Pinterest Drops Invites, Now Open to Everyone

Pinterest announced Wednesday that it began open registration, dropping its invite-only approach.
Users can now sign up for the social photo sharing website without waiting for an invitation, according to Pinterest’s official blog. Now, prospective pinners can register using their email addresses, or log in with their Facebook or Twitter accounts.
“We’re really excited to have the capacity to offer Pinterest to more people and if you’re a Pinner with friends who’ve been waiting on the sidelines, we hope you’ll let them know,” the blog said.
Prior to opening up, users had to click “Request an Invite” on Pinterest.com, and enter their email address.
The California-based company announced in late July the addition of new categories, including, “Quotes,” “Tattoos” and “Weddings,” which joined old standbys, “Food and Drink,” “Architecture” and “Home Decor.” Some category names were tweaked: “Pets” became “Animals,” and “Prints and Posters” is now “Illustrations and Posters.”
Pinterest also reported that it had improved old categories, so users see less miscategorized pins as they peruse boards
The site, a virtual pinboard where members organize and share photos of their favorite things, is one of the fastest-growing social networks online. Reports suggest that Pinterest is the third-largest social network in the U.S., behind only Facebook and Twitter. It is currently looking to expand into overseas markets, such as France, Germany and Japan.
In May, Pinterest raised $100 million in a round of funding that values the company at $1.5 billion.

Twitter announces it's now available in three more languages: Greek, Czech and Basque

Early last year, Twitter kicked off its Translation Center efforts in hopes of bringing support for more languages to the site with help of amicable volunteers from all over the globe. Naturally, this has helped the renowned Blue Bird network immensely during its global gibberish quest, having added compatibility with right-to-left idioms since the program started and, more recently, Ukranian and Catalan. To make things even better, today Twitter's announced it's now available in a few more, including Basque, Czech and Greek -- which means that a simple trip to account settings can now translate your current 140-character experience into one of the aforementioned languages if you so choose. Twitter's Translation Center is open to anyone willing to lend a hand, so those interested in helping the cause can pay the more coverage link a visit to learn how to get involved.

Twitter Has A Big Problem With Fake User Accounts

Everyone knows there's a sordid industry around selling Twitter followers.
But on Friday, Jason Ding, a researcher from security vendor Barracuda Networks, quantified how bad the problem is for Twitter and how these guys fly under the radar.
For 75 days, Ding investigated the fake Twitter account business. He and his team fired up three Twitter accounts and then bought 20,000 or 70,000 Twitter followers for each.
Here's what they discovered:

• 20 eBay sellers and 58 websites sell Twitter followers, mostly fake accounts.

• On average, these accounts follow 1,799 other Twitter accounts.

• It costs about $18 per 1,000 followers.

• Those selling the fake accounts can earn as much as $800/day.

• They sell retweets, too. They charge between $2.50 and $55 per 1,000 retweets.

• Those who buy fake Twitter followers had on average 48,885 followers.

Twitter suspends accounts it knows to be fake. But it's pretty easy to fool Twitter, Ding's research shows.

Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Thinks Cloud Computing Will Be 'Horrendous'

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak prefers to feel like he "owns" his digital data and feels uncomfortable uploading it to or downloading it from another company's cloud servers.
That's why in a recent Q&A session held after Mike Daisey's play, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," Wozniak warned the audience of the dangers in cloud computing.
"I really worry about everything going to the cloud," he said, per Agence France-Presse. "I think it's going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years."
According to ZDNet, making a purchase via cloud often means consumers are not actually buying a product, but instead buying a license to use it. This is true even in the Apple App Store's Terms and Conditions, which reads "Apple is the provider of the App and Book Services that permit you to license software products and digital content."
Apple has used cloud technology since the early 2000s, including services such as MobileMe, which then morphed into iCloud last fall. The feature promises to do more than "just store your content," but to also "seamlessly integrate" all iOS devices, per the Apple website.
So is Wozniak knocking the company he helped create?
Maybe -- and that wouldn't be the first time. Earlier this summer, Wozniak criticized Siri, the iPhone's voice-controlled assistant, telling the Times Union that he was a bigger fan of the program when it was simply a downloadable app not owned by Apple.

But his cloud concerns are not completely far-fetched. Just this last weekend, tech blog Gizmodo's Twitter account was hijacked by a hacker who had breeched former contributor Mat Honan's iCloud account, allowing the hacker access to Honan's Macbook Air, iPhone, iPad and Twitter account. Ultimately this linked the hacker to passwords used for Gizmodo's resources.
"A lot of people feel, 'Oh, everything is really on my computer,' Wozniak stated at the Q&A. "[B]ut I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it."

Journalist blames Apple tech for allowing iCloud hack

Former Gizmodo reporter says device wipes and Twitter breaches occurred after an AppleCare technician fell victim to a bit of social engineering.

