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The best way to find out Twitter’s health

For constantly updated Twitter status info, visit the Twitter API page the image above was screengrabbed from: https://dev.twitter.com/status

Twitter also has an official status blog, powered by tumblr: http://status.twitter.com.

While it is reliably up when twitter is down (different platform), it is updated by a (PR-aware) human, and not as sensitive, timely, or accurate as the dev status page linked above.

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A commercial Twitter account for a project I’m on went from “rarely tweets” to 40-tweets-in-12-hours. Major follower shock (and dip)! (Not a permanent loss. You’re just keeping a different rhythm now, and will get a new type of audience/community/follower.) I’m not prescriptive about about The Right Way to Tweet (including quantity). I romanticize neither “be human, join the conversation!” nor “automate + blast” tropes. Different styles work for different goals. But ideally an account is consistent in both style and quantity. When you switch something up all of a sudden, prepare for a bit of follower shock. Starting a brand new account is a rush, coz there’s nowhere to go but up. But taking on an existing account, and tweaking its style, is a whole different ride. Buckle up! :D (Despite me just saying that there’s no one right way to tweet, long bouts of twitter silence followed by tight clusters of posts usually isn’t best.)

A commercial Twitter account for a project I’m on went from “rarely tweets” to 40-tweets-in-12-hours.

Major follower shock (and dip)!

(Not a permanent loss. You’re just keeping a different rhythm now, and will get a new type of audience/community/follower.)

I’m not prescriptive about about The Right Way to Tweet (including quantity). I romanticize neither “be human, join the conversation!” nor “automate + blast” tropes.

Different styles work for different goals.

But ideally an account is consistent in both style and quantity. When you switch something up all of a sudden, prepare for a bit of follower shock.

Starting a brand new account is a rush, coz there’s nowhere to go but up. But taking on an existing account, and tweaking its style, is a whole different ride. Buckle up! :D

(Despite me just saying that there’s no one right way to tweet, long bouts of twitter silence followed by tight clusters of posts usually isn’t best.)

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Agencies: Pinterest update adds Twitter social graph (friend-finder)

What Pinterest is calling a new “look” is less of a redesign, and more of a new version. There’s lotsa new stuff (“related” Pins, a la YouTube, huge discovery flow), and a lot of removed stuff (bye-bye “origin” trail, a la Tumblr, pout).

Many of these changes are of interest to marketers, but this post is gonna focus on the biggest one: The Twitter social graph (aka, “friend finder”) is now completely accessible in Pinterest.

In other words: you can find your Twitter community, and they can find you, in a much more straight-forward way.

Twitter social-graph access is a critical tool for marketers and businesses on social platforms, because Facebook friend-finding is pretty much useless for businesses: Pinterest lets you connect to your personal Facebook account, but your business’s hundreds/thousands of Facebook Page Likers are lost in a black hole, inaccessible to your business’s new presence.

Twitter’s all-accounts-are-the-same (no distinction between “real person” and “business page”) structure works much better for joining new networks, and bringing over a community.

But until now, Pinterest had been kinda half-assed about Twitter social-graph access.

In the old Pinterest, at time of sign-up, you got a decent one-time pass at finding your Twitter buddies. But after that, you only got occasional email about Twitter friends joining, and a wacky, peekaboo feed that came and went with some of your Twitter friends (not clearly marked as Twitter friends, btw).

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When you clicked “see all” you were brought to a Find Friends page that DID NOT INCLUDE TWITTER, just Facebook, even though it was just showing you a preview of Twitter friends. This has driven me crazy for a year+.

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Now let’s look at the new Pinterest Friend Finder.

This is more like it! Here are your Twitter friends!

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Yay. Nothing like not having to rebuild your community from scratch.

Big + welcome news.

PS- It’s worth noting that this does not require you to declare your Pinterest account a “business” account, or to have verified your website. The Twitter social graph access applies to all accounts who have upgraded to the new Pinterest.

PPS- the new Pinterest is not without some bugs/unfortunate changes. While I’m very enthusiastic about the new Twitter social graph access, I still recommend a fully considered evaluation before upgrading your Pinterest account.

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Twitter’s sexual favers (not sexual favors)

[Update March 20: Looks like the Sexual Favers have flamed out. Way less chatter about “favorite bots” as of March 19th]

original post:

Feelin’ on fire lately?

Think you’re a regular @robdelaney?

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Sorry, baby. Those favers got a tweet in every port.

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Spammers are exploiting a small inefficiency in how Twitter does rate limits/ suspends new accounts.

In general, new accounts have a tighter leash than aged accounts, and anything that just starts spewing links or @-ing people gets shut down fast. 

However, the leash gets a little looser when it comes to favoriting tweets- and the world of weird spam has figured this out, so they’re spawning (and willing to let rapidly die) sexual favers.

I predict Twitter will soon adjust the “tripwire” for new accounts to include favorite activity as well.