Tweets

Big changes are coming to Twitter links. In a post just published on the Twitter blog, the company has announced that it will soon be using its official link shortening service t.co to wrap all links shared on Twitter. Starting this summer, every time you share a link through either the Twitter web client or a third party, it will be be wrapped in a link with the format t.co/******.

So what does this mean for the Twitter ecosystem? Twitter VP Product Jason Goldman says that the feature serves three purposes. First, it’s going to help Twitter crack down on spam, as they’ll be able to accurately monitor the distribution of each link. Second, it will allow users to better understand where links are going (more on that below). And third, it will help Twitter with analytics, which is related to its Promoted Tweets. Goldman says that Twitter is pre-announcing the feature (which is currently only active with three accounts) to give the developer community a heads up for what’s ahead.

This didn’t come as a surprise — back in March, Twitter began routing direct messages through a new link shortening service as an anti-phishing mechanism. It didn’t take long for users and developers to question whether the service would soon be broadly launching a link shortening service, and Twitter confirmed that it would in April.

Still updating

Twitter Introduces Bit.ly-Baiting URL Shortener, T.co —

Say goodbye to the bit.lys that pervade your Twitter stream--along with all the other custom URL shortners from your favorite publications--Twitter is rolling out its own way to shorten those unruly post on the Twitter blog announces the change.

As early as this summer, any links shared via Twitter will be shortened and wrapped into Twitter's new t.co URL shortener, which will seem to have some smart capabilities when viewed on Twitter:

A really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title. Ultimately, we want to display links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened link and lets you know where a link will take you.

There are a couple elements of this update that push t.co into more than a bit.ly competitor that makes me subconsciously want a taco. First, Twitter will be keeping track of all these t.co links, and will use the data they've snagged to make algorithmic recommendations to users--basically, the data will be made available through API for targeted advertising.

The other element is not entirely clear right now, in what's becoming a refrain for new Twitter announcements. Twitter will be counting t.co-wrapped links differently in terms of character count. Because this URL-wrapping will be done automatically, you can actually submit updates of length longer than 140 characters--Twitter will shorten the links and then count characters afterwards. That's how many third-party apps work, but now it's built into Twitter.

This is yet another attempt for Twitter to make first-party what was formerly third-party, just like Promoted Tweets and the new mobile apps for BlackBerry, Android, and iPhone. Twitter is taking control of the ways people use their service. So what does this mean for other URL shorteners, most notably bit.ly? Will bit.ly still work? Will Twitter allow it? That remains to be seen.

Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in San Francisco (no link for that one--you'll have to do the legwork yourself).

Links and Twitter: Length Shouldn’t Matter — Since early March, we have been routing links within Direct Messages through our link service to detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of malware, phishing, and other dangers. Any link shared in a Direct Message has been wrapped with a twt.tl URL. Links reported to us as malicious are blacklisted, and we present users with a page that warns them of potentially malicious content if they click blacklisted links. We want users to have this benefit on all tweets.

Additionally, as we mentioned at our Chirp developer conference in April, if you want to share a link through Twitter, there currently isn't a way to automatically shorten it and we want to fix this. It should be easy for people to share shortened links from the Tweet box on Twitter.com.

To meet both of these goals, we're taking small steps to expand the link service currently available in Direct Messages to links shared through all Tweets. We're testing this link service now with a few Twitter employee accounts.

User Experience, Safety, and Value

When this is rolled out more broadly to users this summer, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL. A really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title. Ultimately, we want to display links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened link and lets you know where a link will take you.

In addition to a better user experience and increased safety, routing links through this service will eventually contribute to the metrics behind our Promoted Tweets platform and provide an important quality signal for our Resonance algorithm—the way we determine if a Tweet is relevant and interesting to users. We are also looking to provide services that make use of this data, an example would be analytics within our eventual commercial accounts service.

Early Developer Preview Comes First

As a first step, developers who create applications on the Twitter platform can now begin to prepare for this service. They will be able to choose how to display the wrapped links in a manner that is most useful, informative and appropriate for a given device or application. Our first step is a small one. We're rolling out wrapped links on a handful of accounts, including @TwitterAPI, @rsarver, and @raffi, to help developers test their code. Ultimately, every link on Twitter will be wrapped.

If you are already partial to a particular shortener when you tweet, you can continue to use it for link shortening and analytics as you normally would, and we'll wrap the shortened links you submit.

We’d like to thank our friends at .CO Internet SAS, the registry for the new .CO extension, for helping us secure t.co for use with this service. Links shared on Twitter will be safer, clearer, and more valuable.

