Thursday, April 15, 2010

Twitter’s Latest Announcements

With Facebook stealing the majority of the spotlight lately, it couldn’t be timelier for Twitter to unveil the new projects they have been embarking on within the past couple weeks. From a sponsored tweets business model to tweet preservation at the Library of Congress, Twitter continues to innovate and grow around the world. Let’s take a look at some of their new developments:

@anywhere. Announced yesterday, @anywhere integration is now available to the public. Some of its early users include Google, Foursquare and The New York Times. This now gives a user the ability to interact with Twitter without leaving the website they are on to actually visit the Twitter site. By using hovercards, there is now a seamless integration between a Twitter account and a user – without ever having them leave the original site.
Tweet Preservation. Announced yesterday, for preservation and research purposes, Twitter is donating access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress. Twitter notes the tweets can only be used after a six-month delay. To learn more read Twitter’s tweet preservation announcement.
Promoted Tweets. Announced earlier this week, Twitter is launching the first phase of what they are calling “Promoted Tweets.” The tweets should hopefully not be too intrusive since only one promoted tweet will display on a given search results page. The great thing is that if a specific sponsored tweet does not appear to resonate with the user, this will be taken into account and will not be served again.
Tweetie. Announced late last week, Twitter entered into an agreement to acquire Tweetie, a highly regarded iPhone Twitter client. This means the app will be renamed to Twitter for iPhone and made the official Twitter app. And yes of course, they are working on a solution for the iPad as well.

It’s exciting to see Twitter continue to innovate and not fall off the map. I look forward to seeing Twitter continue to grow as I don’t think they are dwindling away as many do believe. Are you still a Twitter believer?