Twitter Acquires Posterous

Saw the announcement that Posterous has been acquired by Twitter (↬ h/t infoneert)— which doesn’t have very much other information, aside from the ominous statement that directions for moving to other services will be posted soon — and I immediately thought Twitter’s weakest link: direct messaging. DMing in Twitter is pathological, it’s so bad. And especially the lack of group private messaging.

So, imagine Twitter using Posterous as a way to support group private messaging, since Posterous does that today.

Several questions if they go that way:

  1. Will this new sort of private messaging be limited to 140 characters? (I bet they will be, at least the day that Twitter decides to relax that limitation everywhere.)
  2. Will group private messaging require defining a group, or will they be ad hoc? Will it be possible to invite users to a group after the fact, and catch up on historical updates there? (That’s how Posterous works now, more or less like a private blog.)

It’s easy to see how Twitter could use a solution like Posterous as a way to move into the business market, allowing businesses to coordinate work internally on Twitter. This could make Twitter the most fundamental of work media tools. About time, guys.

nerdology: The140Film - the movie the internet wrote I am happy to announce the start of the140film project.  What you see above is the first two lines of a movie that twitter will write one tweet at a time. When it’s all written Derek and I will produce exactly what is on the page… er… internet. Here’s how it works: Read the two current lines of the movie featured at the top of the page. Read submissions by other people in the stream of tweets on the page. Vote for the line you like best by retweeting any tweet or write your own and use #the140film. The first tweet to get 25 retweets will become the next line in the film and move to the featured spot at the top of the page. Once we reach 140 lines the movie will be written… and then Derek and I will start production. I’m really excited to see the movie you guys will write! Head on over to the site and start retweeting and writing. This is cool as hell. I will have watch this movie, built from a distributed screenplay.
Zoom

nerdology:

The140Film - the movie the internet wrote

I am happy to announce the start of the140film project.  What you see above is the first two lines of a movie that twitter will write one tweet at a time. When it’s all written Derek and I will produce exactly what is on the page… er… internet.

Here’s how it works:

  • Read the two current lines of the movie featured at the top of the page.
  • Read submissions by other people in the stream of tweets on the page. Vote for the line you like best by retweeting any tweet or write your own and use #the140film. The first tweet to get 25 retweets will become the next line in the film and move to the featured spot at the top of the page.
  • Once we reach 140 lines the movie will be written… and then Derek and I will start production.

I’m really excited to see the movie you guys will write! Head on over to the site and start retweeting and writing.

This is cool as hell. I will have watch this movie, built from a distributed screenplay.

Google Is Distorting The Google+ Numbers

When asked, Google executives say Google+ has 50M sign ups, and 100M active users over a 30 day period. But they are stretching things a bit, to be generous:

Nick Bilton via NY Times

Although these numbers sound impressive, the catch is that Google Plus-enhanced properties include YouTube, the Android Marketplace and Google.com, the company’s flagship search engine. Yet Google contends that these numbers illustrate that more than 100 million people have signed up for a Google Plus account and are now actively engaging with Google Plus-related products across the company.

In a view from outside the company, a report released last month by ComScore, the market research firm, says Google Plus users spend about three minutes a month on the social network. By comparison, ComScore says that people spend an average 405 minutes a month on Facebook, the service Google Plus is trying to displace.

Google may be trying to plusify all of its properties, but unless people start acting like there is a real, deep, rich social experience in there, it’s just not going to displace anything.

Back in June 2010 I wrote a post (see Twitter Raising The Infrastructure: App Builders Better Run For The Ultrastructure) about Twitter’s destablizing moves into the Twitter ecosystem, and predicting that Twitter would push strongly into analytics. And yesterday the company announced that its analytics service has gone into limited use with clients, and soon will be available to us all.
Zoom

Back in June 2010 I wrote a post (see Twitter Raising The Infrastructure: App Builders Better Run For The Ultrastructure) about Twitter’s destablizing moves into the Twitter ecosystem, and predicting that Twitter would push strongly into analytics. And yesterday the company announced that its analytics service has gone into limited use with clients, and soon will be available to us all.

For social sharing, Apple turns to Twitter again - Om Malik via GigaOM

Om Malik is right when he says that the most important aspect of the prominent role Apple has handed to Twitter in the upcoming Mountain Lion release of OS X is the developer API:

I think the biggest news from my perspective is the developer API.

Developers can take advantage of the Share Sheet API to let users tweet seamlessly from their apps. With the API, developers can leverage Twitter single sign-on and Tweet Sheet, so users can tweet with comments and locations, right from within their apps.

As I have said in the past, Apple plans to make OS X and iOS social, and their current strategy is to build on top of Twitter as a platform.

Twitter is really a protocol, one on which the most important social information network lives. Why Apple hasn’t acquired Twitter escapes me.

Sky News joins the anti-social media brigade — Mathew Ingram via GigaOM

Mathew Ingram builds on the Sky News Twitter Policy story, injecting some much needed cool-headedness:

Mathew Ingram via GigaOM

Although it doesn’t link to an actual document, the Guardian story quotes from the Sky News guidelines, which tell reporters not to tweet about stories if they are not “a story to which you have been assigned or a beat which you work,” and says that anything approaching breaking news must be sent to a Sky editor first before being posted. The policy says that retweeting other Sky journalists is fine — provided they are posting updates about a story to which they have been assigned — but it says Sky staff are forbidden from retweeting anything that hasn’t been posted by a Sky News account:

Do not retweet information posted by other journalists or people on Twitter. Such information could be wrong and has not been through the Sky News editorial process.

Twitter is the newswire now, for better or worse

This is even more draconian than the most recent example of a news outlet trying to lock down Twitter use — namely, the Associated Press newswire, which came out with standards for retweeting that not only mis-stated how the process works on Twitter, but also forbade journalists working for the newswire from retweeting anything without adding a comment to make it clear that they were not agreeing with the person being retweeted. The AP rules also strictly forbid breaking news on Twitter, which ignores the fact (as I pointed out at the time) that for many people the real-time information network has become the newswire.

In the long run, Sky News won’t slow the move to liquid media — where all the most important information is experienced in the locale of greatest flow, first — but it’s fun to watch the media giants stumble over their own feet.

(Source: underpaidgenius)

Eliza Dushku is following me?
Zoom

Eliza Dushku is following me?

twitter

The unwillingness of Facebook and Google to share a public commons when it comes to the intersection of search and social is corrosive to the connective tissue of our shared culture. But as with all things Internet, we’ll just identify the damage and route around it. It’s just too bad we have to do that, and in the long run, it’s bad for Facebook, bad for Google, and bad for all of us. (BTW, Google also doesn’t show Twitter or Flickr results either, or any other “social” service. Just its own, Google and Picasa.)

- John Battelle, Search, Plus Your World, As Long As It’s Our World

Once again, Google steps in a pile of doodoo with its maladroit efforts in trying to absorb the social web. Unwilling to simply index things and offer them up as search results, Google wants to ‘socialize’ search. What this means is that search is just another battlefield for Google to fight the war for the future against Facebook, Twitter, etc.

On one hand, you have to admit that Google faces a new world, one that is increasingly social, and the search company has to get in there. But this is not the way to do it.

I continue to be amazed that Google doesn’t look at its email and calendar apps as a good place to build social, instead of dicking around with search.