Twitter now Boasts Nearly 200 Million Visitors —

Twitter now Boasts Nearly 200 Million Visitors is a post from Chris Pirillo

During the CM Summit today, Twitter COO Dick Costolo informed the gathered crowd that Twitter now has approximately 190 million visitors per month. Collectively, those people send out about 65 million tweets per day. Holy Twitter client – that’s a lot of updates. ““We’re laying down track as fast as we can in front of the train,” says Costolo. These numbers are up slightly from 180 million self-reported unique visitors per month back in April, and 50 million Tweets per day in February.”

The number of visitors to the site is not the same thing as the number of registered users. Costolo reminded us that most users never send out a single tweet (though I cannot imagine that!). Instead, they use the site to consume information and news. It’s also not clear how many of those 65 million tweets come from spam bots and the like.

Twitter is much more than just a place to update your friends and family. It’s honestly the fastest way to find out the latest news – usually while it is happening. For instance, my assistant Kat used Twitter two nights ago to track the deadly and destructive tornadoes that ripped through Illinois. She has family in and near the locations where the damage was the worst, and couldn’t reach them during the storms. She kept her eyes glued to Twitter, finding out information there far quicker than she did on any other source. The local newspaper website (and tv site) didn’t have ANY information about the storms until more than an hour after they happened. However, people living through the catastrophe were live tweeting every moment.

Social networking is about staying connected – with the world. When you open up your mind to the possibilities that are out there and learn to take advantage of them, you’ll find yourself learning new things every moment of every day.

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Today at the Mashable Media Summit (which is presented in partnership with CNN) in New York, CNN has officially launched the new technology section of its website.

Aside from a new design that is quite distinctive from the rest of CNN.com, the revamped tech section includes a new “Tech Pulse” that pulls in tweets from selected tech influencers (Mashable is included), a “Who Says” area that houses the news network’s daily columns (including Pete Cashmore’s “Social Circles” and the “Netiquette” column that Brenna Ehrlich co-authors), and “The Browser,” a new section that CNN says will “link to daily recommended tech content from a site other than CNN.com, in an effort to be good web citizens.”

CNN has also created filters that let users customize the type of content they see in the “Latest News” area – for example, they can now choose to see only stories relating to social media and mobile as opposed to the full feed. Readers will also notice that CNN is doing a lot of aggregation here – content from Mashable, Wired, CNET and a variety of other sources is featured.

A number of CNN personalities will be speaking throughout the day at the Mashable Media Summit – stay tuned to our live stream of the event for the latest information.

Tags: cnn, mashable media summit

Back in December 2009, the number of tweets per month on Twitter reached 1 billion for the first time. Now in May, we reached yet another milestone: 2 billion tweets per month (or to be precise, 1.99 billion, which is close enough).

We actually called that this would happen at this exact point in time, based on a prediction we’d made for Twitter’s “tweet growth” in 2010 a while back.

Here’s a chart showing the number of tweets per month from December through May, i.e. the path from 1 to 2 billion tweets per month on Twitter:

Twitter saw the following numbers in May:

• 64 million tweets per day.
• 2.7 million tweets per hour.
• 44,481 tweets per minute.
• 741 tweets per second.

Maybe Twitter won’t quite be able to reach the almost 6 billion tweets per month we’ve predicted for the end of the year, but it’s clear that the Twitter platform is still growing at a healthy pace. Close to doubling the volume of monthly tweets in the last six months is no small feat.

Note: These numbers represent all tweets that pass through Twitter, including those using the Twitter API (i.e. from apps). For an explanation of how we are extracting the number of tweets, see the bottom of this post. It also shows the number of monthly tweets all the way back to July 2008.

iPhone 4 on Sale June 24th —

iPhone 4 on Sale June 24th is a post from Chris Pirillo

Even though I couldn’t be there in person to witness the goodness at the WWDC today, I was able to listen along live in my car via Twuner. This is a talking Twitter app that lets you actually hear the tweets you want to follow. I was traveling during much of Steve Jobs’ keynote and was to hear what was happening almost as quickly as Steve was saying it. My assistant Kat was sitting in her office at home following the updates via the live blog at MacRumors and taking notes for me.

The news of the day, of course, is iPhone 4. Pre-sale orders begin very soon: on June 15th! The device will be available for purchase on June 24th. The pricing is about what was expected with a new two-year contract: $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model. Although you’ll have to choose between black and white as the basic color, you’ll be able to use one of the new “bumper” cases to change things up. They will sell for $29.00, and come in six colors: black, white, pink, light blue, orange and lime green.

