Quick Note to Twitter Users Who are Listed on WeFollow

as you probably know, is a public directory of Twitter users. The site, a brainchild of Digg founder Kevin Rose, was launched nearly an year ago and is still quite an hit among Twitter users.
To add your own Twitter profile in the WeFollow directory, you just need to grant certain read & write permissions to WeFollow, choose a city and any five tags, and you are done. Your profile will get listed under the relevant tags and you’ll also get own profile page on WeFollow – see example.
What’s the problem then?

When you add (or update) your Twitter profile to WeFollow, there’s a default setting that says “Update my twitter URL to be my WeFollow profile.”  If you are in a hurry and don’t read the fine-print, the URL in your Twitter profile will automatically be replaced with your WeFollow profile.
There are quite a few Twitter profiles now that are pointing to WeFollow though I doubt if the profile owners are aware of the fact that their blog URLs have been replaced in Twitter just because they failed to uncheck a default setting.
It just doesn’t make sense to point your Twitter followers to a directory listing when you have your own website.

Offical Twitter Developer Conference, Chirp!

There are more than fifty thousand registered applications on the Twitter platform. These applications represent the creativity, ingenuity, and talent of a growing number of developers and companies building innovative new ways to interact with the Twitter information network. There are thousands of individuals who work on Twitter—over one hundred of these individuals actually work at 795 Folsom Street in San Francisco but many platform developers work in offices, coffee shops, apartments, and even friend's couches around the world.

We want to get together with some of you and celebrate the chutzpah that goes into so many of the apps built on the Twitter platform with our first ever official Twitter conference especially for developers called Chirp. The word Tweet is a noun defined as the chirp of a small or young bird. The Twitter ecosystem is still very young so naming this conference Chirp felt right. For all the details and information about the event please visit Chirp, The Official Twitter Developer Conference web site. Carsonified are helping us so it's going to be awesome. See you there!

Now Trending: Local Trends

Twitter trends began as a way to shed light on popular conversations. It's interesting to know that one topic can now spread across the world in real-time, and Trends help us discover which of those topics are paramount on a global scale.

As Twitter evolves, and more people share what’s happening in their own world, we want to provide another way for people to discover topics that may be relevant to them. Last week we began to slowly roll out a new feature called Local Trends to expose what people are talking about on the state and city level, and today we've fully launched so everyone can use it.

The big events that come up around the world will always become a global conversation, but what about the big events that only happen in your world that only matter to those around you? Or the slight differences in the way Californians perceive an event, like Obama's election victory, versus those São Paulo, Brazil?

Local Trends will allow you to learn more about the nuances in our world and discover even more relevant topics that might matter to you. We’ll be improving this feature over time to provide more locations, languages, and data through our API.

The Power of Suggestions

Hi, I'm Josh and I work in the product team at Twitter. One of the areas I'm working on is helping new users get started so they know how to find and discover what interests them. Today we're making the first of many changes here to help people ease into the twitterverse by finding and following accounts that interest them.

Two of the biggest challenges for new users have been finding accounts to follow that appeal to their interests, and finding their friends and colleagues who tweet. Over time, we've learned that by making suggestions of who to follow, we can help users get going more easily on Twitter. In our new design, we're taking some steps to continue to improve this process. Once a user signs up and selects what they're interested in, we show them some accounts that relate to that interest. Next, we help them find their friends and colleagues by checking their address books, and third we give them a chance to search for anyone we or they missed in this process.


We've found that the power of suggestion can be a great thing to help people get started, but it's important that we suggest things relevant to them. We've created a number of algorithms to identify users across a variety of clusters who tweet actively and are engaged with their audiences. These new algorithms help us group these active users into lists of users by interests. Rather than suggesting a random set of 20 users for a new user to follow, now we let users browse into the areas they are interested in and choose who they want to follow from these lists. These lists will be refreshed frequently as the algorithms identify new users who should be suggested in these lists and some that are not as engaging to new users will be removed. We also have a set of "Staff Picks" that are manually selected by Twitter employees as some of our favorites. Given the recent tragedy in Haiti, we've also created a special "Staff Picks for Haiti" to get updated news and content on what's happening there.

We're really excited about this change, and look forward to continually improving the experience for all users to discover the best content and get the most out of Twitter.

How to Use Twitter During Office Hours

Some organizations have this policy that social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. are a waste of time and therefore ban their staff from using such sites during office hours.
Then you also have companies that have no such rules in place and allow unrestricted access to the web as long as the employees are able to deliver what’s expected.

A. When Twitter is Not Allowed in Office

If you are working for a company that falls in the first category (no social media please), its better that you install a Twitter mobile app on your cell phone and not use the office computer at all for tweeting. After all, your boss will get a web usage report at the month-end and he will easily figure out which sites have you been visiting secretly during office hours.
If you don’t have a data-plan on your phone and cannot resist that urge to tweet ever 10 minutes, you may use tools like Posterous or Nutshell that allow anyone to send and receive tweets through regular office email.
There’s another option that will come handy if the twitter.com website itself has been blocked by your office firewall. You can use Twitter indirectly through third-party sites like Brizzly or Dabr.
These sites offer a fresh interface to your Twitter account with all the regular features (retweets, @replies, etc.) but the more interesting part is that they will work even if Twitter domain is inaccessible from your office computer. You can track up to 5 accounts with Brizzly.
Your Twitter friends’ timeline feed is protected by a password but you may still subscribe to it with a simple hack involving FeedBurner.
You can then follow tweets from your friends using Outlook or any other newsreader. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the friend’s feed directly with FeedDemon provided that access to Twitter is open in your office.
If you are allowed to use IM clients in Office, you can add twitter@twitter.com as a buddy in Google Talk and send tweets through IM. TweetSwitch is another free service that lets you send and receive tweets through popular instant messaging clients including AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype and GTalk.

