Google Plus is very proud of its photo features, especially the instant uploads from Android phones, and today’s Plus update also adds new photo editing tools called Creative Kit. It has basic editing tools as well as filters like everybody has these days.

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What’s Hot On Google Plus

What’s Hot appears underneath new posts inside the main stream as well as in the Sparks area on the left sidebar. It’s a new way to discover content on Plus that makes a nice algorithmic complement to the right-now real-time search tool. Discovery on Plus is now nicely positioned between the ways Facebook and Twitter work.

Ripples: Watch Sharing Happen

Ripples is a sexy feature that lets you visually follow the flow of a conversation. It even incorporates some analytics. That’s much more data than other social networks give casual users about their posts. Very Google-y. Visual representations of data are catching on at the Googleplex. The Google Analytics team also recently introduced a flow visualization tool.

Creative Kit for Photos

Google touts 3.4 billion photo uploads as its favorite metric of the success of Plus. When Android users (who have turned on Google Plus) take a photo, it uploads automatically, so that’s sort of cheating. The photos are kept private until a user decides to share them on Plus, which then makes them visible instantly. If Google talked about how many photos were shared, then we’d have a real sense.

Today’s update gives Plus users some tools to spruce up their photos, which may increase sharing as users get more excited about photos. Trendy filters and Halloween gimmicks aside, Plus users can do much more with photos now.

The editing tools are desktop-only for now, but I’d put money on them coming to mobile apps soon.

What do you think of these new Google Plus features?

Discuss

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Now that we have rolled out banner ads on our My Info and Welcome Tab applications (to page admins only, not to viewers of the pages), we have a few cents a day coming in to help us pay the annual fee for an SSL certificate. So we are now supporting SSL throughout all of our Facebook applications. This means My Greetings, My Places, and My Status also have full SSL support.

This means you can turn on Facebook’s secure browsing preference and seamlessly use our Facebook apps without having to switch out of secure mode. While none of our apps send any sensitive data, it was annoying to our users to have to switch back and forth between secure and unsecured modes.

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It’s called Google Plus, and it’s kind of a big deal. At least, that’s what we’re being told. Over, and over, and over. Yep, Google Plus is the best thing since Facebook. In fact, it’s better than Facebook. And it’s better than Twitter. In fact, Google Plus is going to be the death of them both!

Poppycock. Not only is Google Plus one of the biggest examples of style-over-substance and over-hype that the Internet has seen, it will be prove to be absolutely no threat to the dominance of Facebook and Twitter within their respective niches.

And while there are some aspects of Google Plus that are fairly innovative (and have made it attractive to early adopters), other parts of the platform have been so poorly thought out and executed that it begs belief. Other highly-celebrated features flatter to deceive, whilst being all-but-ignored by those clapping the loudest.

The Hype

Google Plus  has certainly arrived with considerable fanfare. Using the same approach that made Gmail so desirable, Google Plus  launched as invite-only, with the platform open only to a lucky few. This wasn’t entirely random — Google was careful to pre-invite many thought leaders, bloggers and pundits in the tech space (particularly in Silicon Valley), as they were always going to have a lot to say. And say it loudly.

This created an early demand that probably hasn’t been matched in internet history. The Wall Street Journal reported that in just three weeks, Google+ has had 20 million unique visitors since its launch. Even Mark Zuckerberg signed up, quickly becoming the most-followed user on the network.

Of course, visitors isn’t the same thing as users, and users isn’t the same thing as active users. So how many people have signed up for Google+? Using a surname-based analysis system, Ancestor.com founder and statistician Paul Allen pegged the membership at 10 million on July 7, a feat achieved in just 16 days. As a comparison, it took Twitter 780 days and Facebook 852 days to reach the 10 million user mark.

I mean, look at this growth — insane!

Since then, Allen estimates that Google Plus is up to 18 million to 20 million users, all achieved in about three weeks. No wonder Zuck has signed up — he’ll have nowhere else to go at this rate.

The Reality

Google Plus seems exciting now because it’s new and shiny and lots of major tech players are giving it a decent amount of attention. But it’s deceptive, and underneath very little is actually going on.

Google Plus’ 20 million signups in such a small period of time certainly seems impressive. But this is Google, a well-established search giant that already boasts over a billion users. Couple that with the must-scratch-itch that is invite-only, and you have an influx that was both predictable and self-fulfilling.

But it’s not as good as it looks. For the week ending July 19, 2011, Experian Hitwise says that Google Plus had some 1.8 million visits. That number was up 283 percent from the previous week, but relatively it’s tiny, both compared to Facebook and Twitter, but also to the number of registered profiles on Google Plus.

If Google Plus actually has 20 million signups, that means that on any given day of that week only a fraction over a quarter of a million bothered to come back. That’s about 1.3 percent. Even if you assume there are only 10 million registered users, that’s still only 2.6 percent. It’s actually less than that, as number of those visits are from brand-new users.

Either way, it’s hardly a healthy stat for long-term growth. And anecdotally I’ve seen a lot of evidence of this myself. I’ve invited dozens and dozens of my friends to Google+, and of those who have bothered to sign up (probably less than half), the vast majority – easily 90% – have registered, had a quick look round and then promptly departed, never to return. The question I’m hearing again and again is: I already have Facebook and/or Twitter, so why do I need this?

The thing is, if you register on Google+ and follow a portion of the most-followed users – people like Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Leo Laporte, Kevin Rose and Steve Rubel – you’ll start to believe that Google+ is the most popular thing, like, ever. Look at all those posts. More impressive, look at all those comments. Such engagement!

But it’s an illusion. These guys come with a ready-made audience, most of whom follow them pretty much anywhere. Google+ is the best thing that ever happened to them. This isn’t a criticism – they all produce first-class content. But just because they’re seeing a lot of reactions and getting a great response to their posts doesn’t mean everybody else is. In fact, virtually nobody else is. Try visiting the Google+ profiles of many of the people commenting in these guys’ posts. With a few exceptions, it’s a ghost town.

And Mark Zuckerberg racking up at least 350,000 followers isn’t proof of anything. Zuck could show up at MySpace and have 350,000 followers by the end of the day.

And let’s not forget that Google Plus had the help of Facebook and Twitter to generate all of this publicity. I don’t think we can credit this enough. A combined billion users (give or take some crossover) went completely nuts about Google Plus, with some 1.9 million tweets, 107,000 blog posts, 30,000 online news articles and 153,000 forum posts made about Google+ in the first two weeks of its launch. But this isn’t proof of success, as the vast majority of these people didn’t even have invites to the platform. It’s proof of hype, but also proof of the power of Facebook and Twitter, both of whom didn’t have the same help when they first opened their doors.

When it launched, Twitter had a little bit of help from Facebook. And Facebook had a little bit of help from MySpace, because it was so decidedly awful.

(Also, it’s worth observing that even with all this fuss, mentions of Google Plus were dwarfed by mentions of Facebook and Twitter over that same period.)

People have very short memories. When the much-derided Google Buzz opened it generated 9 million posts in the first 56 hours. It’s Google. These kinds of launches are inevitable. It doesn’t mean anything.

Where Google Got Social Right

Hangouts

Hangouts, the Google Plus live video chat, are proving very popular with a lot of users (although typically only when launched by somebody well-established and/or downright famous). Because Hangouts support multiple users, Google has one-upped Facebook’s one-on-one Skype integration, although it can’t be long until that also supports group video chat.