Steve spent more than an hour discussing what he feels are eight of the most important features of iPhone 4. He chuckled about the fact that we “saw” photos already back when Gizmodo had one of the devices in their hot little hands. He was quick to point out, though, that we hadn’t really seen it. The design is completely new and is “beyond a doubt the most precise things, one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever made.” There is glass on the front and rear of the phone with stainless steel running around the side. The top features a headphone jack, a second mic for noise cancellation and a sleep/wake button. The bottom has another mic, a 30-pin connector and a speaker. Jobs boasts that this is the thinnest smartphone on the planet at only 9.3mm thick… 24% thinner than the current iPhone 3GS model.

The first audible gasp from those assembled came when Steve grinned almost smugly as he described the display. Retina display is a brand-new technology that dramatically increases pixel density. 300 pixels per inch is the limit of the human retina when held about ten inches away from the eye. The display on the iPhone 4 features 326 ppi – which is four times as many pixels as before in the same amount of space! Text will appear on the screen just like you were reading a “fine printed book.” The screen resolution will be 960 x 640 pixels with an 800:1 contrast ratio.

Next up, Jobs reiterated what we already knew about how the phone will be powered. iPhone 4 packs an Apple-developed A4 chip which is incredibly small – yet incredibly powerful. The bigger battery coupled with this chip means 40% more talk time. Steve estimates you’ll get 7 hours of talk time, 6 hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours of both WiFi browsing and video consumption, 40 hours of music listening and about 300 hours of standby time. This is absolutely incredible, and is a development that we’ve long hoped for. Thanks to this chip, the device will have 32GB of storage and will be capable of 7.2 Mbit down and 5.8 Mb up – as soon as carriers support those types of speeds.

The next announcement was met with raucous cheers. iPhone 4 will have a Gyroscope included! The Gyroscope coupled with the accelerometer gives you six-axis motion sensoring. Steve demonstrated by playing a game that looks quite similar to Jenga – he lost the game, by the way. With the Gyroscope enabled, rotation is insanely better. Rotation of 3D objects is unbelievably smooth.

The new camera system had me pumping my fist in the air… right in the car as I was driving. You already know that I use my current iPhone 3GS to take a lot of pictures and videos. The new iPhone is going to make this about a gazillion times better. With both front and rear-facing cameras, you’ll never miss the perfect shot again. The camera is 5 megapixels, and Jobs is quick to point out that a good camera has nothing to do with megapixels – it’s all about the actual photo quality. Even better news is that I will be able to use my iPhone to record HD video in full 720p at 30fps! The quality shown in the demonstration was honestly incredible by all accounts. You’ll be able to tap to focus your video and have built-in video editing. One-click sharing makes life much easier. The LED flash can even stay on during recording.

Insert drum roll here!

Along with that HD recording goodness comes the announcement that iMovie will now be available for the iPhone! You’ll be able to record directly in to your timeline or choose from previously recorded clips and videos on your device. The workflow is very similar to the desktop version… just on a smaller screen. You can edit your movies with themes, transitions and titles. Change the scale of your timeline by pinching the screen, much as you would on the iPad. You can easily add music, switch themes and use geolocation data. Export your creation to 260p, 520p or 720p. The app will be available for only $4.99!

The iPhone OS has been renamed to iOS 4. There are more than 100 new user features. This update will be available for FREE beginning June 21st for your iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G (with not all features supported) and your iPod Touch (again – not all features supported, and not on first generation devices). That’s right – this update will finally be free! Steve went over all of the features that were previously released. iOS4 has multitasking, folders, retina display technology, enhancements to mail, camera and photo apps and much deeper Enterprise integration. Microsoft Bing was officially named as the third search option for iOS4, with Google still being the default option.

iBooks and iAds were discussed for a few moments, and then Steve unveiled the last big surprise of the day: FaceTime. FaceTime will be face-to-face video chatting from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4. The video demonstration showed a grandparent chatting with their grandchild, a dad traveling on business chatting with his children back home and two people conversing via sign language. This was met with many loud cheers and wild clapping from the audience.

My iPhone 3GS has served me well in the time I have had it. However, it is currently whimpering and cowering in a corner. I think it already knows what its fate is going to be come June 24th. What are your thoughts on all of the announcements made during the WWDC keynote? Are you counting down the days until you can officially have an iPhone 4 in your hands, or are you still not convinced you need an iPhone?

Credit for all of the photos in this post go to MacRumors.