Former Gizmodo reporter Mat Honan is blaming an AppleCare technician for allowing his personal e-mail and Twitter accounts to be hacked, as well as the tech blog's official feed.
The Gizmodo breach, apparently perpetrated by a person or group of people calling themselves Clan W3, was brief but resulted in racist and offensive tweets being sent to the tech blog's 415,000 followers on Friday. Gizmodo initially blamed its former reporter for the tweets and quickly regained control of its account.
But Honan, who currently works for Wired, was not so fortunate. He described in a blog post how he had learned his iCloud account had been breached by a hacker who wiped his devices and gained access to his Gmail and Twitter accounts. Now he says an Apple technician fell victim to social engineering, a technique of manipulating people instead of computers to perform a task or divulge information:

I know how it was done now. Confirmed with both the hacker and Apple. It wasn't password related. They got in via Apple tech support and some clever social engineering that let them bypass security questions. Apple has my Macbook and is trying to recover the data. I'm back in all my accounts that I know I was locked out of. Still trying to figure out where else they were.

Honan says the hacks occurred Friday evening when someone gained access to his iCloud account and reset his password. That led to the remote wipe of his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air and hijack of the Twitter accounts. The blog also describes the challenges he faced in regaining control of his devices and accounts.
He said he initially suspected the hacker used brute force to learn his seven-digit alphanumeric password, but Honan said in a blog update that someone claiming to be the hacker contacted him, saying he "didnt guess ur password or use bruteforce. i have my own guide on how to secure emails." 

 

Apple Wants To Buy Pinterest Rival, The Fancy

Apple is in talks to acquire The Fancy, a fast-growing social commerce site backed by cofounders of Twitter and Facebook.
The objective: to secure a role for Apple in the growing e-commerce market, putting the 400 million-plus users with credit cards on file with Apple's iTunes Store to work shopping—with Apple getting a cut of the action.
While The Fancy is far smaller than archrival Pinterest, which similarly lets users make lists of things they find interesting, the 20-person New York startup, led by cofounder and CEO Joe Einhorn, is much farther along in linking its users to transactions. The Fancy takes a 10 percent cut of purchases. Last we checked in, sales were exploding.
There is no signed deal and no guarantee one will happen. We do not know the price Apple has proposed to pay for The Fancy or how recently talks took place.
However, given what we've learned, it was apparently no coincidence that Einhorn and Apple CEO Tim Cook met at Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley conference earlier this year. The notoriously private Cook, who does not visibly participate in any well-known social media sites, started using The Fancy shortly afterwards.
The Fancy raised a $10 million round at a reported valuation of $100 million last fall, led by PPR, the French luxury conglomerate behind Gucci. It previously raised $6 million in 2010; $2.7 million of that round went to Einhorn and his cofounder, his brother Jack Einhorn, according to an SEC filing. Investment bank Allen & Co. was an early investor.
It would be reasonable to think its investors would expect a healthy return—call it 3 to 5 times what they paid. (Consider that nothing more than informed speculation, based on similar deals.)
Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes are on the board, along with LeRoy Kim of Allen & Co. and James Pallotta, the owner of the Boston Celtics. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the co-founders of venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, are also investors.
Apple is not known for making big, splashy acquisitions. But a source familiar with Apple's acquisition strategy noted to us that The Fancy is at a stage where Apple typically buys companies.
For example, in recent years, it has bought several companies to bolster its online offerings, like Chomp, an app search engine; Lala.com, an online music service; and Placebase, a digital mapping company. It is in the process of trying to buy AuthenTec, a mobile security company.
Still, how can a two-year-old company with 20 employees possibly be worth that much to Apple?
Apple's history in e-commerce stretches back almost 15 years to November 10, 1997, when it opened its first online store. On April 28, 2003, it got into digital commerce with the iTunes Music Store. Those foundations in e-commerce let it roll out the iPhone's App Store. As Apple's sales of mobile devices exploded, so did its rolls of online customers registered with a credit card.
But as its tentative moves into general e-commerce have shown, sending those customers on a shopping spree isn't a simple matter. PassBook, a new online wallet introduced in the latest version of iOS, Apple's mobile operating system, lets users store discounts, gift cards, and airline tickets—but it doesn't let people spend money with stored credit cards.
The Fancy could change all that by giving Apple a clear route to converting people's interest in an object into a sale.
Apple could well build an e-commerce layer into its operating system and let application developers hook into it, giving them a way to make money besides advertising.
The Fancy has recently rolled out a system that gives users a cut of the sales their lists of objects generate.
Einhorn's company began life as a project called Thing Daemon, or ThingD, which aimed to be a universal database of things. In February, it adopted a model focused around e-commerce—and its business has taken off since.
The Fancy's offices are situated above an Apple Store in New York City. We don't think that has anything to do with anything, but it's funny, given the circumstances.
Einhorn declined to comment. Apple, Dorsey, Hughes, and PPR did not respond to requests for comment.