The User Interface

Google Plus looks great. So clean and minimalist, it totally reminds me of FriendFeed (more on that later).

Where Google Got Social Wrong (Again)

How about everywhere else?

Circles

This is being touted as Google Plus’ killer feature, as circles allow anyone to digitally organize their friends, as proposed by Paul Adam in his much-loved presentation, The Real Life Social Network. It’s so easy — simply drag and drop a friend into the circle of your choice. You can then click on any circle in your sidebar to see just content from those users. Even better, you can send your own content to any circle of your choice. Talk about targeted marketing!

The thing is: this is broken. Circles sound like a good idea on paper but in reality they don’t work. Why? Two main reasons. One, because people cannot digitally organize their friends by interest. And two, even if you could nobody talks about that same interest constantly and nothing else. In other words, a given person cannot be defined by something they like. Certainly not just that.

I’ll give you an example: Danny Sullivan. Danny is head of Search Engine Land and produces a ton of outstanding content about that space. I follow Danny on Google Plus, and filed him away in the appropriate circle. But the problem is that Danny doesn’t just talk about search engines. He also shares a lot of photos of sunsets and beaches and stuff like that. Which is fine — he can write about what he wants. Which, of course, is the crux of the issue. I could file Danny over multiple circles (search, tech, photos, sunsets, and so on) or I could keep him filed under one, but none of them are going to be accurate, because Danny Sullivan is not a robot, blindly mass-producing content about a finite number of subjects. He’s a person, and people aren’t easily pigeonholed.

This is an ongoing issue. Not only is the circle filing system likely to be inaccurate, but to make it even remotely useful you have to keep modifying and revising your circles as you start to follow new people and existing followers prove themselves to be somebody else.

Bottom line: most people won’t bother. They’ll just start to file everybody under one big circle, and put it up with it. And that’s exactly what will happen when you group too many people into one circle, especially if they’re pundits or self-promoters — the circle becomes unusable, almost instantly. A veritable nightmare of ramblings and noise.

This is the problem when you don’t have a character limit on status updates. Twitter has 140, Facebook has 420, and Google+ has no limit, at least not one that I’ve seen reached. Some of the updates are so long that they fill up multiple screens. Seriously: who wants that? Who signed up to see that? If I wanted to see every word of every article you’ve written I’d visit your blog. And cherry pick.

That’s the problem with circles as an input measure. For output, they’re even worse. Google thought they were being really smart by letting us, as individuals, decide who goes where, and then broadcasting to them accordingly. But as a system it simply does work, because of the reasons I’ve already outlined: I don’t know what you like. And you don’t know what I like. You might think you do, and Google might even be able to provide you with an algorithmic guesstimate that’s pretty accurate at this moment right now, but come tomorrow things will have changed. Come next week and next month and they’ll have changed completely. I’m not all about Twitter, and I’m not all about social media. I don’t want to see everything ever written about those things. I don’t see no ring on this finger. You don’t own me!

As you can see the way the output part of circles has been defined is backward. I shouldn’t be tagging you by your interests — you should be tagging yourself based on your own interests. You know what you like. Nobody else does. And you know that tomorrow you might not like that thing anymore. But I’ll still think your its biggest fan, blinding pushing my now-irritating content your way 24/7. Right up until you unfollow me. Hooray! Everybody wins.

If Google had set up circles so people tagged themselves, it could be a world-beater. I’d set up a Circle called Twitter, and other people would opt into it, ike a mailing list, circa 2011. Visit my profile, check out my different circles of topics, and sign up for what you want. That’s a winning content delivery system. And it will work because users choose what they want to see, rather than the broadcaster picking for them. Moreover, I could quickly see which of my circles was the most popular, and focus my efforts on that.

To me, the biggest proof that circles don’t work is the way that the Google Plus superstars like Scoble, Rubel and Sullivan are using them. Namely, they don’t. They post everything they do public. And why wouldn’t they? Who wants less people to see their content? It’s fundamentally opposed to everything we’ve ever been taught. Sure, targeted marketing certainly has its place, but only when people opt-in. Not the other way around.

And let’s remember that Facebook has had this feature forever, except over there it’s called Groups. And nobody uses it. Why would it be any different on Google?

Sparks

Are you having a laugh, Google?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a fundamentally useless, bolted-on-at-the-last-minute worthless piece of crap.

Search

The Google Plus search feature is… non-existent. You can find people and you can search via sparks (so sweet), but that’s it.

I mean: this is Google, right? Who thought leaving out a search box was a good idea?

Brand Profiles

Google Plus didn’t launch with brand profiles, promising to add them later, and announced that they only wanted real people to make profiles. Specifically: no non-humans (which I have to say I welcome). Google warned users that they’d remove any brand profiles that were set up. And on July 21, that’s exactly what they did, much to the chagrin of those involved. All except for Mashable, whose excess of 100,000 followers was saved and renamed as founder Pete Cashmore. All the other accounts — which included some major players such as Coca Cola and Good Morning America — were nuked. Talk about one rule for one.

The Scoble Effect

I’ve touched upon this a couple of times in this post but it needs more explanation. Basically, Robert Scoble ruins everything. He’s the Jack Nicklaus of social networks, because when you factor in what he’s done and doing compared to everybody else, it all falls apart. There is no comparison. He’s out there, alone, like Jonah versus the whale.

This isn’t me knocking the guy. I like him. Scoble is the early adopter personified, and gives every new major social network 100 percent of his attention. He follows bazillions of other users and seems to read everything they all post. He also generates a lot of his own content, all of which gets a bazillion comments.

So what happens is if you want Robert Scoble in your network, you are basically saying: I do not want to use this network. In fact, I want it ruined. This was true on FriendFeed, it was true on Google Buzz and it’s even truer on Google Plus. It isn’t an issue on Twitter because of the strict character limit. But when anything goes, then it’s game over. As I said, Scoble ruins everything. He even acknowledges this himself. It’s the litmus test of every new social platform.

But it’s not just Robert who breaks Google Plus. It’s all the other power users, too. Because Google Plus has relatively no controls over content, if you add more than a couple of these guys to your stream then Google Plus becomes essentially unusable. With their continuous updates and pages and pages of comments, they drown out everybody else so much that it’s both impressive and completely infuriating. Don’t worry — very soon you won’t care, because you’ll have stopped using Google+.

FriendFeed Again

To me, Google Plus is basically FriendFeed all over again. Bigger platform, and beefed-up, sure, but it’s essentially the same tech crowd (almost exactly), each of whom are showing the same enthusiasm, which delivers the same hype, which ultimately produces the same lack of returning users, simply because very few of them care about the same things to the same degree.

On that initial visit, Google Plus is just as overwhelming for most people as Friendfeed was. (And I liked FriendFeed, but it was never going to appeal to non-technical folk.) It doesn’t have the simplicity of Twitter and it doesn’t have the familiarity (and comfort) of Facebook. Instead, it sits somewhere between the two, satisfying neither one user nor the other, and ultimately appealing to neither.

Why Google Plus Is No Threat To Facebook

The people who are most active about the threat posed by Facebook, or what it is that they don’t like about the platform, are often the same people mentioned in this article. That is, early adopters, tech pundits, web entrepreneurs, journalists and high-profile bloggers. But cool as a lot of these guys are, they aren’t normal people. They aren’t the majority. They aren’t the hundreds of millions of people who use Facebook to chat with friends and family, and to play games. There’s fundamentally no reason whatsoever for these same people to leave Facebook and move over to Google Plus. Even if Google Plus copies Facebook exactly there’s no reason, as they already have what they need on Facebook.