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I was hit with a reminder this Sunday morning that I am indeed no longer a 15-year-old teenager. But if you are a Bieber-Swift-Pattinson-Stewart-OMGVampires-loving tween/teen, then boy does MTV have a Twitter visualization map for you. In honor of this evening’s MTV Movie Awards, the digital team at MTV have rolled out a highly interactive (almost too interactive) Twitter live-graph that will tell you via text and dynamic visuals what are the top trending topics/people related to the Awards show, how many tweets per minute each topic is averaging, and the content of those tweets. Sound overwhelming? It is, but it’s also pretty engaging— even if you’re an over-the-hill teen.

This is how it works. Once you open the site, there is an opaque overlay with simple instructions: the visual graph contains pictures of the most popular topics/people that moment (calculated in 60 second increments), as a topic becomes more popular the image will grow, with the most popular topic holding court in the center of the graph, if you click on an image you can access all the related tweets. Not surprisingly, when I logged on this morning, it looked like a partial promo for the Twilight series, with Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart’s enlarged faces eerily presiding over the frenetic scene. The visual graph is constantly moving because each image is comprised of shifting squares (that move according to popularity of the topic). There are also two other notable features: a timeline on the bottom and a “stripped” screen that will show you the top twelve topics in pseudo-bar-graph form (as users tweet, their name zooms across the screen). Once again, it’s a study in visual overload— but probably perfectly appropriate when you consider the chaos that is Twitter and MTV’s target demographic.

This is not the first time MTV has experimented with a Twitter visualization graph. MTV launched version 1.0 last September for the 2009 Video Music Awards. The main difference in this new version is that users can now connect with their Twitter account on the platform and submit tweets directly. Far from an experimental side project, the company plans on using the graph format for all of its award shows moving forward. Kurk Patat, an MTV spokesman, says it’s all about creating the most interactive forum for live discussion. “The conversation is already taking place,” Patat says. “We want to be where that conversation is taking place.

Forget about the idea that early adopters are always first at everything. Sometimes it takes some of us a little bit longer to find utility in products or services that others get right away. Twitter was an obvious initial miss for me. I held out for a long time - by my standards - swearing first that I would never use it, and then finally giving in after getting some good feedback from peers who were finding value.

Now, nearly 30 months later, and 5,000 tweets later, the milestone I'll hit once this blog hits the service via FeedBurner, Twitter has become a powerful force. Even those people who are not on the service, or using it as often as many of us are, have at least heard of it, or know people on it. The assumption now is that everybody has a Twitter account, in the same way as we believe everybody has an e-mail address. News breaks on Twitter. People break on Twitter. And it has become the go-to source for real-time feedback from a massive audience. Maybe Twitter doesn't cure cancer, but it turns out, it can help - as we learned with #blamedrewscancer... and it sure doesn't cause cancer, no matter how frequently you update, or what client you prefer.


5,000 tweets sounds like a lot to me. That's almost 6 per day, or one every 4+ hours around the clock for 2 1/2 years, scattered almost exclusively between 8 a.m. in the morning and 2 at night, if TweetStats tells the truth. With 140 characters to play with, that's 700,000 characters of wiggle room. But as we once discussed with a Twitter Noise ratio I made up, one's pace can depend on their personal preferences, their choices to share links or engage in conversation, or what social networks make sense for them. I know, for example, that many Twitter-centric folks long since left 5,000 and 10,000 or even 20,000 and 50,000 tweets in the dust. @chrisbrogan sports nearly 70,000 while @parislemon is approaching 14,000 and the legendary @queenofspain is going to cross 85,000 before the month is out. So I must not be too noisy amid such elite company.


Twitter, for all its ups and downs with infrastructure strains and developer changes, through the company's maturation, has become an important player for many different things. Its limitations have been rebranded as simplicity, and what used to be a geek mecca is as much home to celebrities, teens and marketing as anything else. That's the problem with a nice neighborhood, everyone moves in and the ads go up. But the crowds have brought relevance. With worldwide growth and use in many different markets for many things, one can practically assume someone is twittering most events, in the same way one can safely assume that any scene of interest is being videotaped. The world is being recorded, and the world is being tweeted.


My comparatively slow approach to Twitter contrasted with some of my peers continues thanks to my own internal checks against noise. I still use Twitter primarily for distributing links from the blog and others I think may be relevant to followers. I set up a dedicated account at @lgstream for even more shares, without drowning my feed. I try to keep idle chat to a minimum, engaging on Google Buzz, FriendFeed and Facebook for some, and using Twitter DMs in other cases. I don't know if I'll ever make Twitter a place where I want to drop in and stay a while. I am absolutely glad it's there, and recognize its significant utility, but it still doesn't feel like a destination to me - instead, a powerful, increasingly critical utility.