Gizmodo's Twitter account hacked

Hackers gain access through a former employee's Twitter account, which they breached first.

Gizmodo's Twitter account was hacked Friday by a group called Clan VV3. The breach didn't last long, but it was enough to send racist and offensive messages to the account's 415,000 followers.
The attackers apparently gained access to the Gizmodo account after compromising former employee Mat Honan's e-mail and Twitter account.
Read more of "Gizmodo's Twitter account hacked" at ZDNet.

Dear Yahoo, I Redesigned Your Website (And Took Out 512,240 Pixels Of Banner Ads)

Dear Yahoo!,
I’ve redesigned your website (five sites, actually) and I’d like to get your opinion.
Across five properties — Homepage, Screen, OMG, Flickr, Music — I’ve removed 4 square banner ads, 2 wide rectangles, 2 text ads, and an interruptive preroll. I’ve replaced those traditional ads with content-based ads that are entirely native to each site’s user experience — promoted videos, promoted playlists, promoted trends, promoted images, and promoted articles.
The kicker? I’m confident you could pull this off without having an impact on long term advertising revenue.
Y! Homepage: See the redesign
Y! Screen: See the redesign
Y! OMG: See the redesign
Flickr: See the redesign
Y! Music: See the redesign
Here’s what I removed (and no offense intended to the advertisers below):

* That’s 512,240 pixels of traditional display advertising, if anyone’s counting.
And here’s what I added:

Your Silicon Valley counterparts have entirely changed the ad game, starting from the ground up with design decisions built around the user experience and the product, not beholden to traditional “boxes and banners” economy. From Facebook’s Sponsored Stories, to Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, to YouTube’s Promoted Videos, the new platforms of record are changing the rules of the ad game, saying “no” to traditional ads – and are already driving $10B+ in “native ad” revenue.
In fact, Marissa Mayer was part of arguably the most successful native ad strategy of all time — Google’s promoted search ads.
So here’s my suggestion:
You have the opportunity at Yahoo to do for content-driven advertising what Google did for search-based advertising – make the ads native to the user experience.
Native search ads don’t try to distract you from what you came to Google to do; they actually help you find things (when done well). What if, in the same spirit, Yahoo encouraged advertisers to create and promote quality content (marked as “sponsored” of course) – videos, photos, articles, trends, music – and then allowed this content to compete on fair terms for readers’ attention?
Yahoo’s undeniable strength is content. From Sports to News to Entertainment, Yahoo has far exceeded any other Silicon Valley company’s efforts to build loyal audiences through original content. There could not be a better time for Yahoo to go native with content-driven advertising. Brands are investing unprecedented budgets in their own original content and publishing efforts, and are in deep need of new mediums to promote this branded content in native ways.
Yahoo, as the largest content company on the web, I say take a page from your frenemies, who are driving billions of dollars in native ad revenue.
Google = native ads in SEARCH.
Facebook = native ads in SOCIAL newsfeeds.
Twitter = native ads in the stream of real-time COMMUNICATION.
Yahoo = native advertising for CONTENT.
Your friendly, neighborhood native ad evangelist,
Dan Greenberg
CEO & Founder, Sharethrough

Outlook vs. Gmail: A Feature-by-Feature Comparison

Microsoft announced its Outlook webmail service this week, and it's a suprisingly robust new webmail client. But can it hold a torch to the current king of webmail, Gmail? To give you a better idea of how they stack up, here's a feature-by-feature comparison of Outlook vs. Gmail.
Feature-by-feature, the two services are remarkably similar. Here's a quick rundown:

Now for the more detailed breakdown.

Interface

Let's start with the first thing you're going to notice when you log into Outlook for the first time: the interface. Most of us are familiar with how Gmail looks and feels. Outlook's not entirely different, but it is a little simpler.

Outlook's Clean, Email-Centric Interface

Outlook is all about email. That's it. When you pop into Outlook, you're shown your email account and nothing else. You still get ads on the sidebar, but overall, it's a far less cluttered interface than Gmail (and it's way less cluttered than Hotmail) because Outlook isn't seeking to integrate with a bunch of other services. Ads are a little less creepy because they're not based on keywords in your inbox.

Gmail's Google-centric Interface

We all know Gmail's interface pretty well at this point. You get personalized ads on the main inbox page on the top, and a sidebar with ads inside your messages. You also have the chat window on the side and the Google bar on the top. It's not complicated by any means, but the Google bar is certainly a bit of a distraction.

