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The Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, The Forbidden City, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa all will be turning off their lights for Earth Hour. But how does the online community show its support? ACG will be shortening all tweets to 60 characters during Earth Hour in a gesture to save power on the mighty Twitter servers that must save, process, and regurgitate the community tweets.
From 8:30-9:30pm wherever you are tweeting from and no matter what you need to say, join ACG in a 60-character tweet hour to show our support for the Earth!
Update: Tweetdeck has fixed this issue in the latest version of their client. I still suggest, however, being aware of lost information because of Retweets. You never know if an @reply is misspelled or neglected because of system issues.
When I was taking the usual morning look at Twitter and Facebook, I noticed that there were quite a few companies offering deals if you retweeted their updates. I wanted to look into how these companies would fulfill their promises, and I realized that there’s a large gap in feedback with Twitter’s new Retweet functionality. Have a look at the image below:
Hopefully you’ve noticed the Retweet link on the web client navigation. But what about other applications like TweetDeck, Seesmic, Hootsuite, and others? TweetDeck supports mentions but as of version 0.33.2 you cannot add a column that supports Twitter’s new Retweet functionality. I haven’t seen it in other clients and I could not find a post of mine that was retweeted in any mentions list in the web client.
If your company is running a campaign to “Retweet to win a product”, you absolutely need to be aware of Twitter’s Retweet functionality and find users that are Retweeting according to the new functionality. There is likely a pool of users that you cannot see that are retweeting your posts, and this can throw your analytics. If these “hidden” retweeters are not seeing retribution for their retweets, you may have an unexpected PR issue as well.
So what’s happening with the Retweets? Since Twitter has expanded its API to designate certain tweets as reposted/retweeted items, it will propogate that tweet to followers of the retweeter but does not include an actual mention of the retweeter in the timeline. Therefore, Retweets will not show up in traditional Mention timelines that search for the tweeters “@” username. Web clients will need to adjust for this accordingly.
The amount of companies joining Twitter is increasing everyday, with over half of Fortune 100 companies already subscribed to the service. Many have been extremely successful at engaging their customers and carrying valuable conversations, a practice that is proving well for public relations.
But what about that thing called the Twitter API? If you’re not familiar with it, the Twitter API is a method for outside programs to access Twitter for searching tweets and even automatically updating a Twitter profile. Already you need to be thinking, “how can I apply the API to my product?”
If you’re in any internet business with online applications, you’ve probably already figured out that you can connect your app to Twitter. The benefits? Real-time automatic updates of your product. For example, let’s say you own a video site called “MyTube” that’s similar to YouTube. You can ask your users to connect to their Twitter profiles, and every time a user uploads a video a link is automatically created in a new Tweet. Because you connected “MyTube” to their Twitter profile, you have made it easier for your users to share their videos and, ultimately, easier for “MyTube” to be shared across the net.
It’s easy to get started on the API, and Twitter itself provides a huge resource for free (see their wiki). If your application is not internet-based, some still are able to connect to Twitter depending on logistics. Many companies seek professional help in these cases.
Since the end of spring, ACG has utilized the new Windows 7 Release Candidate as a platform for most of its operations. We had to switch most of our essential functions like version control over to the new operating system, but so far the OS has been promising for design operations.
So, overall, how do we like it? Windows 7 has been a gift from the Microsoft gods and addresses some annoying issues with networking and user experience. Its backwards compatibility is great with most programs, and its 64-bit performance makes us jump for joy.
Our favorite features with Windows 7 include its new taskbar. Every program is represented by an icon, and previewing between Windows takes a simple mouse hover. Window behavior is now “pin-able”: drag two windows to the left and right side of the screen and Windows automatically formats side-by-side viewing.
The issues we experienced on Windows 7 are not completely Microsoft’s fault: the Adobe CS4 suite is massively complex and often yields strange behavior. However, 64-bit Windows is much more CS4-friendly.
Overall, we are happy with the features that Windows brings to ACG. The platform networks well, meeting our technological needs of bridging complex programming with simple design. Our only hope is that Microsoft decides to shift gears and begin improving the internals of the OS, maximizing CPU and GPU power.
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