By the time I hit 10,000 tweets, I expect Twitter will be dramatically different again from where it is now. As the company may have approached 200 employees, it could be at 1,000 or more by that time. It might be a public company, and the service could be dramatically different. Maybe popular clients like TweetDeck, Seesmic and Brizzly will be purchased by other brand names, or by Twitter themselves, like Tweetie was. But Twitter looks not only here to stay, but to play a big role in how this generation communicates. It may be through 140 characters at a time, including @Replies and short URLs, but it's what we've got.

Here's to filling your stream with another 5,000 useful tweets. You can find me at @louisgray.

Today during an interview at AllThingsD’s D8 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg got grilled by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher on Facebook’s recent privacy changes, the resulting backlash, and the company’s long-term vision.

By far the most tweeted about moment of the conversation came around a third of the way through, when Zuckerberg (who was sweating and appeared to be nervous, according to multiple tweets) took off his famous hoodie, revealing it to have Facebook’s mission statement stitched inside. Fortunately the conversation didn’t linger on Zuckerberg’s attire for long — the questions quickly turned toward some more pressing issues like Instant Personalization, and how Zuckerberg goes about making decisions.

When asked about the site’s privacy changes, Zuckerberg wasn’t exactly forthcoming. Many tweets, and the official live coverage of the event, noted that Zuckerberg dodged some questions about privacy, resorting to talk about encouraging serendipity through openness and well-worn anecdotes detailing why sharing is important. Zuckerberg also brought up Facebook’s oft-repeated stat that over 50% of users have adjusted their privacy settings, citing it as evidence that users know what they’re doing (this doesn’t convince me in the slightest — that means nearly 250 million people haven’t touched them).

With regard to Instant Personalization, Zuckerberg referred back to the News Feed backlash as evidence that innovative features can become immensely successful once the controversy dies down. He predicted that a few years from now, we’ll look back and question why all of these websites weren’t personalized.

Asked about leadership and his role at the company, Zuckerberg said that he would remain as CEO after an IPO, though he didn’t know when that would be. He also said that he regularly consults with a “core group” of Facebook employees that he has worked with for years, and that any of them would be capable of steering the company.

Toward the end of the conversation, Zuckerberg also noted just how much Facebook manages to accomplish with extremely small teams. Facebook Chat is run by one person. And Facebook search — which Zuckerberg said sees usage that’s on the same order of magnitude as Google search — is run by only twelve people.

Not to belittle what Facebook has accomplished with such small teams (really, it is quite incredible), but it’s worth pointing out that  the search comparison isn’t really fair. As MobileCrunch editor Greg Kumparak explains:

That.. doesn’t really make sense. Not the magnitude, but the comparison. It’s like saying “We are just as good at searching through our perfectly organized file cabinet as Google is at searching through someone else’s mansion.”

Would you keep a daily diary on Twitter? Or use it to decide what to wear? Or use it to bypass text-messages charges in international countries?

The possibilities for Twitter are about to get a lot richer with the ability to add annotations to any tweet. A handful of developers got the opportunity to play with the new application programming interface over the weekend at a company hackfest in San Francisco.

Annotations, which launched in April at Twitter’s first developer conference and will go live sometime later this year, are a way of marking up tweets with additional data. Instead of having a simple 140-character tweet, you could make a note that the tweet is about the weather or a movie. Other apps will be able to interpret this and display display or interpret the tweet in a different way. It has the potential to make the experience of the microblogging network feel a lot more media rich and powerful. (We suggested a few possibilities for “Annotations” here based on conversations with different Twitter developers.)

A dozen or so developers showed off a few works in progress at the company’s headquarters yesterday. (Note: These aren’t finished products, just ideas people have hacked together in a few days).

Fab or Drab, developed by engineers at San Francisco-based Crowdflower, helps people decide what to wear through an iPhone app. You take and upload pictures that friends can vote “Fab” or “Drab” on. (In typical fashion, Crowdflower, which specializes in farming out microtasks that computers can’t solve to thousands of people, says it can also pay strangers tiny amounts of money to judge your photos too.) Another app, Tazpic, brings some classic Facebook functionality to Twitter with photo tagging. 5Slices lets people keep a daily journal of their lives through Twitter by recording five words a day that describe how they’re feeling. Another developer built an Android to SMS gateway that basically lets people text each other in international countries without incurring expensive charges. You can see all of the projects here.