Storage Space and Attachments

Email storage space isn't as big of a deal as it once was, but if you're sending a lot of large files back and forth, a hefty amount of storage is helpful.

Outlook Has Nearly Unlimited Storage and a 100MB Limit on Attachments

You get a "virtually unlimited" amount of storage in Outlook. We're not entirely sure what that means, but we do know that you can attach a file of up to 100MB to any email. If you link your email to Skydrive you can attach files up to 300MB.
For incoming attachments, Outlook retains the Hotmail-style Active View. YouTube videos open inside the email, a group of photos becomes a slideshow, and you can open any Office document directly in your browser.

Gmail Comes with 10GB of Storage and a 25MB Limit on Attachments

Gmail's limits on storage and attachment size are a lot smaller than Outlook's. Out of the gates, most Gmail users get 10GB of free storage, and attachments are limited to just 25MB in size.
Like Outlook, Gmail opens up YouTube videos directly inline with the email. Gmail also handles Office documents in a similar way, and opens them in browser with the option to edit in Google Docs. Images in Gmail are handled with a pretty typical list view and don't offer the slick sideshow that Outlook has.

Email Organization

For power-users, the most important part of a good webmail client is automatic email filing and organization. Gmail locked this down a while ago, but Outlook brings some new ideas to the table.

Outlook's Quick View Folders and Sweep Features

Outlook doesn't have the robust filtering and labeling system that Gmail does, but it has a few tricks up its sleeve. One is the Quick View folders. These folders are automatically filled with certain types of emails (flagged, photos, office, shopping, etc). For instance, from the sidebar you can instantly search through the last few messages with photo attachments, or messages about Groupon deals. The Sweep feature from Hotmail also carries over to Outlook. Sweeping works a lot like Gmail's labels where emails from certain people or places automatically get filed away in a folder of your choosing.

Gmail's Filters, Labels, and Priority Messages

Using Gmail's labels is an easy way to keep track which emails are important and where they are. Better still, it's simple to set up an automatic filter that combs your incoming mail and distributes messages directly into those labels. If you're still overwhelmed, the priority inbox is a lifesaver for designating which emails really matter.

Junk Mail Control

Everyone hates spam, and no webmail client is worth using if it doesn't have extensive spam filtering. Of course, it's not just spam, it's also the junk you've signed up for that matters (newsletters, mailing lists, coupons, and whatever else).

Outlook's Spam Control and Clever Batch Filtering

Only time will tell how good Outlook's spam control is, but one of Outlook's coolest features is how it handles newsletter-type messages. Outlook automatically labels these messages and adds an unsubscribe button to them—even if the email doesn't include one its own. It's super handy for filtering out those emails you don't mind getting, but don't want alerts constantly.

Gmail's Spam Control and Filter Settings

Gmail has a pretty great spam filter and chances are you won't have too much trouble with spam. However, it doesn't have the same out-of-the-box batch filtering system for that clutter email you get. Still, it's super easy to set up your own filter for things like newsletters. Just create a new filter with words like, "opt-out, unsubscribe, privacy policy, or manage your account" and all your newsletters and coupons will filter off into their own section.

POP/IMAP Support

If you use a third-party email client on your desktop or mobile device, POP or IMAP support is crucial for keeping everything in order. Support for either also matters when you want to look at email without an active internet connection.

Outlook Doesn't Support IMAP or POP, Instead uses ActiveSync

Here's one of Outlook's major bummers: it doesn't support IMAP or POP. This means using certain third party email services (like Apple's default desktop Mail app) won't work. You can still follow the guide for using Hotmail with POP and that should work with Outlook. Instead, Outlook uses ActiveSync. Subsequently, you can only use email apps that support ActiveSync.

Gmail Has Full Support for Both IMAP and POP

Gmail supports both IMAP and POP and you can switch your settings on the fly very simply. This means you can synchronize between multiple email clients very easily. It also means you can access your archived email even when you're offline.

Search Capabilities

If you receive hundreds of emails a day, then a solid search capability is key with any webmail client. You don't want to spend more than a few minutes hunting down a lost email.

Outlook Has Simple, but Effective Search

Outlook's search capability is pretty straight-forward. You can search by a simple keyword, or pop into the advanced search and narrow it down by email address, subject, folders, and dates. It's nothing too complex, but it works well enough.

Gmail's Comprehensive Advanced Search Strings

Gmail's search strings are pretty advanced. The nice part about Gmail's search is that you don't have to worry about a bunch of input boxes. Instead, you can just type commands like, label, list, or filename, directly into the search box. It's fast and effective for quickly searching through email.

Social Integration

Email is already inherently social, but if you're looking to connect your various social accounts into your email, it's increasingly easy to do.