Yep, it’s certainly true that nothing lasts forever — MySpace and AOL are the best (and increasingly cliched) examples of that. But at 750 million users plus, Facebook isn’t going away anytime soon. And Google Plus isn’t enough of a temptation to make any significant dent in that user base.

Why Google Plus Is No Threat To Twitter

People who want Twitter — that is, the majority of users, not the loudest users – want it because of what it is: a short, quick messaging service that, if one follows the right profiles (and ‘right’ is of course a very relative term – what’s right for you?) provides an easy (and powerful) way to position yourself right on the edge of the information curve.

Those same short updates also works brilliantly on most mobile phones, making Twitter very addictive.

If Google Plus has any appeal to the man in the street, it’s for vastly different reasons than why they’re using Twitter.

Google Plus As A Blogging Platform

Because there aren’t any limits to content updates, GooglePlus does work as a blogging system, and it could become a viable alternative to WordPress, Tumblr and Posterous for bloggers.

We’ve already seen some evidence of this with people like Kevin Rose and Bill Gross pointing their personal web domains directly at their Google profiles. Of course, they can reverse this any time they like, but it could be a trend of things to come, and it will be interesting to see if Google+ begins to take some share away from the established blogging platforms.

The Big Question

Google Plus could top 100 might users with little or no effort — because it’s Google. The key thing is what it takes to get the platform to the next level in social networking: The much-desired billion users. So let’s ask this question again: why would the average person leave Facebook for Google Plus, when it’s mostly the same and what’s different is a bit of a mess? Why on earth would they leave Twitter, when they’re a complete apple and oranges comparison?

Why do they have to leave at all? Surely there’s room on the block for another major social network — can’t we all just get along? So here’s what I think is the biggest question: Can people really cope with the work it takes to successfully manage three social networks?

More importantly, will they?

Because if they can’t, or won’t, it doesn’t matter what Google Plus does, what features it introduces and what fixes it makes to those already on the system. Because, relatively at first, and later in actuality, almost nobody will be paying attention.

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“Agent G” Syncs Google+ to Other Sites

To use the service, you must first associate Agent G with your preferred social networking services, using OAuth (on Twitter and Identica) and Facebook Connect.  In testing, the service was a little buggy. It took two times to register Agent G with Twitter, three times to register with Facebook, and we’re still waiting on Identica. Maybe we weren’t being patient enough, but Agent G’s developer Saggi Malachi says the registration process should only take seconds. It did not.

Still, even with its kinks, you have to admit – this is a pretty cool idea. And as for the bugs, the source code will be released in just a few days, so crowd-sourced improvements should follow soon after, or so we hope.

How to Use Agent G

To use Agent G, do the following:

1. Sign in with Identi.ca, Twitter or Facebook on this page: http://gplus.sagg.im. (See the buttons on the upper right of the page.)
2. Once connected, you will be given an authentication string. Create a Google+ post containing your authentication string and share it only with +Agent G.

    

   

3. You can now sync Google+ posts to your connected accounts by simply sharing your post with +Agent G

    

   

    

That’s it!

We should note, there’s a lag here, as well. In tests, syncs between services took several minutes, which is far from being real-time. As they say, your mileage may vary.

But if you do decide to use this service, please remember one thing: if you’re syncing to other services, be prepared to respond on those other services, too. No one likes bot spam!

Discuss

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Today’s announcement actually has two part: one dealing with search and one dealing with photos. It also involves two new partners for the company: Firefox and Photobucket.

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Twitter says that it’s rolling out an updated version of its search today, one that will not just give you “more relevant tweets” and that will show related photos and videos on the results page so you needn’t leave the site to view them.

Twitter is partnering with Firefox in these improved search efforts – at least as part of today’s announcement. With a new version of the browser, users will be able to type a hashtage or a @username into the Awesome Bar and go directly to the search results page. There’s also an add-on that will give this same functionality. This makes Twitter search function much like any other address-bar-based search engine. (Well, except that it bypasses both Google and Chrome, of course.)

Twitter also announced that it has partnered with the photo-sharing and storage company Photobucket, which will be responsible for hosting these tweeted photos. In coming weeks, Twitter says, users will be able to upload a photo and attach it to a Tweet directly from the Twitter.com website. This will also be available via Twitter’s mobile apps, and the company is exploring ways to Tweet photos via SMS.

Just as the new photo-sharing service will be unveiled over the coming weeks to users, it appears as though developers will also have to wait for more information about the new “‘Tweet-with-photo’ API.” But as there are a number of companies who’ve staked their claim on providing just this sort of service – namely Twitpic and YFrog – the future of Twitter photo-sharing still appears cloudy.

Discuss

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While the plugins’ performance varies from one site to the next, the simplicity of a single click has reduced friction so much that it is practically replacing the link, something that I highlighted right after the like button first launched.

Impact Of Google +1

Google is now losing an increasing amount of information that’s being gobbled up by Facebook. The problem is so significant that the search giant is now ready to launch their own like button, +1, later today.

Right now it’s not clear how large of an impact the +1 button will actually have. In addition to being a horrible name (seriously, who came up with +1?), it’s not totally clear how it will impact search results. While it will most definitely contribute to the results at some point, there is less of an incentive for users currently.

For Facebook, the like button has essentially become the default way to share content on the social network — click a button and instantly information is shared with your friends to discover. The issue with Google is that it doesn’t have its own social distribution channel that users read on a daily basis.

I can load up my Facebook feed and instantly see everything my friends are liking around the web. Granted, I use Google numerous times throughout the day as I search for answers to questions. With my friends’ likes integrated into those results, I can quickly find out which content is the best. Ultimately, we’ll have to wait and see how many users click on the “+1″ button.

Impact Of Twitter Follow

In contrast to the like and +1 button, the Twitter follow button launched yesterday is less about specific content and more about following web content creators’ Tweets. It’s more comparable to the like box, which is more targeted at the content creator looking to broadcast out to their following.

Twitter already has its own plugin, the Tweet button. The product, which was first launched last August, has gained significant traction but doesn’t appear to have impacted Facebook.

Instead, most publications have both a like and a Tweet button in an effort to increase the social distribution across both sites.

Depending on which publication you read, you’ll sometimes see more likes and other times you’ll see more Tweets. Most people actually choose between one or the other. Some prefer to share with their Facebook friends, while others prefer to share with their Twitter followers, who most likely happen to have similar interests.

Clicking Multiple Buttons?

The reality is that each product brings a different solution to the table. While the Tweet, like, and +1 buttons are all a single-click way of sharing content, the context of information on each site is completely different. While many users will now be driven to click on all the buttons, most people will click on whichever button results in the content being shared with people they want to share with.

Given that Facebook has such a large user base, there’s a good chance that it will remain the defacto social sharing button. Unfortunately we’ll have to wait and see whether or not users use the +1 button or not.

Readers, what kind of competitive impact do you see in Google and Twitter’s plugins?

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After months of rumors, Twitter has finally announced that it has acquired TweetDeck, one of the most widely used third-party Twitter applications.

“This acquisition is an important step forward for us,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said in a blog post. “TweetDeck provides brands, publishers, marketers and others with a powerful platform to track all the real-time conversations they care about.”