Twitter also revealed a few more details about “Annotations.” The biggest foreseeable problem with them was whether different developers would agree on a taxonomy or structure for the annotations. If one developer decided to mark up movies one way, and another developer decided to do it a different way, none of their respective features would work properly because other applications wouldn’t be able to interpret them.

So Twitter’s actually giving suggested structures for annotations. They include annotations for reviews, songs, movies, books, products, stocks and more. The full list is here. The new guidelines should prevent a huge mess from developers having different standards.

Watch live video from abrahamwilliams on Justin.tv

Tags: Annotations

Companies: Twitter

Memorial Day is being celebrated today across the U.S. This is a holiday we typically associate with barbeques and three-day weekends; however, the somber and nationally important reason we celebrate should be remembered, as well.

Here are a few websites that are showcasing the stories of veterans who have fought and died to preserve our freedom throughout America’s history. When sharing, don’t forget to tag your tweets #MemorialDay!

One of the pages getting shared around the tubes today is this collection of four amazing stories of wartime heroism, ranging from WWII and Vietnam to our present-day fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. These stories, like most stories of those who fight and die for their country, are profoundly touching and will serve as an instant reminder of why we celebrate today.

If you need visual reminders — or if you have images you’d like to share — Flickr has a pool for veteran remembrances and war memorials. This group of more than 13,500 photos features pictures of veterans, cemeteries, statuary and other monuments, such as the Vietnam Memorial.

Over at WhiteHouse.gov, President Obama’s weekly YouTube address centers on honoring men and women who’ve given their lives for our country:

Also from Washington, PBS’ Memorial Day Concert with the National Symphony Orchestra was filmed yesterday and will be rebroadcast on many local PBS television stations today. On the concert’s page, you can find listings for your area. You can also read and submit eulogies, read stories from various wars and learn about the meaning and history of Memorial Day.

And speaking of history, History.com has an amazing Memorial Day collection of images, videos and interactive content around this holiday. From Civil War battles to the D-Day invasion of Normandy, History.com has a ton of information for anyone who wants to learn more about the lives, battles and stories of American soldiers.

Finally, the Library of Congress has a special page dedicated to veterans. The Veterans History Project “collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war,” according to the website. Its pages contain audio and video of personal memoirs from soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, as well as images and personal correspondence. You can search for stories by conflict, by military branch, by gender, by whether the story is about a prisoner of war and more. You can also volunteer to interview others, be interviewed or donate a veteran’s collection through this site.

We at Mashable hope you’re all having a safe and happy Memorial Day as you honor the memory of our fallen troops.

[img credit: wstera2]

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Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Mashable, Twitter

Tags: concert, history, memorial day, military, obama, veterans

Annotated tweets

When you create a tweet, you can add one or more annotations to that tweet. These annotations represent structured metadata about the tweet. What that metadata contains is up to use. The feature simply provides a structure for how to specify the annotations and retrieve them along with the tweet.

A tweet can have one or more annotations. An annotation is a tuple whose first element is a 'type' and whose second element is one or more attribute names with values. Here are some examples of various annotations represented in JSON and in a simple custom format:

A single annotation of type 'type', with a single attribute named 'attribute' whose value is 'value':

  JSON:
  "annotations":%5B{"type":{"attribute":"value"}}%5D
 
  Simple format:
  type:attribute=value

A single annotationn of type 'type', with two attributes, one called 'attribute' and the other called 'another_attribute', both of whose values are 'value:
 
  JSON:
  "annotations":
    %5B{"type":{"another_attribute":"value", "attribute":"value"}}%5D
    
  Simple format:
  type:attribute=value&another_attribute=value
 
Two annotations, one of type 'type', the other of type 'another_type', each of which has two attributes:

  JSON:
  "annotations":
    %5B{"type":{"another_attribute":"value", "attribute":"value"}},
     {"another_type":{"another_attribute":"value", "attribute":"value"}}%5D
 
  Simple format:
  type:attribute=value&another_attribute=value,another_type:attribute=value&another_attribute=value
 
Two annotations, both of which happen to be of type 'type' (this is allowed), each of which have two attributes:

  JSON:
  "annotations":
    %5B{"type":{"another_attribute":"value", "attribute":"value"}},
     {"type":{"another_attribute":"value", "attribute":"value"}}%5D

  Simple format:
  type:attribute=value&another_attribute=value,type:attribute=value&another_attribute=value

To summarize:

•   a tweet can have one or more annotation
•   tweets can have more than one annotation of the same type
•   annotations of the same type are still separate annotations
•   the attribute names in a given annotation may only occur once in a given annotation (the same restrictions as a conventional hash map)

Limits:

• when you sum up all the bytes that make up all your annotation types, attribute names and attribute values, the total size of bytes must be no more than 512 bytes (we're hoping to increase this over time as capacity permits to something closer to 2K)

 

Creating a tweet with annotations:

Annotations are posted to /statuses/update.format with the "annotations" parameter. You can specify the annotations in JSON (as above) or using the simple custom format (as above).