Outlook's Social Integration with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

Outlook directly integrates with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. When you log in with any of those services, you'll see status updates, link mailbox accounts, and more. From the sidebar you can retweet people on Twitter, comment on Facebook status updates, and more. If you don't like the feature, it's easy enough not to enable.

Gmail's Integrates with Google Plus

Since Gmail is owned by Google, its social integration starts and stops with Google Plus. The two are tied together in a lot ways, including contact listings, email filtering, and more. Provided your friends are using Google Plus, you can even instantly create email groups to send mass messages to.

Which One's Best for You?

Outlook is the newcomer, but it's a no-brainer for anyone currently using Hotmail. It's also a good go-to for anyone who wants a webmail client that only does email. Its simplicity is its greatest strength. That said, Google's integration with all of Google's services is nice, and it's advanced features and customization options are more appealing to the power user.

Google Acquires Wildfire, Will Now Sell Facebook And Twitter Marketing Services

Google has just bought social marketing software developer Wildfire, which lets brands serve marketing and ad campaigns on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn. Wildfire has grown to 400 employees over the last four years and now serves 16,000 customers. [Update: We've now learned from a Wildfire investor that the company sold to Google for $350 million, higher than the $250 million price we and others previously reported.]
The acquisition will allow Google to provide advanced software and services to brands who want to run contests, sweepstakes, branded games and more on Google+. Wildfire will still operate as a marketing tool for brands on Google’s competing platforms, including Facebook, putting the search giant in a curious position where it earns money on the success of its rivals.
Google bid on buying Buddy Media but lost the deal to Salesforce. With Oracle buying other social marketing leaders Vitrue and Involver, Wildfire was the last top-tier startup in the space. Today’s deal leaves this moment, another popular marketing platform, as a possible buy for old-world enterprise juggernauts like IBM or SAP.
Now it’s successfully bought one of Facebook’s biggest marketing partners. [Update: Dave McClure of 500 Startups, an early Wildfire investor, this morning commented here that the $250 million price tag we reported was "substantially lower than actual". Now we've learned that another investor has said Google bought Wildfire for $350 million -- nearly a 25X multiple on the $14.1 million it had raised through its Series B.]
But Google hasn’t directly entered the social ad space yet. Wildfire only offers ad buying through a partnership with startup Adaptly. [Update: That's why I've just published "Wildfire Only Sells Ads Through Its Partner Adaptly, So Will Google Buy Them Too?"]

Wildfire claims there will be no disruption or immediate changes to the service it offers, which includes ad buying (via Adaptly), feed publishing, Page management, social app and contest development, analytics, social monitoring:

“We remain focused on helping brands run and measure their social engagement and ad campaigns across the entire web and across all social services — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more — and to deliver rich and satisfying experiences for their consumers. To this end, Wildfire will operate as usual, and there will be no changes to our service and support for our customers.

That puts Google in an odd spot, where it will benefit if social networks such as Facebook and Twitter rise in popularity amongst brands. This hedges it against failure of Google+ as play to gain ad-targetable social data, but could heat up the on-going API battles between the top social platforms.
What if Facebook denied Wildfire API access? That could sting Google but it’s unlikely as it would send a shockwave through Facebook’s developer ecosystem. Facebook may have to grit its teeth and watch Google cash in on brands trying to infiltrate the news feed and its mobile apps. Though since it decides who gets early access to new features that can attract clients, Facebook could subtlety hurt Wildfire by favoring its competitors.
Wildfire will help handle owned marketing, such as handling Pages and other properties brands control, to complement Google’s DoubleClick AdX/Admeld paid marketing service for buying ads on search and other websites. The acquisition shows that Google understands that ads can’t do it all. Tons of brand spend is going towards managing their presences on social networks, and now it will get a slice of that pie too.
–
For more on Google’s acquisition of Wildfire, read: “Wildfire Only Sells Ads Through Its Partner Adaptly, So Will Google Buy Them Too?“
I’ll also be discussing the acquisition on stage this Friday with Facebook’s VP of ads engineering Greg Badros at TechCrunch’s Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp in the Bay Area. There’s still a few last tickets available.

Twitter May Have 500M+ Users But Only 170M Are Active, 75% On Twitter’s Own Clients

Yesterday Paris-based analytics firm Semiocast noted that Twitter had passed the 500 million user account mark, with some detail on how that is playing out on a country-by-country basis. Today, we have some numbers that spell out what that actually means in terms of active Twitter users.
Paul Guyot, the founder of Semiocast, says its analysis indicate that on average, less than one-third, 27%, of Twitter’s user base is active — in other words, only around 170 million people, and possibly less at the moment.
The numbers come from research Semiocast conducted earlier this year, Guyot notes. That study, from January, found that the Netherlands had the highest proportion of active users, at 33%, with Japan following closely behind at 30%. As you can see in the list below, there doesn’t appear to be a clear trend in active users directly related to how developing/mature each market is.

