What happened to my Twitter followers/following count?

May 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

So there’s this, uh, security exploit hole in Twitter, whereby anyone can force an account to follow your account. If you’re seeing 0 followers and 0 following on your account, don’t panic — Twitter knows about it:

We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to “force” other users to follow them. We’re now working to rollback all abuse of the bug that took place. Follower/following numbers are currently at 0; we’re aware and this too should shortly be resolved.

Update (10:18 AM PST): Of note: protected updates did not become public as a result of this bug.

To read more on this nefarious plot to have Oprah follow you back (finally!), check out the Gizmodo how-to/explanation.

As an aside, I now have the same number of followers as Ashton Kutcher. I believe that technically makes me a bigshot. :)

(Photo via Flickr)

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Today is my Twitter anniversary

May 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

On May 7, 2007, I joined Twitter. My account (@sbolen) is #5,842,232. By comparison, I opened up an account for a freelance client on Wednesday, and it was #140,663,441, meaning my account is in the earliest 4% of all users on the service today.

I missed SXSW when Twitter was launched, but was able to grab a beta invite from TechCrunch during the gold rush phase. I’ve been hooked ever since… even through the major outages (come to think of it, I almost miss the fail whale — that new iPhone announcement at Apple’s WWDC can’t get here soon enough).

On May 10, 2007, Biz Stone sent out an email announcing new mobile features. In hindsight, 2007 doesn’t seem that long ago – mobile devices sure have come a long way…

Hello Twitter-ers,

Technically speaking, Twitter has always been mobile because you can send and receive messages over SMS. However, there’s more and more folks accessing the mobile web from so-called smart phones these days and we figured it was high time we created a mobile version of the Twitter web site. So if you have a browser-enabled phone, head over to m.twitter.com and catch up with your friends, mobile style. Special thanks to xhtml-mp developer, Heidi Pollock for helping us put this new feature together. It was an instant hit with us at the office. If you’re on a standard web browser, we’re still here: http://twitter.com.

Twitter, Inc

Speaking of the office, Twitter is now officially Twitter, Inc. We’ve fledged from Obvious, LLC which was previously our parent company and we’ve even hired our very own office manager. Welcome, Krissy! The fact that we are no longer owned and operated by Obvious, is more a matter of paperwork than anything else. We’re still the same folks working behind the scenes. However, it does mean that we’re hiring more engineers so don’t be shy, email [email protected] if you’re interested.

New International Support

+447624801423 is our new UK longcode. With this new number we have significantly improved our international support and more importantly, Australia is once again fully supported over SMS. Thanks for your patience, mates! Also, 21212 is our new Canadian short code. So if you’re Canadian and twittering over SMS then that’s then number to use.

New Feature: Block

We’ve introduced a new feature lots of folks requested called “block.” Blocking someone means that you (and your pic) will not appear on the blocked person’s friends list, profile page, friends timeline, badge, or anywhere else. The person will not be notified that they’ve been blocked, but they will be unable to add you as friend. The feature is a hyperlink in the sidebar of Twitter profile pages.

Mixing It Up

Recently, there was a conference in Las Vegas put on by Microsoft called MIX and Twitter was used to keep attendees connected as well as entertained with an interesting application called Flitter. The application was displayed on giant screens featuring Twitter updates about what folks at the conference were doing. Neat! Flitter is open source and anyone can download it: http://tinyurl.com/257rlu.

Geeking Out with Twitter

Not that you’re a geek, but Twitter has a certain appeal to the geekier types. That’s why there is a fan-created web site featuring dozens of interesting Twitter integrations. For example, you can now Twitter from within your online calendar at 30boxes.com and party site Socializr.com has recently integrated with Twitter as well. Not to mention Twittervision.com which everybody loves. And for the really geeky, we have a surprise: Twitter now fully supports microformats. Now that is pretty geektastic.

Happy Twittering!
-Biz Stone and the Twitter Team

http://twitter.com/biz

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Foursquare and the Fail Whale

May 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Something strange happened to me on my way to work this morning — my low fuel notification came on in the car signaling that it was time to pay for my first post-BP oilpacolypse tank of gas. I zipped into the nearest service station near the highway, started pumping and attempted to check in on Foursquare. After all, this was a new gas station, so I’d get the +5 for a new venue and the +1 for the first stop in the day (as an added bonus, this gas station had no Mayor – one more fill-up and I’d be planning my coronation).

All was going according to plan, until I couldn’t check-in. I was served up the Foursquare version of the Fail Whale:

Foursquare's fail whale

When I got to work, I pulled up Alexa and checked the historical traffic trends. The pattern between Foursquare outages and Twitter outages at about the same time in their explosive growth was pretty staggering:

Alexa's Foursquare & Twitter Growth Chart

In 2007, Twitter experienced approximately 98% uptime (or, to put it another way, roughly 6 full days of downtime). To date, Foursquare has been relatively immune to outages, but this is primarily due to the relatively scaled-back number of users. As of March 2010, Foursquare had 500,000 users, and were adding new users at the rate of about 10,000 per day:

Foursquare's explosive growth

It took Twitter a lot of growing pains before they were able to straighten out their network outage issues. It’s my sincere hope that Foursquare (and really, all location-based app services) can learn from Twitter and ensure reliable uptime. There is a definite future in location-aware advertising/marketing services, and nothing can scare off the n00bs quicker than service downtime.