On successful status creation, the status payload response will contain the annotations.

The annotation portion of a status payload will look like the following examples:

XML:
<annotations type="array">
  <annotation>
    <type>foo</type>
    <attributes>
      <attribute>
        <name>bar</name>
        <value>baz</value>
      </attribute>
    </attributes>
  </annotation>
</annotations>

JSON:
"annotations":%5B{"foo":{"bar":"baz"}}%5D

Error cases:

•   An annotations payload that is too large will return an error response.
•   JSON annotations submitted that are structured incorrectly will also return an error response.

12 More Websites To Show You the Hottest Twitter Topics —

In the past two articles, 9 Websites To Show You The Hottest Stuff on Twitter Now and 10 More Websites To Show You The Hottest Twitter Topics we’ve taken a look at just how much information can be found when you dig a little deeper on Twitter. Going beyond the list of people that you follow, there is no limit to the amount of realtime information that you can find.

In the third and final part of this article we’re going to take a look at how to use Twitter on the go when you’re travelling in a foreign country, how to find content that is personalised just for you, how to find the authoritative voices on Twitter, and a few other specialised sites that use Twitter to find information on specific topics or hobbies.

Authoritative Voices

Twittorati

Twittorati takes a slightly different approach to most Twitter related sites. Rather than plug straight into Twitter to establish what is popular, the site makes use of Technorati’s resources to determine who to follow on Twitter. The site tracks the tweets coming from the most popular and influential bloggers according to Technorati’s stats. It specifically features the Top 100 blogs, but there are plans to expand to include more influential voices from around the web. Tweets on Twittorati can be browsed by categories such as Technology, Business, Parenting and more.

The Twitter accounts include both the blogs’ official Twitter accounts, as well as the personal accounts of the people behind the scenes. You can also browse the most popular links being tweeted from these blogs, and their latest photos. Tweets are accompanied by additional information about the user, including real name and job title, as well as their Technorati authority rating. Logging in with your Twitter account allows you to reply or retweet directly from within Twittorati.

Travel

Twaller

One of the great things about Twitter is how easy it is to access it when you’re on the go, which makes it a great resource to use when you’re travelling. Twaller allows users to share tips and information when you’re on the road, and accessing that information couldn’t be easier. Using the site, you can either search for specific information, or can browse by region or city, with major cities in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, Australia and South America included on the list. Each city’s tweets is divided into several sections, including where to eat, entertainment, things to see, weather and shopping. Twaller relies on hashtags to provide it’s service so the website is only as good as each city’s residents choose to make it. Signing in with your Twitter account allows you to submit tweets about the city you’re in directly from Twaller, as well as reply and retweet.

A great travel Twitter resource to take a look at before you hit the road is Travel Note’s directory of all things travel related – from airlines, to travel agencies, to travel writers, if it’s on Twitter, it’s probably listed here.

Personalised

If you’re looking for a more personalised experience to avoid information overload on Twitter, there are several options available.

Feedera

After both signing up for a Feedera account and connecting to your Twitter account, Feedera will proceed to create a personalised digest to be delivered to your inbox on a daily basis. The process can take several hours to complete. The digest consists of what is considered the best content shared by the accounts you follow, divided into photos, links, videos and music.

Popular content is determined by how often the link has been shared on Twitter, as well as on Digg, Facebook, Delicious, and a few others. Each link is accompanied by the number of your friends who have tweeted that story.

ChatterBox

Signing up for an account with Chatterbox gives you a little bit more control over the kind of content that you will get to see. You can create as many “ChatterBoxes” as you like, each of which can consist of specific keywords mentioned on Twitter, and can even be further narrowed down to keywords mentioned by specific users.

ChatterBox takes it one step further, allowing you to share your results with other users of your choice. ChatterBox can come in handy when a company or team needs to be aware of specific information being shared on Twitter. For example, all Tweets about a specific brand can be listed in one ChatterBox, and shared amongst the staff. The members of the ChatterBox can then assign the response to a specific user, add categories, statuses, and priorities to these tweets, and even respond to users directly from within ChatterBox. ChatterBox is the perfect accompaniment to any corporate or company Twitter account.

