A new study from security firm Barracuda Labs provides some interesting insights into the state of the Twitterverse. Unfortunately for the microblogging startup, the stats say that most of its users aren’t very active. The study looked at around 19 million Twitter accounts (PDF) in order to figure out how people are using Twitter. It started with one assumption: an active or “True” Twitter user has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people, and had tweeted at least 10 times. By tha..   show all text

When it comes to competition, CNN president Jon Klein fears Facebook. The man at the top of the news network believes that the social network is more of a threat to his business than other broadcast media organizations. In a recent question-and-answer session with BusinessWeek, Klein specifically states, “We want to be the most trusted source,” and, “I’m more worried about the 500 million or so people on Facebook versus the 2 million on Fox.” The intriguing statements come just weeks after..   show all text

Brands are engaging in the conversations that are taking place on social media sites now more than ever. But in order to tap into the social conversations that are taking place on the web, brands and agencies need to have a powerful tool to track, measure and engage sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and others. One of the leaders in the social media tracking space, Radian6, is launching a new Engagement Console to streamline this process. A desktop client built on Adobe AIR, the eng..   show all text

The social networking site plans to roll out features next month that will give its 400 million users the option of sharing their location with friends as part of their news feeds.

Tweetie for Mac is the newest bonus edition to the MacHeist nanoBundle 2, which gives Mac users an opportunity to buy a variety of software for a discounted price. Additionally, buyers will also get early access to the pre-public beta for Tweetie 2 for Mac, plus a free upgrade to Tweetie 2 once it is released. When Loren “Atebits” Brichter released Tweetie 2 for the iPhone last fall, one of the biggest new features in the app was that it was completely rewritten in such a way that the des..   show all text

If your Foursquare check-ins could be limited to backyard outings and trips to the mailbox, you may be interested in a new mobile application called Miso. With this service, a startup from Bazaar Labs, also the makers of a social network called Flixup! for movie chatter, you can perform Foursquare-like "check-ins" when watching a particular TV show or movie. Homebodies, this app is for you. Sponsor With Miso, instead of checking in to locations outside of your home, like bars, restaurants a..   show all text

This is probably the busiest year in Panic’s history. This is good. But a lot of things happening mean a high chance that I, the man who lives and breathes Panic and has a giant status board in my head, might not properly explain everything to everyone. Steve and I realized it was high time we made this Cabel Status Board public… using technology! So, with partial inspiration, Neven, Steve and I built the Panic Status Board. Take a secret, sneek peek: What’s on the board? The idea quickly gr..   show all text

The entire family of devices built on the iPhone OS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) have been designed to run only software that is approved by Apple—a major shift from the norms of the personal computer market. Software developers who want Apple's approval must first agree to the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement. So today we're posting the "iPhone Developer Program License Agreement"—the contract that every developer who writes software for the iTunes App Store must "sign." Though more t..   show all text

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Remember the Pantless Knights of “I’m on a Mac” fame? Well, they’re back today with a new vid titled “The New Dork,” a parody of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’s “Empire State of Mind” that pays tribute to social media adherents and hipsters alike. With shoutouts to Zuckerberg, Mashable, Valleywag, Gizmodo, LinkedIn, Twitter and tech nerds camped out in their mothers’ basements, this video is all about using your social media cache to attain new levels of irony-spun hipness. According to these tech..   show all text

The Twittersphere is in love with Justin Bieber. Once again the young pop star tops our top 10 Twitter trends chart, even in spite of the devastating Chile earthquake that also peaked this week as a topic of Twitter conversations. The fresh data, which comes courtesy of the folks at What The Trend, highlights the most popular topics on Twitter. Hashtag memes and games have been omitted from the chart given the topical nature of the list. In looking at the trending data, common themes are s..   show all text

It seems hundreds of Twitter accounts have started to Tweet out “weight loss” product spam today. Specifically, users who have had their accounts hijacked are Tweeting the message “I lost 20 lbs in 2 weeks!” and links to diet sites. Our source counts over 200 rogue tweets so far tonight. It’s not just new users getting caught out: famous tech pundit John C. Dvorak (@therealdvorak) got caught up in the attack, and was none too pleased. At this point we’re unsure of the cause: Access coul..   show all text

For complete SXSW coverage, check out Mashable’s SXSW channel. Popular music magazine SPIN is going geeky for South by Southwest’s music festival, integrating custom Foursquare badges into its event presence and rewarding the most adventurous users of the location-based game with free tickets to their annual music showcase at Stubb’s. Festival goers who check-in at music venues can earn points and collect the four custom SPIN badges. Each badge — should you attempt to unlock it — offers a ..   show all text