Costolo and TweetDeck CEO Iain Dodsworth made it clear that TweetDeck development will continue and that it will remain largely independent. “Change may well be inevitable, but we remain the same team, staying in London, with the same focus and products, and now with the support and resources to allow us to grow and take on even bigger challenges,” Dodsworth said in a blog post.

Twitter did not disclose the price of the acquisition, but several reports peg the price to be around $40 million.

The social media company has been in a bidding war for TweetDeck for the past few months. Its main competition for TweetDeck was UberMedia, the company that owns Twidroyd, Echofon and UberSocial. Sources close to the talks told Mashable last month that one of Twitter’s goals was to make sure that UberMedia (or any other company) didn’t control too much of the Twitter ecosystem.

Twitter also tried to reassure third-party developers that there is still a lot of opportunity for growth within its ecosystem. “TweetDeck is a great example of a third-party developer that designed tools for the incredibly important audience of Twitter power-users and, in turn, created value for the network as a whole,” Costolo noted in the company’s announcement.

More About: tweetdeck, twitter

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Shearman’s report indicates that the pages will provide more space for brands to communicate with their visitors, outside of the structure of 140 character messages and the small fields currently offered on account profile pages. “Chief Executive Dick Costolo, and Adam Bain, president of revenue, are leading the push to create fresh revenue streams,” Shearman writes. Marketers we spoke to tonight expressed support for the idea; Twitter has not yet responded to our request for comment.

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“Branded pages on Twitter could be interesting, although Twitter is more flow-based than page based,” says Rick Mans, Social Media Lead at Capgemini, a technology consulting firm based in Paris, France with 110,000 employees across 40 countries.

“I think it would be very useful for brands to have a page that is richer than the current profile page, especially for users who will visit the page of the brand for the first time. That would be the added value for me: having a broader introduction to the brand than just the limited profile Twitter now offers and offer information beyond the traditional Tweet.

“Integration of branded pages with the existing ecosystem of tools could be interesting.”

While brand advertisers would no doubt be overjoyed by the prospect of breaking free from the constraints of the current platform – and there are many – brand pages like there are on Facebook may not be suitable for Twitter, which is a different kind of network.

Both networks are historically unusual in that they offer brands an opportunity to try to convince would-be customers to subscribe to updates from the brand, integrated into a stream of real-time multi-media updates from friends and family. To date, a brand’s ability on Twitter to make a call to action to subscribe has been subject to substantial limitations due to the structure of the site.

Twitter and social media ecosystem investor John Borthwick called the reported plans for business accounts “smart and necessary” tonight on Twitter.

Twitter has consistently taken bold risks in creating new advertising products, though, and this sounds like it could be one of the next ones. At the same time, Twitter has been criticized for being far slower at rolling out business services than would-be customers would have liked.

“It seems interesting and a natural progression, but I’m interested in the features,” says Nick Gonzales, VP of Operations at Nervora Digital Media Group in the United Arab Emirates. “Brands can already own personal accounts, and if anything Facebook’s branded product has tried to move back to being more like user accounts.”

Would users recoil at increased brand messaging on Twitter? Might it lead to the MySpace-ification of Twitter profile pages? Making customized profile pages a paid product for verified business owners could help prevent that from happening. It may be difficult to imagine how users would react – but it’s very clear that business users would love to take a shot at it.

Discuss

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Twitter updated its official iPhone and iPad apps Thursday, offering improved and enhanced photo options, auto-link shortening and the ability to easily follow friends via the contacts in your address book.

Twitter for iPhone also gained a new feature called the Quick Bar. The Quick Bar is a way to quickly browse through trending topics at the top of the timeline.

New Photo Options

Our favorite new feature in Twitter for iOS is the ability to quickly and easily attach photos to tweets.

There is now a camera button in the new tweet toolbar, which makes it easy to add photos from the library or to take a new photo using the built-in iPhone camera. Users can switch between the front and rear-facing camera (for iPhone 4 owners) and preview photos before choosing what to attach.

Twitter will then upload the photo to the image host you have set in your preferences and send the tweet along with links to those photos. Media will appear in-line on Twitter.com and in other official Twitter mobile apps.

Quick Bar

The Quick Bar is an interesting approach to viewing trending topics. On the main timeline, users see a notification bar that shows current trending topics. Swiping left to right will cycle through the list.

It’s not a bad implementation, but we know some users are not going to be pleased. Already our Twitter streams are full of complaints. If Twitter would make this an optional feature, that would probably make it better.

To us, the decision to make trending topics more visible in the iPhone app is all about the push to promoted trending topics. For advertisers, buying a promoted topic is a lot more valuable if trending topics are more visible to mobile users too.

Other Niceties

The official Twitter blog outlines the other improvements to the app, which include:

• Local trends based on location,
• A new autocomplete implementation that works for @usernames and hashtags,
• A new direct message conversation view,
• Refined tweet box design.

We think the new photo options in Twitter are fantastic, but we’re not totally sold on the Quick Bar. What do you think about Twitter for iOS? Let us know.

More About: ipad apps, iphone apps, twitter, twitter clients, twitter for iphone

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Remember how we were all freaking out on New Year’s Eve, 1999, convinced that the world as we know it would end — at the hands of machines, of course? Well, we weathered that storm and then some. Still, as we shamble forward into the next decade, it might be prudent to take pause and take stock of the years behind us. Translation: Back up your stuff.

Think of it as stockpiling food and building a fallout shelter for the 21st century. We have a ton of information, photos and memories scattered around the web that we would be loathe to lose, and while it’s unlikely that the entire Internet is going to come crashing down in the next week or so, it still might be wise to put some of that stuff in an iron box for safe keeping.

Read on, and Christina Warren and I will show you how to…

… Back Up Your Facebook

We’re coming pretty close to living our lives on Facebook — it’s our photo album, diary and mailbox, all in one — so why leave all that info up to the whims of the all-mighty servers? This October, the social network got hip to data portability after it started allowing users to download their profiles — photos, statuses, updates, videos and all.

The process is really too simple to forgo. Here’s how you can stow away your social life for safekeeping: 1). Go to Account Settings, 2). Click on “Download Your Information” and allow Facebook to download your info, 3). Wait for an e-mail that will let you know your info is ready (it takes a while, what with all the stuff you probably have on Facebook), 4). Go through the security test that allows you to download your info (kudos on that one, Facebook), and, voila, your profile is ported to your desktop in a nifty folder. Do this before you go through with that New Year’s resolution to make your profile less scandalous — you know, for when you’re old and gray and full of sleep and nodding by the fire.

… Back Up Your Tweets

Yes, the Library of Congress is now hoarding tweets, but that doesn’t do much for the casual user looking to keep a log of his own mundane musings, now does it?

Thankfully, you’re got some options. There’s TweetStream, which lets you back up your data as well as mine it for information and statistics. (Be warned, this service takes a looooong time to gather your info).

And if TweetStream doesn’t strike your fancy, TweetScan, a site we covered back in 2009, will track your data back to 2007, and, using OAuth, will even grab your timeline, tweets from friends and direct messages.

Pinboard, a paid, Delicious-like (RIP) tool, also lets you store your tweets. You can also back up or archive tweets from other usernames or from hashtags, as well as add favorites from a username and turn links embedded in tweets into bookmarks.

… Back Up Your Blog

After Tumblr’s epic outage the other week, we showed you all how to back up your blogs. Well, we’re just going to reiterate that right now, along with some solutions for WordPress as well. Remember how you felt when your mom threw away all your old journals, crammed to the margins with angsty poetry? Well, that’s not a feeling one would like to replicate later in life (unless it was relief — in which case, disregard).