B. Use Twitter Without Letting Anyone Know

Now let’s look at the second category – you are very much allowed to use Twitter at work but you still don’t want to give your boss an impression that you are a Twitter addict.
In that case, here’s what you can do to possibly hide your Twitter addiction from boss and colleagues.
You can probably find a gazillion desktop apps for Twitter but if you are looking for something that doesn’t scream to the world that its a Twitter client, try Quitter.
Quitter is a simple twitter client that runs through the command prompt or the DOS window. With Quitter, you can read and reply to tweets, follow /unfollow people or even manage your direct messages. All you need is a Windows computer and no one in the office will ever have a clue that you are engrossed in Twitter.
If you are a Microsoft Office user, Spreadtweet is another interesting option for you. This is a proper Twitter client but in the guise of a spreadsheet so your boss will think that you’re working on an Excel sheet while you are up there tweeting your heart out!
With SpreadTweet, you can send and receive updates, @replies and direct messages all inside an application that looks like a clone of Excel 2007.
The other great option for Microsoft Office users in TwInbox – you probably have Outlook open on your screen all the time and this free Outlook add-in will simply turn your Outlook into a powerful Twitter client.
You can handle tweets just the way you manage your Inbox and the add-in will even let you tweet email messages with a click. The service is integrated with TwitPic so you can tweet pictures by simply dragging them into Outlook.
There’s more – all standard Outlook features like search, mail archiving, categories, etc. will also become available to your Tweets. This screencast explains TwInbox in detail.

A Persistent and Urgent Question

"Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?" This quote made famous by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. strikes at the heart of what it means to be a mindful participant in any community. On an international level this week, people are joining forces to heal Haiti. Together, we're proving that we're wired to help.

On Monday, the Twitter offices will be closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. People all over the United States are urged to honor Dr. King’s legacy by making this holiday a national day of service. The Corporation for National Community Service has set up a web site to help us find a volunteer opportunity in our local community.

The folks behind the @ServeDotGov Twitter account and serve.gov site want to hear about your efforts. If you find a volunteer opportunity that interests you, go for it! Tweet about your experience as you learn about different ways to get involved, volunteer in your neighborhood or town, and be sure to add #MLKDay to spread the word.

Healing Haiti

International relief efforts are underway in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, after yesterday's devastating magnitude 7 earthquake. The atmosphere at Twitter HQ is heavy today and based on the Trending Topics an overwhelming number of Twitter users feel the same.

Easy Ways To Help
Many of us are wondering how we can contribute to the healing process. A few simple but effective ways to help have emerged.

• The American Red Cross allows anyone in the US to text HAITI to 90999 as an easy way to donate $10 to the recovery effort. The money is billed to your mobile phone account.
• Musician Wyclef Jean's Haiti-focused organization, Yele is also accepting text-message donations. To donate $5, text Yele to 501501 or visit the foundation's web site.
• Oxfam International has also set up an earthquake response fund. You can visit their web site to make a donation to this fund.

To follow each of these recovery efforts as they progress, we can follow @redcross, @wyclef, and @oxfam. The Huffington Post, CNN, and The New York Times have spent time curating special lists to track events related to Haiti.

A Complete List of Verified Twitter Accounts

If you see a blue verified seal on any Twitter page, it is sort of a confirmation from the Twitter staff that the account is real and doesn’t belong to any impersonator.

Though any Twitter user can put a request to get their account verified, Twitter has so-far only verified accounts of celebrities and other well-known users. For instance, this screenshot has a list of all technology related people whose Twitter accounts have been “verified.”

List of Twitter Verified Accounts

If you like to see a complete list of verified accounts on Twitter, check the friends list of @verified. When they verify a new account, the @verified bot starts following that person (or brand) and thus we know that only 0.002% of Twitters users* enjoy the “verified” status.
[*] The total number of Twitter users is estimated at 60 million while only 1,224 accounts are verified.
These verified accounts are organized in Twitter lists making it easier for you to follow them all with a click. Surprising, the accounts of both Twitter founders – @ev and @biz – aren’t verified yet.

Room to Read in India

When Twitter announced The Fledgling Initiative in October—making and selling wine to benefit an organization called Room to Read, I was thrilled. This past month, my enthusiasm and commitment increased dramatically when I had the chance to visit some of the sites where Room to Read works in India.

Teachers and students in Hardiwar gave me the warmest of welcomes. I was given the opportunity to help children read books in English and one group of students even inited me to sing a song for them. My performance of Itsy Bitsy Spider (see above—pit stains included), sent the kids into fits of laughter.

The schools in these areas face incredible obstacles but the community approaches problems with passion and vigor. One school was having trouble with a dangerous elephant so parents volunteered to take turns walking the kids to school and would even sleep there for a night or two. When I was little there were snow days but nothing like this.

Seeing kids get excited about learning to read made my heart skip a few beats, and made me feel proud to work at a company that chooses to partner with world-changing organizations like Room to Read. Here are some of the photos from my trip and you can learn more about Room to Read at their web site.

Tweet Appreciation

Newsworthy, funny, interesting, or important—tweets find their way into our lives more and more. Sawhorse Media is organizing the second annual Shorty Awards as a fun way to show appreciation to the people behind the tweets we read every day. Voting has opened in 27 official categories with room for more at your suggestion. An awards ceremony, complete with 140-character acceptance speeches, will be held in March in New York City and live streamed on the web. Check out the official rules to learn how to vote.