A new version of Foursquare for the iPhone is on the way and it will feature a revamped interface, a brand new user tab, and a new checkin history view. This version of the app – v1.6 – should be heading to the App Store soon. Nick Starr shared screenshots of it with us and we’ve included a few below so that you can see some of the new features. Looking at the images from Foursquare 1.6, the first thing you’ll notice is that the interface has been totally revamped. The colors, icons and me..   show all text

Editor’s note: Richard Wong is a venture capitalist with Accel Partners, an investor in AdMob, GetJar, and SunRun, and a former mobile industry executive. In this guest post he argues that the fragmentation of mobile devices and platforms is here to stay, and offers some advice to entrepreneurs on how to deal with it. Mobile data is on fire. Despite a few false starts, we are now in the midst of a transformative “Open Mobile 3rd Wave” (remember WAP, and J2ME?). We are just in the early swell..   show all text

For the moment, the valuations we have for private companies like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are based mostly on what we know from venture capital investments. SharesPost, however, is a company that lets owners of shares in private companies sell them to prospective buyers, and they’ve just released an index detailing valuations of some of the most prominent companies in the social media space. Here’s what they report: Facebook: $11.5 billion Zynga: $2.6 billion Twitter: $1.4 billion..   show all text

Dallas Lawrence is Chair of the Social and Digital Media Practice at Levick Strategic Communications, the nation’s top crisis communications firm. He blogs on emerging digital media trends and best practices for social media engagement on Bulletproof Blog. Connect with him on Twitter @dallaslawrence. If there was any doubt before last year as to social media’s ability to exacerbate reputation crises, 2009 settled the debate. In just that one year, Domino’s, United Airlines, and Tiger Woods..   show all text

Google is developing a system that will enable web publishers of any size to automatically submit new content to Google for indexing within seconds of that content being published. Search industry analyst Danny Sullivan told us today that this could be "the next chapter" for Google. Last Fall we were told by Google's Brett Slatkin, lead developer on the PubSubHubbub (PuSH) real time syndication protocol, that he hoped Google would some day use PuSH for indexing the web instead of the crawling..   show all text

Digital measurement firm comScore released a study today highlighting the rise in social media access via mobile phones and offering some comparison metrics for some of the biggest social networks and their usage on mobile devices. comScore measured the changes in both mobile browser access to social networks and the access numbers to specific social networks from January 2009 to January 2010. Some highlights: – 30% of smartphone users accessed social networks via mobile browsers — this w..   show all text

A ReadWriteWeb Guide South by Southwest Interactive is a favorite conference for many a geeky programmer, and its no wonder why. The talent, learning opportunities and free booze run deep and wide at this show. We've compiled a list of ten must-see, must-do panels, parties and events - and don't worry, we won't be sending you to three identical core conversations on JavaScript. From Google's Hackathon to Facebook's Developer Garage and beyond, you'll get to learn from (and drink with) some o..   show all text

About one year ago Twitter reached a huge milestone: one billion tweets. Four months ago, 5 billion tweets were served. And now, in about one day, Twitter should reach another very important milestone: 10 billion tweets. Notice the trend? Although Twitter has been somewhat struggling with traffic (compared to its earlier immense growth) in the last couple of months, it still managed to go from five to ten billion tweets in four months; quite a remarkable achievement. Counting tweets is act..   show all text

As the battle between HTML5 and Adobe Flash continues to heat up, Virgin America has chosen a side: their brand new web site design ditches Flash in favor of HTML. The reason? The startup airline plans a big push into mobile this year and wants to be sure iPhone users can access the Virgin America site and check-in process via the iPhone. Already absent from the iPhone, Flash support will also be notably lacking from Apple’s iPad. Steve Jobs also reportedly had some choice words on the com..   show all text

Foursquare may still be relatively small (around 450,000 users), but wow have they been able to woo certain areas of the mainstream quickly. We already know about the deals with Conde Nast, Marc Jacobs, the New York Times, and others — some of which are pulling in revenue. And then there’s the Bravo deal, which has already included a commercial spot. But now, Foursquare is getting love in the bright lights of Vegas. Yes, the pictures above and below were taken at the Miracle Mile Shops attac..   show all text

CoTweet, the Twitter CRM tool used by several massive brands including JetBlue and Ford, has been acquired by ExactTarget, an email marketing firm. In a statement, ExactTarget CEO Scott Dorsey said, ”By combining the power of ExactTarget and CoTweet, we can provide businesses a complete solution to tie together all forms of interactive communications and drive deeper customer engagement online.” While perhaps not a widely known name in the social media space, ExactTarget is a major player ..   show all text