Tumblr

Last year, Tumblr launched a backup app that allows users to save their blogs so that they can be viewed on any computer, burned to a CD or hosted as an archive of static HTML files. The app is super easy to use: Simply download, enter your Tumblr sign-in info and save your blog to your desktop (it looks like the below screenshot). You can launch the app and back up more info every time you post as well.

Note, this app is only for Mac OS X (10.5 or higher), but there are other options for those who use different operating systems.

WordPress

If your blog or website uses WordPress, grabbing a backup file of all your posts, pages and comments is easy. In the WordPress dashboard, just go to Tools, Export and choose what types of posts you want to export.

If you want a backup of your entire WordPress database, the excellent WP-DB-Backup plugin can make scheduled database backups for your WordPress site at intervals you choose and even e-mail you the backup file.

… Back Up Your Photos

If you’re like millions of Internet users, you probably upload most of your photos to a photo-sharing site like Flickr or Facebook. While you’re backing up your blog entries, tweets and Facebook messages, it might be a good idea to go ahead and archive all of your photos, too. If nothing else, this is a great way to destroy the evidence from that sorority beer bong tournament in college.

Flickr is a great service and in terms of reliability, it’s consistently solid. What’s less consistent is the whims of its parent company, Yahoo. If the Delicious debacle has taught us anything, it’s that Yahoo isn’t afraid to sell off or shut down a service with millions of daily users.

Lots of apps and tools let you back up your Flickr photo stream, but a quick, fuss-free way to unload years of photo uploads is the Adobe Air app Flump. The app works on Mac, Windows and Linux and downloads a copy of each photo in your stream to a folder of your choice.

Be aware that while this will grab each and every photo, tags, titles and photo sets are not preserved. There a few other alternatives if you’re willing to invest more time in the process, but Flump gets the job done.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, matspersson0

More About: facebook, flickr, social media, tumblr, twitter, WordPress

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Here’s how it works: First, log into your Ping account and click the new “Connect to Twitter” button. A window pops up requesting your Twitter credentials. You’ll receive a confirmation and a list of Twitter contacts who have also enabled Ping sharing. Then you’re done! The new Ping information will show up at Twitter.com for you.

Apple introduced PIng a few months ago, and has struggled a bit during its initial growth period. Steve Jobs recently met with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to discuss Apple’s fledgling social network. That meeting was well-publicized, but we didn’t know this Twitter collaboration was coming.

Good luck to both companies on this joint venture. Now you can tweet your ping. Or is it ping your tweet? We’re so confused.

Twitter adds Ping functionality to user pages originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 13:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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iPhone and iPad development studio Taptivate is about to release its latest app for the iPhone and iPod touch, “Friends.” Friends is an app that is designed to streamline the way you keep up with your friends, family members and colleagues across social networks.

Taptivate is no stranger to creating apps that plug into social networks — some of its other apps include Formspring client Spring and the official Digg iPhone app — but Friends is unique in that it takes in data from multiple social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

The Taptivate team provided us with a beta build of Friends, giving us a chance to take a look at the app to see what it’s all about.

Check out this promo video to get a feel for the app:

The app automatically organizes your iPhone contacts with Facebook. This is convenient because it offers you easy access to all your Facebook contacts, while also merging their information with any related address book entries.

Unfortunately, at this point, the app doesn’t equally consolidate LinkedIn and Twitter contacts — but you can still find them and get various info on those friends. You can also view streams of either all your contacts from assorted networks and individual streams, or you can pick and choose groups of contacts you want to keep up with and follow.

Friends also makes it easy to sort content by type — photos, videos and posts. The app also works with photo attachment services to make previewing images and videos easy and you can also directly visit a URL and view it without leaving the app. You can even view “Places” to see recent checkins from your friends, alongside a Google map. Friends supports Instapaper, and you can choose a “Read Later” option for links or posts you find interesting.

The app can also be used to update your status across your social networks. You can selectively update or post to every network you are signed onto. Each network section acts as its own little app of sorts. When viewing a tweet, you can retweet, reply or favorite. When viewing a Facebook status message, you can “like,” comment or view comments.

The app is still in development, but we think it shows tons of promise. The interface is gorgeous, the app is easy to figure out, and the grouping options make sense. We also appreciate that Friends doesn’t corrupt your own address book on the iPhone or iPod touch. And you can even make calls with the app, which is pretty handy.

These days, social mobile apps are a dime a dozen. Finding the right mix of an app that can consolidate multiple channels, while also making the management of those streams easier, is a pretty tough task. From what we’ve seen, Friends is up to the challenge.

Gallery

Check out these screenshots to see Friends in action.

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How do you manage your social networks on your mobile device? Let us know.

More About: facebook, friends, iphone apps, linkedin, taptivate, twitter

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Twitter has allowed users to tweet their location via its Places feature for a while now, but now it looks like the company is taking Places a step further with a feature that lets businesses “claim” a location or place.

The feature, first spotted by the Hacker News community and tech pioneer Dave Winer, provides a permanent URL for specific locations, along with a list of people who have recently tweeted from that location and their tweets. The interesting part though is that at least one of these pages, Twitter HQ, has been “claimed” by @Twitter.

The “claiming” of Place pages could be a sign that Twitter is getting serious about competing in the geolocation space currently dominated by Facebook and Foursquare. It could give businesses a new avenue to promote themselves on Twitter, and it could lead to new revenue possibilities for the microblogging service.

Place pages are nothing new; Places launched in June and the updated Place pages were likely part of the launch of the New Twitter. However, the “claimed by” feature is something we have never seen before. We’ve only found one location that has been claimed so far, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility that Twitter is testing the feature with a limited set of partners.

What does Twitter plan to do with its Place pages? Is Twitter planning to launch a deals feature of its own? We don’t know the answers to these questions yet, but we’ve contacted Twitter to find out.

Update: Here is Twitter’s response to our inquiry on claiming Places:

“Claiming Twitter Places is not available at this time. We’re experimenting with a variety features. Allowing businesses to claim a Place is a natural thing to consider for the future.”

It looks like this feature is indeed in testing, though not with businesses quite yet. We agree with Twitter though that being able to claim a Place is a logical avenue for the company to pursue.

More About: Facebook Places, foursquare, places, twitter, twitter places

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It appears to be an automated tweet (presumably from an unreleased service) which states Ben’s Facebook activity. This is somewhat similar to Twitpic which simply links back to images published through their service. If I was able to upload mobile photos to Facebook and have them automatically published out to Twitter, there’s no doubt that it would be my primary mobile publishing tool. While this is only the initial testing, I’ve been seeing similar stories from other Facebook employees over the past couple weeks.

This would only lead me to believe that Facebook is about to move to essentially try and kill off Twitpic, Plixi, and other photo sharing services that are currently filling the gap left by Twitter, who has yet to release their own photos application.

No related articles yet.

An easy place to start is by navigating to your settings page and clicking on the Design tab to choose one of Twitter’s home-made backgrounds. For more options, check out tweetygotback.com and search through racks of patterns to fit your style. They’re loaded with artwork from Threadless, NASA space images, and graphics from featured artists around world.

Feeling ambitious? Custom-tailor your own background using Themelon tool built by COLOURlovers. You can choose custom background images, then adjust your color pallette to complement your new look.