Also: active in this sense means the number of accounts that were modified over a three-month period, including changes of avatar, subscribing to a new follower or tweeting, says Guyot. “We believe this is close to a monthly login rate,” he tells me. This is potentially the key one for Twitter as it seeks to monetize visitors with advertising and other marketing strategies. Also, there may be an argument for more people logging in who are just looking at what other people post, and not adding new follows or making any other changes.
Guyot also points out that the 500 million-account landmark it announced yesterday does not include spambots. “Twitter is massively deleting spam user accounts,” he noted. “Our figures do not include these deleted accounts.”
In terms of how people are accessing Twitter: Guyot says that Twitter’s own access points, including TweetDeck, represent 75.4% of all public tweets. That seems to imply that Twitter’s moves to make its APIs a little more difficult to use for certain third parties, it seems, is potentially a play to bring that proportion up even higher.
Semiocast analysis indicates that Twitter’s own website accessed from desktops, not mobile, is the largest platform overall, representing 27.6% of all activity worldwide.
But collectively it is mobile clients (including iPad software) that are most-used: they represent about 61% of all tweets, with Twitter’s own mobile apps and mobile web presence accounting for 74% of that.
Interestingly, Twitter is getting more activity these days from third-party apps outside of iOS and Android. The most popular non-Twitter agent [client] is Ubersocial for BlackBerry at 3.0%, followed by Echofon at 2.1%, Guyot tells me. Twitter clients that make it easier to tweet in languages other than English seem to also be performing well, offering some kind of edge over what Twitter itself offers. “Usage really depends on country, as many Japanese-only agents are in the top 50 of all agents,” he notes.

Twitter introduces ticker symbol 'cashtags' for finance searches

Building on hashtags, the social network expands search capabilities by adding in clickable stock-ticker symbols like $AAPL, $GOOG, and $FB

Twitter started prioritizing money talk on its site today with the announcement of "cashtags." These are clickable ticker symbols, like $AAPL, $GOOG, and $FB, which take users to search results about the company's finances and stocks.
Twitter made the announcement via a tweet in which it wrote: "Now you can click on ticker symbols like $GE on http://twitter.com to see search results about stocks and companies."

According to The Verge, the cashtags come on the heels of other user-created Twitter innovations, such as the @reply and the #hashtag. (The hashtag, for instance, evolved into the social network's "Discover" tab.) In this case, cashtags also appear to be part of Twitter's emerging strategy to keep users on twitter.com instead of clicking away.

StockTwits co-founder Howard Lindzon, however, charged that Twitter has hijacked one of his company's key features. "You can hijack a plane but it does not mean you know how to fly it," Lindzon wrote. The entrepreneur claimed that Twitter had told him as recently as a few months ago that it wasn't interested in making its own cashtags.

Despite the "he-said, she-said," Twitter definitely seems interested now.
Currently, the cashtags take users to a Twitter search of the ticker symbol but don't yet show any expanded information within the Twitter service. Of course, this could, and probably will, change in the future.

Creative Block? This Website Is Here to Help

Nothing can match the frustration of losing your imaginative mojo, especially in the middle of a new project.
Video production community Wooshii just launched the site Help Me Be Fucking Creative to inspire designers when they’re lacking inspiration.
With each refresh, new advice spits out from an algorithm, such as “get away from the computer,” “break the rules” or “get feedback.”
If you’re viewing on iOS, it will also show a random app recommended to trigger the flow of creative juices.
The site plans to crowdsource ideas from other creative individuals. You can add your own tips by tweeting them with the hashtag #FCKNGCREATIVEADVICE.

Twitter Doghouse Lets You Temporarily Dump Annoying Tweeps

Are you a non-sports fan but know there’s that one Olympic nut in your Twitter network who will be constantly posting pseudo analysis, lame jokes and failed bon mots for the next two weeks? Maybe you’ve got a friend who’s on vacation and posting way too many Foursquare check-ins, or know someone who insists on live-tweeting every episode of The Bachelor.
It could be time to put them in the Twitter Doghouse. That’s the name of a new app that lets users unfollow tweeps for scheduled periods of time to jokingly call out obnoxious behavior or seriously avoid Twitter-centric events of limited interest to the non-involved (SXSW, anyone?).
Twitter Doghouse was created by developers Elan Dubrofsky and Jure Stern in response to a challenge posted on the crowdsourcing development platform CloudSpokes.
Once you log in and authenticate with your Twitter credentials, you’ll be presented with a form to fill out indicating who you want to put on timeout and for how long. You can spurn someone for as short as one minute or as long as you want.
When you give someone the cold shoulder, you can keep it secret (they’ll still hypothetically be able to find out by scrolling through their entire list of followers and seeing you gone) or send an automated teasing tweet their way. Or, you can tweet to @TwitDoghouse to publicly request service.
Dubrofsky coded the app using Ruby on Rails and has the open-source code posted to his Github page so other programmers can check it out and suggest improvements or tweaks.
Do you think Twitter Doghouse would be a fun tool to play around with? In the comments, tell us who you want to ‘house.