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Twitter Spam: I'm already on the internets

March 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

There’s some new spam goin’ round the tubes, this time it’s hitting via Twitter DMs. A clever message, obviously designed to appeal to the narcissistic bloc of internet users aged 6 months – death:

Holy subdomains, Batman! That should be your first clue not to click on the link.

What’s unfortunate, though, is that many people just like @jaythornton000 did. And who is Jay Thornton?

I’m a professional advertiser with a background in technology and a Masters in communication

Ouch. Sorry you fell for such a crappy hook.

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How to lose a new Twitter follower in 15 seconds

January 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Thanks for using TrueTwit validation service. When you sent me the auto-DM saying that you wanted me to validate my existence as a carbon-based life form by deciphering a captcha, I begrudgingly did it because I was legitimately interested in following you. When you sent me the second auto-DM without even so much as an @-reply, you lost me forever.

First, there’s nothing on the planet more annoying than unnecessary captchas (Chris at Rizzo Tees has expressed this beautifully in his anti-captcha t-shirt). I realize that all the text in the re-captcha project is to help digitize books, but c’mon. I’m trying to follow you on Twitter, not hack your mainframe.

Second, auto-DMs for new followers make me want to throw up in my shoe. Think about that. IN MY SHOE. I don’t even know you and you’re already telling me about how many “Fauxlowers” you have? Really? You just got your ticket punched for a one-way trip on the express train to unfollowville.

So heed this warning, Twitter-ers: If you want to screen your followers, that’s fine. But don’t use a service to do so. You’ll end up missing out on engaging conversations that you could have been having, if only someone could have cracked the captcha code.

Like me.

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What's up, Overstock?

January 9, 2010 By 3 Comments

I decided to do some Christmas shopping with Overstock – after all, I was to get 8% cash back on my order through Bank of America’s Add It Up program. My parents had been asking for a digital picture frame so they could have up-to-date photos of our daughter their granddaughter cycling through at all hours of the day/night.

I ordered a Kodak 8″ digital frame for $80 and thought that was that. I was guaranteed shipping by Christmas Eve, which was perfect. Done, right?

Wrong.

I was shipped a refurbished/open box item that did not have any retail packaging. I can’t give that as a gift – it looked like I was re-gifting. Not cool. I chirped about it on Twitter and was put in touch with the right people. I thought I was well on my way to having this problem resolved. The customer care representative was going to mail me out a replacement product immediately; unfortunately, it was not going to arrive until after Christmas. So I had to give my parents the picture frame “as-is”, with the explanation that I’m going to send it back once I get the new frame and just swap it out.

Well, the replacement frame came after the new year and was packaged even worse than the first one – a rubber band around the power supply, the 64MB SD Card in a small baggie, the frame loosely bubble wrapped… again, not acceptable as a gift. And this was after I was assured that it would be shipped in retail packaging.

I fired off an email to the customer care representative and was almost immediately contacted by someone to rectify the situation. I was “upgraded” to a $100 picture frame that they had in stock and was told that it would be shipped via 2-day air on January 4.

Something finally came to my door today – and you know what? It wasn’t even a picture frame at all. It was a Nikon CoolPix 10 Megapixel Digital Camera.

Have you ever had a run-in with Overstock? If so, let’s hear it in the comments!

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Social Media Marketers are worth more than $12/hour

November 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I can’t wait for the day when Social Media Marketing is seen by organizations as a legitimate form of marketing by that requires a broader knowledgebase than how to use Facebook, Twitter, et cetera – that there *is* a lot of training involved and an awful lot of higher-level thought…

… which leads me to my second point: I also can’t wait for the day when Social Media Marketers are paid what they deserve for possessing a unique skillset, not paid like interns or part-time college students who fit the profile of a “Facebook user.”
Here’s the Craigslist posting that inspired this rant, posted in my own city!

Social Marketing/Digital Media (Hwy 40 and Lindbergh)

Date: 2009-11-17, 3:03PM CST
Reply to: [email protected]

Looking for an outgoing, positive person to take our Company into the techie, communications world of twitter and facebook. Can you set up a facebook wall, maintain it, twitter, etc? Send a few sentences by email to us describing your abilities. Please, no attachments. Part time, could lead to full time. Looking for a high energy team player.

• Location: Hwy 40 and Lindbergh
• Compensation: $12/hr
• This is a part-time job.
• OK for recruiters to contact this job poster.
• Please, no phone calls about this job!
• Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

It’s really insulting, but, at the same time, not surprising. People who put out ads like this are also the kind of people who think that they can get away with paying $150 to a neighbor or distant relative for a website that looks like it was designed in Netscape Communicator 4.2.

How does your organization view Social Media? Are you getting the resources you need? Do you even have a budget? Let me know in the comments!

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