Need specifics for your design? Here are a few helpful things to note, courtesy of our friends at Mashable:

• The opacity of the details pane is about 75%
• The main timeline is a static 540 pixels wide
• The details pane ranges in size based on screen resolution and covers 380-500px.

When you’re done, don’t forget to Save your sweet new style – either from the service you’re using or from your settings page. Then you’ll be ready to post tweets that represent you as well as your new look.

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Here’s a full list of the enhancements:

• Moved the Twitter Connect logic out of the main My Status page as this was sometimes causing problems for folks just wanting to view their Facebook status history and not connect to Twitter.
• Now displays your Facebook and Twitter status and the update status form on every page, not just the home page. This makes it much more convenient for Twitter users.
• Added Retweet and Reply features to the Twitter pages. You will need to have Javascript turned on in your browser, but its just a few lines of code.
• Added a dynamic character counter that shows you how long your status message is as you type. It also shows a reminder of Twitter’s 140 character limit (not including a URL) and Facebook’s 255 character limit. This also requires Javascript, but its only 2 lines of code.
• Added a hidden feature to let you view your Facebook Status starting with the oldest posts first. Just use this URL and you’ll see the oldest status updates that Facebook is still storing on the first page. http://apps.facebook.com/my-status/?sort=oldest. The navigation links now say “Next Page” and “Previous Page” to avoid confusion, depending on your sort order.

I hope you enjoy the enhancements and as always, please let me know if you run into any problems by emailing webmaster at xtremelysocial dot com.

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The Better Profiles Series is supported by Gillette. Learn more about Gillette and its products at Gillette.com.

Last month, Twitter unveiled a total site redesign. The new Twitter homepage is robust, more like a stand-alone application, and offers support for multimedia, keyboard shortcuts, and easy access to various types of content.

The new design also has different dimensions (originally based on the golden ratio) and treats backgrounds in a slightly different way. The result is that a carefully customized Twitter background that looked fantastic on the old Twitter, may not work so well with the new design. In many cases, the best solution is to create a new color scheme or background design to fit into the new parameters.

As more and more users are gaining access to the new Twitter, we thought it would be a good time to revisit the area of Twitter customizations. Fortunately, Twitter now offers some fantastic theming tools to make the process less of a chore, and we’ve created some Photoshop (PSD) files mapped to the dimensions of the new Twitter to help give you a head start.

Plan Your Layout

The new Twitter utilizes a fluid layout, meaning that the browser window or screen resolution can impact the width of some of the columns, as well as how much of the background image is visible.

Check out this image that we created to show off the layout of the new Twitter. Although resized to fit this blog post, this screenshot was originally taken at a resolution of about 1440 pixels wide.

There are a few points you need to keep in mind when designing or altering your Twitter background to fit into the new site:

• The new design has a constant top toolbar that is 40 pixels tall and spans the entire length of the web page. For most designs, this shouldn’t interfere with any of your elements, but be aware that this bar is always there. Also note that there is a 20 pixel tall space between the toolbar and the start of the two columns.
• The spacing to the right and left of the columns is fluid and will vary based on the resolution and size of the browser window. The spacing is also significantly reduced from the previous design. As an example, in a 1280×800 browsing window, in the old design, there were approximately 251 pixels on each side of the Twitter columns. On the new design, that is reduced to 112 and 113 pixels respectively.
• The Twitter sidebar on the right is now semi-opaque. The opacity is about 75%, which means that depending on what color you choose and the color or style of your background image, that can impact readability.
• The timeline column on the left is always 540 pixels in width, but the sidebar can vary. After a certain resolution (about 1130 pixels), it becomes fixed at 500 pixels wide, but on smaller screens or in smaller browser windows, it can be as small as 380 pixels.
• Because of the way the columns are now laid out, background images should probably only be tiled if they are patterns or seamless. Larger images are much better off transitioning to a solid color rather than repeating.

Use the Built-in Twitter Theme Tool

The excellent Themeleon tool from COLOURlovers has been updated for the new Twitter. You can access the tool by either going directly to the site or by selecting Themeleon from the sidebar in the Design section of the Twitter settings page.

You can login to Twitter in the app and customize your colors and backgrounds on the fly. The great thing about the tool is that until you hit “save,” none of the changes take effect. Think of this as a great way to test out color combinations and various motifs.

COLOURlovers has provided a number of quality pre-built themes using backgrounds and designated color palettes, but you can upload your own background image and set your own color schemes. You can also browse the very large collection of COLOURlovers patterns and tiled background images. One of our favorite features of this tool is that if you use one of the pre-built patterns, you can apply a color scheme that will also change the color setup of that pattern.

COLOURlovers also has a ton of color palettes to choose from and to play with. If you’re already a COLOURlovers member, you can access your own palettes or palettes you follow or have marked as “loved.” It’s a free community, and given the difficulty in actually discovering new color palettes in the theme creator, we recommend signing up so you can favorite your own schemes.

Find Your Perfect Palette

COLOURlovers is a great resource for color fans, but there are tons of other great resources on the web to get the perfect color combination.

We’ve written about some of our favorite web tools for working with color, but here are a few more:

• Color Hunter – This site offers up some palettes based on photographs uploaded on the site. You can also search through palettes and upload your own photograph to find the perfect palette.
• ColorCombos.com – This site has a great listing of user-generated color palettes and you can also test your combinations out to see how well they work together.
• PHOTOCOPA – PHOTOCOPA is another tool from COLOURlovers and it helps pick out the colors that are in an image. What’s great about this tool is that you can not only upload a photo, but you can also link or search for a photo from Flickr. Once you find your colors and create your palette, you can save it in your COLOURlovers library, which can then be accessed in the Themeleon tool.

Test Your Resolution

Because the new Twitter layout is fluid, how things look can vary based on the size of your browsing window. It’s a good idea to test how your background or color scheme looks at different screen sizes.

Fortunately, there are free extensions available for all the major browsers that make resizing your browser window a snap.

• Firesizer for Firefox – Firesizer is a simple add-on that shows up in the bottom status bar of the Firefox browser. Not only does it show you the current dimensions of your browser window, but right-clicking the resolution lets you select a pre-defined browser size. Your window will be resized as soon as you select your choice. You can customize the extension to add your own pre-set sizes.
• ResizeMe for Safari – ResizeMe lets you quickly change the size of your browser window. It works as a toolbar button and clicking the button can either auto-change the size to a selection of your choice or give you the option to select various sizes.
• Window Resizer for Chrome – This extension shows up in the Chrome toolbar. Clicking the button lets you select from a dropdown list of various browser sizes or device types. You can customize this listing. It’s got a great interface and is really easy to use.

Test it Out in Photoshop

Lots of designers like to manipulate their backgrounds or color schemes in Photoshop or other image editing programs. We understand. While there are plenty of PSD files created for the old Twitter layout, we had a hard time finding any good PSDs for the new Twitter.

Thus, we rolled up our sleeves and created this collection of PSD files. They are in resolutions of 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1920×1080 and 1920×1200. If you need a different variation, let us know in the comments and we’ll see what we can do. The guides and layers are all editable so you can customize these files for your own uses.

You can download these files at http://drop.io/mashnewtwitter.

Your Tips

Let us know your own design tips when dealing with the new Twitter in the comments!