Bitly Announces Realtime, A Search Engine For Trending Links

Today Bitly announced a new Bitly Labs project called Realtime, a service for finding the most clicked on Bitly links. Realtime, now in private beta, allows users to filter searches by social network, keyword, subject and more. For example, here are the results for a search for the keyword “startups” in technology on Twitter.

As you can see, it’s not perfect yet (why is that article on hidden Mountain Lion features being displayed on a search for startups?). But with Bitly’s traction in URL shortening, this could become the go to reference for trending articles and sites.
Bitly has been working on expanding its business beyond URL shortening in recent months and announced a new round of funding lead by Khosla Ventures earlier this month. In May the site launched a controversial redesign that recast the service as a bookmarking service rather than just a URL shortening service, and in January it launched an updated version of its enterprise dashboarding service.
But the really big idea the company has been floating is a real-time social search engine. since at least October when the company launched a social search engine beta for its enterprise customers. But the company made it clear that it had bigger plans for search. Realtime, which so far is available to non-paying customers, seems to be the first step in realizing those plans.

Apple Buying Into Twitter: Neither Likely Nor Implausible

Apple

Apple iOS honcho Scott Forstall introduces iOS's Twitter integration at the WWDC conference on June 6, 2011

We already know that Apple is a Twitter fan. It’s baked the social network into both of its operating systems, OS X and iOS, in a manner that’s a departure from its tradition of building every possible aspect of its products itself. Now Evelyn M. Rusli and Nick Bilton of the New York Times are reporting that the relationship could lead to something a lot more significant: In recent months, Apple has been in discussions to buy a chunk of Twitter.
In another report, Shira Ovide and Jessica E. Vascellaro of The Wall Street Journal confirm the Times story, sort of: They write that the talks in question happened more than a year ago.
Rusli and Bilton say that negotiations aren’t currently in progress, and that the conversation has involved Apple spending in the hundreds of millions in a deal that could value Twitter at more than $10 billion, which would mean that Apple would be taking a stake of less than 10 percent. So the idea might lead nowhere, and even if something does happen, the impact on the industry might be less than history-making. Still, it’s fun to ponder the implications.
The notion of a deal between the two companies is nothing new: It dates back at least as far as May 2009, when rumor had it they were deep in discussions of a potential Apple buyout of Twitter. That scuttlebutt sounded profoundly fishy, mostly because it was part of a long tradition of speculation involving Apple buying well-known companies–everything from Sony to Hulu–which has always led absolutely nowhere.
Now, Apple does snap up other businesses all the time. But it likes to spend its money on small companies with low profiles which it can integrate entirely into its own efforts. Its decision this week to purchase mobile security startup Authentec is a classic example.
The odds are still against Apple buying part of another well-known company, but these new rumors aren’t unthinkable in the way they once might have been. CEO Tim Cook has said that as he prepared to succeed Steve Jobs last year, Jobs told him not to ask what Steve would do, but to do what was right. It’s not tough to imagine Cook and Co. concluding that a tighter relationship with Twitter feels right.
That scenario certainly sounds more likely than one in which Apple pours its heart into building its own mammoth social network from scratch. While the company has a long-standing reputation for being bad at social networking, that’s not quite fair: It’s more that it’s evidenced little interest in it over the years.
It launched its most meaningful social effort of its own, the Ping social features built into iTunes, back in 2010. But the whole effort seemed half-hearted in a way that Apple’s efforts rarely are, and when Ping didn’t immediately catch on, the company didn’t do much with it.
Game Center, the multi-player features built into iOS and, as of this week, OS X, is the closest thing Apple has to a social-networking success story. However, it doesn’t really encroach on the turf of the major general-interest networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Apple is technology’s most fastidious, detail-oriented major player. When it builds something, it worries about every seam, every pixel, every element of the experience. Social networking, by contrast, is inherently untidy. It’s about turning features over to real people and getting out of the way. That doesn’t play to Apple’s strengths, which helps explain why Ping failed to capture the imagination of both Apple and consumers.
But Apple can’t pretend that social networking isn’t important, either. As Cook put it in his appearance at the D conference last May, the company doesn’t need to own a social network–but it does need to be social. So partnering up with an existing major social network, and maybe even owning part of it, could make sense.
As long as Apple and Google are squabbling over Android, that network isn’t going to be Google+. And Facebook, which will get integrated into OS X and iOS this fall, is more of an Apple rival than a potential junior partner. (Both would like to be the single technology company at the center of the lives of people around the world.)
That leaves Twitter, which needs all the help it can get as it does battle with the twin behemoths that are Facebook and Google. A deal with Apple would be a coup. It might also be a worthwhile way for Apple to invest a tiny sliver of the billions it has in the bank.
Of course, any financial transaction between the two companies wouldn’t be a big whoop in itself. What would be fascinating would be if Apple influence started to show up in Twitter, or Twitter helped to shape Apple products. Or both. It would be a blast to see Apple’s chocolate get mixed up with Twitter’s peanut butter.
I’m not going to get emotionally invested in that possibility, though. Remember, both the Times and the Journal are talking about the discussions in the past tense. They could have been tentative explorations that went nowhere. Like Tim Cook said, Apple understands that it’s important to be social–but maybe even Apple is still figuring out exactly what that means.