Also be sure to take a look at Mahendra’s article, 3 Little Known Ways to Use Twitter Without Information Overload, which includes another great site for creating personalised feeds – Cadmus.

Search

Twitter’s search feature leaves a lot to be desired, but luckily there are a few websites that make up for its shortcomings.

Topsy

Topsy is a Twitter search engine that uses Twitter as a basis for the ranking of its search results. They are based on how popular a link is, as well as the influence of the Tweeple sharing it. You can search the web as a whole, can search specifically within Twitter, and can also do an image search. Results can come from within the last month, week, day or hour, and can be sorted by relevance or date.

Signing in with Twitter allows you to retweet directly from within the website, and you can also subscribe to the RSS feed of any given search, or even create an email alert. Opening a link will show you who has tweeted it, what’s been said, and influential Tweeters are distinguished from the rest, with the ability to filter the tweets down to only influential users. Topsy also overcomes one of Twitter search’s main drawback – the inability to search beyond the past 10 days.

Bing

Microsoft search engine Bing has decided to get in on a little bit of the Twitter action with their dedicated Twitter search engine. The home page features some of the trending topics and popular links. Search results consist of the most recent tweets containing the search term and the most shared links on Twitter.

Any given link will be accompanied by two tweets mentioning it, which can be expanded to display more tweets organised by relevance or date.

Specific Interests

If you have a hobby that takes up a lot of your time, chances are, there’s a Twitter-related website that you could find useful.

If you’re a wine aficionado check out WineTwits for the latest Tweets about wine related topics and events.

If you’re a sports fan, Twackle brings you the latest buzz on Twitter about the NFL, NBA, NHL and much much more.

For the latest on all things stock market related on Twitter, check out StockTweetApp

If health and fitness is what matters to you most, Wellness Tweets will definitely appeal to you.

And TwitArcade is the place to go if you want to share and find out about new online games.

What websites do you use to keep up with the hottest topics on Twitter? Let us know in the comments.

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Top 10 Twitter Trends This Week [CHART] —

It may be the end of an era for Twitter trends, as Justin Bieber is nowhere to be found on this week’s list. Instead, American Idol champions the chart as the show wrapped its ninth season and crowned some guy the winner of something.

Below that, international trends including Korean boy band Super Junior continue to dominate, while concerns over the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico mount.

Once again, our friends at What The Trend have provided the insightful list below. Because this is a topical list, hashtag memes and games have been omitted from the chart.

You can check past Twitter trends in our Top Twitter Topics section as well as read more about this past week’s trends on What The Trend.

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Top Twitter Trends This Week: 5/22 – 5/28

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Rank	Topic	Top Index This Week	Previous Peak Index	Description
#1	American Idol	1	1	Lee DeWyze was announced as the latest American Idol winner beating his runner up Crystal Bowersox.
#2	Uniqlo	1	-	Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo ran a promo for their 26th anniversary in which Japanese users who retweet a message have a chance to win special presents based on a drawn ticket number.
#3	Cnectd	2	4	People are tweeting about the new social networking which connects all phones through a new type of messenger.
#4	Lost (TV Show)	2	-	People tweeting about the series finale of LOST that aired May 23rd in the US.
#5	Soccer/Football	1	-	Tweets about the Champion’s League Fnal in Europe, and preparations for the FIFA World Cup.
#6	Super Junior	1	-	BONAMANA continued to be a very popular song for Super Junior, and their fans, also known as E.L.F.s, said goodbye to member Kangin, who is enlisting in the South Korean army.
#7	Gulf Oil Spill	2	6	People are still awaiting the news as to whether or not BP has succeeded in plugging the leak.
#8	Google	3	-	Google is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the popular game Pac Man, offering a playable version as it’s homepage doodle. If you press "Insert Coin" twice, a second player can play as Ms. Pac Man.
#9	Dream Concert	4	-	Dream Concert is an annual concert in Korea which features many Korean singers, boybands and girl groups. Fans are tweeting about their experience.
#10	Paul Gray	5	-	Slipknot bassist Paul Gray found dead, at age 38. His body was found in an Urbandale, Iowa, hotel room Monday morning, 5/24/10.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ricardoinfante

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Reviews: Facebook, Google, Twitter, iStockphoto

Tags: gulf of mexico, gulf oil spill, Super Junior, Top Twitter Topics, trends, twitter, twitter trends