Biz writes that they are officially adopting the concept of the retweet into the Twitter platform and twitter.com. The plan is add a retweet button to twitter.com. It seems like the right move, but the execution might upset the apple cart.

Retweets would no longer show up in your timeline in the familiar “RT @JeffParsons” designation. Now you will see the avatar and username of the person being retweeted in your timeline, even if you don’t follow them. It will be designated with “retweeted by” to show the person you follow who sent the retweet. Confusing? Here’s a sketch that Biz posted on the Twitter blog that gives you a better idea of how it will look on twitter.com

rtsketch

Gone will be the use of RT to retweet. This probably will help those on Twitter who are new or casual users, but what about Twitter’s power users who have become so accustomed to seeing the RT designation in their timelines? How will Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck deal with this new method of retweeting?

The concept is still being worked out and shared with the developer community so they can start devising ways to work it into their efforts, but look for a full launch in a few weeks.

We’ll discuss this change more on the Word On The Tweet Podcast recording this Sunday at 8:30 and released the following day, but in the meantime feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Filed Under: Twitter News
Tagged: Biz Stone, retweet, Tweetdeck, Twitter

Facebook Buys FriendFeed

August 10, 2009 by Jeff Parsons · Leave a Comment

Facebook announced today that they are acquiring the social network aggregator FriendFeed.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, FriendFeed co-founder. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

Is it just me or don’t a lot of those innovations that FriendFeed developed already exist in Facebook? Ever since Facebook was unable to acquire Twitter they have continued to make their service more and more like everyone else.

Many Twitter users are also users of FriendFeed, if for nothing more than another place to dump their Tweets for others to see.

Will it be business as usual for FriendFeed? No one seems to really know.

Taylor said in a post on the FriendFeed blog that “FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team.”

Time will tell, but Facebook’s move could spell the end of FriendFeed as we know it.

Filed Under: Twitter News
Tagged: Facebook, FriendFeed

Word On The Tweet 17 – The Back Tweet Boys

August 10, 2009 by Jeff Parsons · Leave a Comment

This week CostaVidaFred and Jeff Parsons are joined by Amanda O’Brien and Saul Colt.

Show Notes:

Twitter’s DDoS attack woes.

Twitter sued over patent rights

Jeff gets attacked on Twitter by spam from fans of the Backstreet Boys

Ashton Kutcher tweets about businesses blocking Twitter.

John Quincy Adams is on Twitter:

Tweep picks:

Amanda: @djwaldow

Saul: @mrblackfrancis

Fred: @cspenn

Jeff: @cnreilly

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:46 — 26.5MB)

Filed Under: Episodes
Tagged: @aplusk, Ashton Kutcher, DDoD, John Quincy Adams

Twitter Almost Back To Normal After DDoS Attack

August 9, 2009 by Jeff Parsons · Leave a Comment

twitterupsidedown It’s been a rough week for Twitter thanks to a distributed denial of service attack. These attacks happen all the time, but this one was different because it wasn’t targeted at any one company. In fact it turns out it was targeted at a blogger from the Republic of Georgia and all his various accounts, one of which was on Twitter.

Thursday morning Twitter went down for hours. The first time in a long time. It’s taken until today to get back up and running to something close to normal. Even after getting Twitter back online, many apps and services using Twitter still weren’t functioning properly. At 3pm ET Sunday, Ryan Sarver from Twitter posted that they were able to restore the crucial parts of Twitter API operation so all those apps should be working just fine now.

Even with all these fixes, the DDoS attack continues as Twitter tries to stay ahead of it. Go easy on Twitter. It’s not their fault this time.

We’ll have more on this week’s Word On The Tweet podcast.

Filed Under: Twitter News
Tagged:

Rumor: iTunes To Add Twitter Integration

August 9, 2009 by Jeff Parsons · Leave a Comment

appletwitter Apple rumors are so much fun. So much that there’s a website totally devoted to them. If you’ve become tired of guessing whether or not Apple will release a tablet, try this latest Apple rumor on for size.

According to Boy Genius Report, iTunes 9 will include social media integration. Facebook, Twitter and last.fm. No word yet on what that integration would be or when it would be released, however speculation points to an announcement from Apple in Septemeber when Apple usually launches its new line of iPods.

I’m going to take a shot in the dark here and say there’ll be some way to update your Facebook status and Tweet whenever you buy, listen to or watch something in iTunes. The last.fm integration surprises me though. Doesn’t that kind of go against iTunes trying to sell you music?

There are some other additions rumored to be in iTunes 9. We’ll just have to wait and see. All I really hope they do in iTunes 9 is make the damn thing work well in Windows. If it wasn’t for the iPhone requiring iTunes I’d never run the thing.

Filed Under: Twitter News
Tagged: Apple, Facebook, iTunes, iTunes 9, last.fm, Twitter