents and caused at least 50 deaths by unofficial count, a digital lifeline emerged. Filipino citizens, non-profit organizations and government agencies have been using social media to coordinate relief efforts and rescue missions.

The Philippines, one of the most social media-savvy countries in the world, relied on Facebook and Twitter to disseminate information as people pleaded for rescuers to retrieve them from the rooftops of their homes.

Roughly half of the population uses social networks — something that government rescue workers, volunteers and media outlets used to their advantage by creating unified hashtags to spread information more efficiently. #RescuePH is for rescue calls; relief aid’s hashtag is #ReliefPH, breaking news falls under #FloodsPH, and official government alerts are tagged with #PHalert.

Social media users also created a relief center map on Google Maps and a rescue request form.

Do you think consolidated hashtags and online coordination make a noticeable difference in disaster response, or is an official rescue request form an unnecessary step in relief aid? Let us know in the comments. (Mashable.com)

Tweets That Will Get You Kicked Off Twitter

Independent journalist Guy Adams tweeted his outrage about NBC coverage of the Olympics and found his Twitter account suspended. (Update: Twitter later reactivated his account and apologized.)

But it wasn’t his criticism that caused trouble, it was his inclusion of an NBC executive’s email address in the tweet, which violated Twitter’s terms of service.

Most of us check a box that says we agree with a company’s terms of service. But how many of us read them? Here’s a checklist of things to avoid if you want to keep using Twitter.

Don’t post a private email address, street address or telephone number without permission from the individual associated with the information. Posting social security and credit card numbers are also grounds for suspension.

You may not post direct, specific threats of violence against others. That’s what got Olympic Swiss soccer player Michel Morganella in trouble. No illegal activities, pornography or copyright infringement will be tolerated, either.

Twitter also has rules that kick in when a member follows 2,000 other accounts. At that point, you’ll have to have gain additional followers before you can follow more people. Not letting the following/follower ratio too far out of balance is how Twitter combats spammers.

Unlike other social media networks including Facebook and Tumblr, Twitter’s terms of service do not cover hate speech.

However, according to a June report in the Financial Times, Twitter is wrestling with minimizing hateful comments, while preserving free speech.

Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive, said he was frustrated by tackling the problem of “horrifying” abuse while maintaining the company’s mantra that “tweets must flow.” (Mashable.com)

Twitter clocks half-billion users

PARIS—Over 500 million people are on micro-blogging site Twitter and Americans and Brazilians are the most connected, according to a study by social media monitor Semiocast released Monday.

Twitter surpassed the half-billion mark at the end of June, with the United States accounting for both the most users and largest number of “tweets” or short messages of no more than 140 characters posted on the site.

The Paris-based monitor carried out the study by analysing data like time zone, geolocation and language available for the social networking site’s total 517 million accounts.

The US accounted for more than 141 million of Twitter users, with Brazil ranking second with 41 million after seeing its number rise by 23 percent since the start of the year. Japan came in third with 35 million users.

Americans also posted the highest number of Twitter messages, with 25.8 percent of all tweets hailing from the US.

Japan came second accounting for 10.6 percent of all tweets, making Japanese the second most common language on Twitter after English.

The study found Jakarta to be the most active Twitter zone, with 2.4 percent of all tweets originating in the Indonesian capital.

The popularity of Twitter continued to soar in the Arab world following the site’s key role in the “Arab Spring” revolutions last year, with Arabic now the site’s sixth most common language. (Inquirer.net)

Apple Considered Investing in Twitter

Apple isn’t currently in talks with Twitter to invest in the social-networking site, but according to a report from The New York Times, the two companies were previously in such discussions that would value Twitter at more than $10 billion.

“Apple has considered an investment in the hundreds of millions of dollars, one that could value Twitter at more than $10 billion, up from an $8.4 billion valuation last year, these people [briefed on the matter] said. They declined to be named because the discussions were private,” the Times reports.

Social media, so far, isn’t in Apple’s wheelhouse, and it’s had fragile relations with Facebook in the past. Things with Twitter, on the other hand, have been a little more friendly. As the Times points out, Twitter’s baked in to Apple’s operating systems.

“Those guys are a great partner,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said of Apple in a separate interview, according to the Times. “We think of them as a company that our company looks up to.”

In the paired-up world of tech giants and social media, Microsoft and Facebook have each other and Google (which owns Apple’s mobile competitor Android) has Google+. Could Twitter and Apple be the next hot couple? (Mashable.com)

Twitter Apologizes for Massive Outage

Following a lengthy outage on Thursday, Twitter said it is “deeply” sorry for the inconvenience it has caused users.

“We are sorry,” Twitter said via a blog post. “Many of you came to Twitter earlier today expecting, well, Twitter. Instead, between around 8:20 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. PT, users around the world got zilch from us. By about 10:25 a.m. PT, people who came to Twitter finally got what they expected: Twitter. ”

The social network added that the outage came from within its data centers.

“Data centers are designed to be redundant: when one system fails (as everything does at one time or another), a parallel system takes over,” Twitter said. “What was noteworthy about today’s outage was the coincidental failure of two parallel systems at nearly the same time.”

The outage was first noticed at around 11:15 a.m. ET and experienced issues for well over an hour. The platform slowly come back across the U.S.

“We’re aware of the issue and are looking into it,” a Twitter spokesperson told Mashable. “We will let you know when we have an update, and keep an eye on status.twitter.com for updates as well.”

The company also posted a note on its blog informing members of the issue: “Users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter,” it said on the site. “Our engineers are currently working to resolve the issue.”

Today’s outage didn’t just take down Twitter.com but also some of its mobile clients. The issue also disabled the t.co URL shortener. (Mashable.com)

Next Twitter for iPhone Version to Bring Interactive Tweet View

Twitter is preparing a major new version of its iPhone app, which will include an interactive tweet view, enhanced notifications and more, 9to5Mac reports.

The info comes through leaked release notes which bring a detailed list of all the new features in the next Twitter for iPhone version, 4.3.

These include a more interactive tweet view experience, letting you see content previews, videos and images within tweets containing links to “partner websites,” as well as the ability to choose whether you want to receive push notifications when certain people tweet.

Other improvements include highlighted tweets about selected events, autocomplete in the Connect tab, and the ability to tap someone’s avatar and be taken to their profile pages.

The time of launch for this update is unknown, and some of the features may change when it actually hits the App Store.

Source: http://mashable.com