More Dev & Design Resources from Mashable:

5 Hot Design Trends for Aspiring Bloggers
How the iPad Is Transforming Web Design
11 Trends in Web Logo Design: The Good, the Bad and the Overused
Top 5 Web Font Design Trends to Follow
5 Tips for Aspiring Web App Developers

More About: better profile series, color, colourlovers, customization, design, New Twitter, Photoshop, PSD, twitter, twitter background, web design

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“Twitter.com has always been the most popular Twitter client. 78% of active users have used it in the last 30 days,” said Twitter CEO Evan Williams in a tweet earlier today.

While that stat has been public knowledge for nearly two weeks now, it carries even more weight as we welcome the completely overhauled version of Twitter.com.

The new web interface effectively makes Twitter desktop clients irrelevant in the long run. Because what’s the point of downloading software and running Silverlight or Adobe Air to engage with Twitter when there’s a brand new, multimedia-rich Twitter experience waiting for you inside any browser?

Twitter.com Is a Desktop App Minus the Download

Look closely. Does the pane style of the new Twitter.com look familiar to you? It should. It’s essentially a version of the sleek new Twitter iPad app, but optimized for the web.

In the iPad app, Twitter users browse tweets in the typical timeline fashion, with links, photos, videos, profiles and other content opening up in new panes to the right of the timeline. That approach has been brought to the web with the introduction of a two-pane design, mini profiles, a myriad of media partnerships for viewing embedded photos and videos inline, and a details pane for additional context around a particular tweet.

The new Twitter is essentially a full-featured desktop application minus the download. The new experience is rich and nicely contained — gone are the days of right-hand navigation searches and unfriendly user profile lookups. Users can now simply tab through their timeline, mentions, retweets, searches and lists via the upper navigation options for fast access to practically everything Twitter has to offer.

Let’s be honest, though, the media experience is where the magic happens. Twitter has partnered with Dailybooth, DeviantArt, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi (formerly TweetPhoto), Twitgoo, TwitPic, Twitvid, USTREAM, Vimeo, Yfrog, and YouTube to put content from the people you follow smack dab in the middle of your timeline.

Media posts are tagged as such with their corresponding icons, and you can simply click on them to pull up photos or watch live and recorded videos. Try getting the same quality of experience from your desktop client. Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck come close, but even they can’t compete head-to-head on this front.

Twitter Developers Relegated to Niche Markets

With dozens if not hundreds of desktop (and mobile) applications competing for just 22% of the market, the competition for your desktop was already fierce. Now each and every one of them — TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop 2 included — will have to fight harder to attract new audiences that continue to show a preference for using Twitter.com.

Twitter will let them fight for niche markets, but the new Twitter.com essentially rolls up all the best features from all the best desktop and web clients and repurposes them for mainstream use.

Sure, the new Twitter.com won’t be right for every power user out there. But, Twitter has given most of us desktop app-lovers reason enough to come back to the web and little reason for new users to dabble around.

More About: desktop applications, New Twitter, seesmic, tweetdeck, twitter

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Facebook changed the way applications work and for brand new users we have to now specifically ask you to be able to read your status and update it. That’s great from a privacy perspective, but it caused problems with new users not being able to see their status history. Existing users were “grandfathered” by Facebook, so if you don’t see a link to re-authorize My Status on Facebook, then you are all set.

Also two days ago Twitter changed the way you have to authorize us to read your Twitter status updates and other private timelines. If you want to view and update your Twitter status, you will need to click the Authorize Twitter link on the main My Status home page to allow us to do so on your behalf. Ultimately, this new method is better because we don’t have to send your user ID and password to Twitter. Once you authorize it, Twitter knows who you are and that My Status is allowed to view and update your status.

In addition, we added the ability to view your Twitter favorites. This was quite easy to do and hopefully its useful to everyone.

Thanks to all you great users of My Status out there, we now have about 78,000 monthly active users! This is now our most popular Facebook application and as a result I will be spending more time on enhancing it.

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In Twitter’s case, it released an upgrade to its Facebook application in June that, if you had it installed, showed you all of your Facebook friends with Twitter accounts, and made it very easy to start following all of them. Facebook is requiring that partnership terms be in place for all big partners, and Twitter apparently didn’t have that when it launched the app (the simpler ways it accessed user data, like syncing status updates, was not an issue).

Maybe there is some sort of legal or technical short-term reason for the shut-down. And maybe Facebook didn’t want to make it so easy for its users to go off and start building its social graph on Twitter.

Yesterday, Apple launched a music social network, Ping, that at first seemed to have some sort of Facebook integration. It was going to allow you to invite friends from Facebook to use Ping, presumably some sort of friend-finder or mass-invite interface. We don’t know for sure what integration there might have been, though, because the feature never appeared in iTunes 10. [Update: It did appear for some, worked for a short while before being turned off, and was  specifically for finding Facebook friends who were also using Ping -- similar to what Twitter was trying to do.]

The fact that it didn’t launch is especially surprising because Apple included the Facebook integration in a screenshot in its presentation in San Francisco yesterday, and currently has an app Page — and has advertised Facebook on its Ping splash page since yesterday. Apple marketing executive Phil Schiller even mentioned it yesterday to Kara Swisher of AllThingsD… which brings us to the reason for the feature’s no-show. Minutes away from talking to Schiller, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs told Swisher that Apple could not agree to Facebook’s “onerous terms.”

While the Twitter app was clearly borrowing from Facebook’s social graph, we don’t know what Apple wanted specifically. [Update: Swisher follows up with a little more detail about what happened: the two companies couldn't agree on terms, so Facebook blocked Apple's access to the platform, and Apple responded by disabling the feature.]

These are not the first instances of Facebook restricting a large tech company’s access to its otherwise open platform. When Google launched Friend Connect in 2008, Facebook blocked the service from accessing its user data. It essentially argued that Google was not ensuring that users understood how their data was being used, and while it said it was working with Google, it has never turned on full access to let users do things like export their friend lists or other data to Friend Connect (or other Google products, like Orkut).

These are the exceptions to the rule, of course. Facebook does partner with potential rivals. For example, take a look at MySpace’s recent integration of Facebook, where it first asks for lots of Facebook user data, then makes itself a one-way publisher to Facebook. In this case, Facebook and News Corp were apparently able to come to an agreement.

So what’s going on now? Twitter and Apple are making public statements about their dissatisfaction with Facebook’s terms — applying that sort of pressure is a standard negotiating tactic.

Twitter’s status has been pending since June, and it recently reverted its Facebook app from having a broken message for the friends-follow feature, to just showing its other, simpler syncing features as it tries to work out a deal with Facebook. Here what Twitter tells us about the matter:

Several weeks ago, Twitter released an update to its Facebook application: The ability to see which of their Facebook friends have attached their Twitter and Facebook accounts and choose which of those friends to follow on Twitter.

Facebook blocked the ability to access a user’s list of friends within the application. As we’ve not yet been able to come to terms on a solution, we have removed references to the update in the application to avoid user confusion.

There are a few ways this could go. Twitter, and/or Apple could launch a more meaningful integration with Facebook soon — as in the next couple of months — which would show that Facebook is more concerned about the details of the agreement than the concept of giving potential competitors access to its users. Facebook could also do what it did with Friend Connect, and say publicly that there are privacy and security issues. Or it could just keep access off, and not say anything. The problem with that last route is that it could encourage other potential partners to be more cautious about making business deals with Facebook.

Also, Apple hasn’t send anything beyond Jobs’ statement yesterday, but here’s Facebook’s official response to Swisher.

Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we’ve partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future.

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What does this mean for me?
The move to OAuth will mean increased security and a better experience. Applications won’t store your username and password, and if you change your password, applications will continue to work.

With OAuth, you still individually approve each application before using it, and you can revoke access at any time. To see which applications you have authorized or to revoke access, just go to the Connections section under Settings.

One thing to note – to continue to use your favorite applications, you should make sure you are running the latest version of the app. Otherwise, you may soon find that it doesn’t work anymore.

Tell me more about OAuth
In order for Twitter applications to access your account, developers have been able to choose one of two authentication methods: Basic Authentication or OAuth. Both require your permission, but there is an important difference. With Basic Auth, you provide your username and password for the app to access Twitter, and the application has to store and send this information over the Internet each time you use the app. With OAuth, this isn’t the case. Instead, you approve an application to access Twitter, and the application doesn’t store your password.

Fortunately, developers have known about our transition to OAuth since last December, so they’ve had time to update their apps. And many apps, including Echofon, TweetDeck, Twitterrific, Seesmic, and Twitter for Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry, are already using OAuth. We appreciate the work and time that developers have invested in this update in order to keep you safe.

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Today we’re launching the Tweet Button to make sharing simple. It lets you share links directly from the page you’re on. When you click on the Tweet Button, a Tweet box will appear — pre-populated with a shortened link that points to the item that you’re sharing.

After you post to Twitter, you may see suggestions for accounts to follow. These accounts are suggested by the web site you visited and may include, for example, the news outlet and reporter of the article you shared.

Check out our video, and try out the button at the bottom of this post!

The Tweet Button is not only simple for users, but for publishers of all sizes, too. Recreational bloggers to large media companies can quickly and easily add the Tweet Button to their sites. It only takes a few lines of code. The Tweet Button will help publishers grow traffic and increase their Twitter following.

You may have seen similar buttons on blogs, news sites and other places that let you share content on Twitter. These have been created by third parties. Most notably, a company called TweetMeme created a popular “retweet button” for publishers. They’ve already made it easier to share links on Twitter and have helped a tremendous number of publishers get their content into Twitter. We’re pleased to be working closely with the good folks at TweetMeme and, from here on out, they will be pointing to the Twitter Tweet Button. Check out TweetMeme’s blog to learn more about what they’re up to next.

Starting today, the following sites will use the Tweet Button. All of them integrated this in less than one week.

AddThis
Arizona Republic/azcentral.com
Ask.com
CBS Interactive
CNN.com
Cracked.com
Detroit Free Press
eHow.com
Eventbrite
Gawker Media
HuffingtonPost.com
Hulu
LIVESTRONG.com
Redfin
SFGate.com
ShareThis
Sky News
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Des Moines Register
The Indianapolis Star
The Onion
The Tennessean
Threadless
TIME.com
TV Guide
USA TODAY
WordPress.com
WUSA 9
Yardbarker
YouTube

Our guess is that more than a few sites will join the above in the hours to come. Get the Tweet Button for your website today and let the sharing begin.

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Sponsor

What is more impressive, however, it that those without an account of their own can still receive alerts and can even sign up right from their phone via SMS. While this is a simple feature add for Twitter, it is a brilliant move that will get more people trying the service.

The use of short code text messaging is very popular these days. Millions of people vote for the next American Idol star via text message, and just as many have donated money to the Red Cross during times of need right from their phones. Part of the reason for this popularity is the ease by which it is done, as well as the ubiquitous nature of text messaging.

Even the most basic mobile devices can send text messages, and texting is huge among younger generations who use it as a 24/7 lifeline to their friends. Cell phone use is especially high among less affluent demographics of society who may not be able to afford a broadband internet connection, but can certainly swing a cheap basic cell phone.

Now with Fast Follow, anyone can start following tweets as easy as they vote on American Idol or donate to the Red Cross. Now business, organizations and even people can say, “Follow me on Twitter by texting ‘Follow @chcameron’ to 40404,” and people will know what that means and how to do it. There is much more familiarity with SMS short codes than there is with signing up for Twitter and following people that way.

What’s more – letting non-users receive alerts is a great way to let people dip their toes in before jumping head first into the vast ocean that is Twitter. It is curious, however, to consider how being able to follow a user without an account will affect a user’s follow count. Will a new category emerge that will tell us how many non-users are following?

Either way, it would not be surprising to see this decision pay off very well for Twitter in terms of adding users to the service – perhaps even from new demographics.

Discuss

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More women than men across the world visit social networking sites and spend 30% more time per month using them.

As such, in the “Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet” report, comScore concludes that women are the digital mainstream, a group of savvy Internet explorers who are more engaged than their male counterparts, and are the primary drivers of online and group buying.

comScore analyzed the Internet behaviors of women everywhere and found that while women make up a little less than half of the global online population (46%), their online behaviors drastically distinguish them from male Internet users.

The detailed report, available for download, delves into everything from women’s entertainment predilections (they really like puzzle games) to search behaviors, mobile preferences to video-viewing activities (they watch a lot of YouTube). What follows is a closer examination of their social media and online retail activities.

Women and Social Media

On average, women spend more time online per month, 24.8 hours compared to 22.9 hours for men. But, when it comes to the social web, there’s an even bigger rift between the sexes.

“Nearly 56 percent of adult women say they use the Internet to stay in touch with people, compared to 46 percent of adult men,” according to the report. comScore pinpoints higher activity levels in social categories such as social networking, instant messenger and e-mail.

Those behaviors equate to women spending an average of 16.3% of their online time per month on social networks, a percentage that continues to rise month-to-month. Men spend just 11.7% of their time on the same activities.

Interestingly enough, comScore identifies middle-aged women, 45 plus, as the group most responsible for growth in social networking site usage. Fifteen to 24-year-olds, however, are the heaviest users and have the greatest reach. When it comes to Facebook in particular, the younger crowd use that site more than 350 minutes per month on average. That data seems to line up with an Oxygen Media study showing that more than a third of young women check Facebook first thing in the morning.

In terms of country breakdowns, 9 out of 10 North American women visit social networking sites, making them the group with the highest reach. Latin American and European women are practically equals in this category, with 83.6% and 83.4% social networking participation respectively.

Women and Twitter

comScore found that Twitter’s reach is only marginally higher among women than among men. Women also outpace men in the adoption of Twitter, but only marginally as well.

The slight differences between the sexes doesn’t accurately highlight the actual disparity in how the two sexes use the microblogging platform.

In a U.S. consumer survey conducted in April 2010, comScore asked men and women how they use Twitter. Responses demonstrate that women use Twitter more for finding deals, following celebrities and their own self-defined purposes than to post tweets or read tweets from the people they follow.

Women and Retail

Men and women visit retail sites in practically equal amounts, but women spend 20% more time on those sites. That time equates to more money spent in most retail categories, as women buy more frequently than men do.

Women spend significantly more money on apparel and accessories, with their dollars accounting for 71% of all dollars spent in that category in the U.S. for February. They also spend more on books and music, toys, and even video games and consoles.

comScore concludes that women are also driving growth on group-buying sites. They compromise a majority of the U.S. audiences on both Groupon (62%) and LivingSocial (67%). Women also make up 67% of the visitors to Gilt Groupe’s flash sale site.

What do you find particularly interesting about the findings?

[img credit: TheSeafarer]

More About: ComScore, facebook, social media, study, twitter, women

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