No API For You: Twitter Shuts Off “Find Friends” Feature For Instagram

Instagram has just announced 80 million users and a new app update; Noticeably missing in the update? The “Find Your Friends” on Twitter feature, which allowed users to follow the same people they follow on Twitter on Instagram.
The “Tweet Photo” feature is still available.
We’ve learned that the feature is missing due to API restrictions from Twitter’s end, restrictions that possibly came about over concerns about Instagram’s scale and its strain on data pulls.
Many social apps like The Fancy and Foursquare still have access to this part of the Twitter API — it seems very likely that Instagram was the largest developer using the Twitter Friend Graph.

The decision is especially perplexing for multiple reasons having to do with Valley politics: Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is also an investor in Instagram and the two companies share Benchmark as an investor. One could speculate that this is a competitive move on Twitter’s part, a direct attack on Facebook’s social graph via limiting access to its recent acquisition (Instagram).
Twitter’s agenda here isn’t at all clear. And selectively limiting API access by company definitely strange behavior in an ecosystem that thrives on API symbiosis. Imagine if Google just decided to shut off Google Maps access to apps randomly?
Before this, Twitter most recent move in the API wars was pulling tweets off of LinkedIn, a decision that now seems like the beginning of a slippery slope.

Twitter's owner a billionaire now

Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

Square has once again raised a ton of money, closing a $200 million round of funding that will make CEO Jack Dorsey a certified billionaire, according to those watching the industry.
Although neither the company nor its lead investor -- little-known private equity firm Rizvi Traverse of Michigan -- has confirmed or commented on the matter, news of the dollar figure has been swirling around today.
Rizvi Traverse other investments include Playboy, Facebook and Twitter, according to the company's Web site.
The funding, which is twice the amount the company raised last year, puts a valuation of $3.25 billion, an unheard of amount for a 3-year-old, privately-held company, according to PrivCo, a research firm that specializes in private companies' financial data.

According to the firm, Square's 2012 revenue will be at least a 300 percent increase from Square's reported revenue of $42.5 million last year. The new funding puts Dorsey, who also founded Twitter and has a stake in the social media company, in the billionaire's circle, PrivCo said.
Launched in 2010, Square's card reader plugs into the headphone jack of mobile devices, allowing merchants to process credit cards from any location. The company charges 2.75 percent per swipe and boasts more than 1 billion customers. The company has also launched merchant services like Square Registry and the Pay with Square app.
The new funding is a testament to Square's increasing popularity, but PrivCo CEO Sam Hamadeh said the company has some challenges to overcome as more competitors -- like PayPal -- emerge.
"PrivCo has always felt that Square was a company being 'built to be bought,' and we still feel that is true, as the company would make a perfect acquisition for a major payment processor that is behind the curve on mobile payments," Hamadeh said in a statement Wednesday. "We don't see Square being an independent company forever."
Previous news reports indicated that Square was looking for an even higher valuation -- $4 billion.
Although the company found investors willing to pay the hefty price tag, Square decided to go with another group of investors that weren't keen to the $4 billion valuation, The New York Times reported.

Twitter Is Working On A Tool To Let You Download All Of Your Old Tweets

Twitter is finally working on a solution to one of the most obvious things missing from the social network right now: the option for users to go back and find their tweets that are more than a few weeks or months old.
Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo told The New York Times that the social network is working on a tool to let users retrieve all of the updates they've posted to the social network.
“We’re working on a tool to let users export all of their tweets,” Costolo said. “You’ll be able to download a file of them.”
Some third-party services have come up with workaround solutions to this problem, including one new site called Oldtweets, which lets users search through all the tweets posted to Twitter in the first year after the social network launched.
Costolo wouldn't say when the tool might launch, noting that the tool isn't as simple as it sounds to make, and requires a good amount of manpower and ingenuity.