Rate of Tweets Per Second Doubles

The sudden interest in the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett was apparently too much for Twitter’s search engine, which quickly got overloaded and returned results that were increasingly delayed—when it returned them at all.

Later Thursday evening, Twitter said it had disabled the search field on users’ home pages entirely, although it did not explain why. The troubles don’t bode well for Twitter’s prospects as a “real-time” search engine, which many believe is likely the service’s most valuable feature. Twitter executives have even hinted in the past that they want to expand the search engine to sift through not only posts on Twitter but also pages linked to by Twitter users.

But even before Thursday’s overload, the search engine had already been sharply criticized for being “broken.” Tweets often don’t show up in the results or are delayed in showing up.

A silver lining for Twitter, however: Big news days like Thursday reinforce that people do want to turn to Twitter for news. At one point Thursday afternoon, all 10 “trending search topics” were related to this week’s trio of celebrity deaths, with Ed McMahon still getting attention.

Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard’s Berkman Center For Law and Society tweeted that his “search scripts” showed that about 15 percent of all Tweets mentioned Jackson—levels that had not been reached with either “Iran” or “Swine Flu.” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone also tells the LA Times that the news led to an instant doubling of tweets per second.

“This particular news about the passing of such a global icon is the biggest jump in tweets per second since the U.S. presidential election,” he said. As for the service’s troubles, Stone acknowledged that there were “reports of slowness” and the company was acting “right away” to improve it.

Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-twitter-search-fails-under-thursdays-celebrity-news-rush

Tags: Biz Stone, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Twitter’s search engine, Twitter search, tweets per second doubles, Ethan Zuckerman, Harvard’s Berkman Center For Law and Society, Global IT News, LA Times, Ed McMahon,

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US Asks Twitter to Stay Online Because of Iran Vote

NEW YORK (AFP) – The US government took the unusual step of asking Twitter to delay a planned maintenance outage because of its use as a communications tool by Iranians following their disputed election, according to a senior official.

The request highlighted the Obama administration's Web-savvy and the power of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook in organizing protests over the election results in the face of a ban by Iranian authorities on other media. But it also seemed to run counter to President Barack Obama's public efforts not to appear to be meddling in Iran's internal affairs.

Twitter delayed Monday's scheduled tuneup, which would have taken place during daylight hours in Iran, and rescheduled it for Tuesday but said the decision was made with its network provider, not the State Department. The micro-blogging site went down around 5:00 pm (2100 GMT) on Tuesday and was back online about an hour later.

A State Department official in Washington said Twitter had been asked to delay Monday's shutdown because it was being used as "an important means of communications" in Iran. The official told reporters on condition of anonymity that Twitter was all the more important because the Iranian government had shut down other websites, cell phones, and newspapers.

"One of the areas where people are able to get out the word is through Twitter," the official said. "They announced they were going to shut down their system for maintenance and we asked them not to." Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, in a blog post, noted the State Department request but said the decision to delay the outage was made with Twitter's network provider, NTT America.

"When we worked with our network provider yesterday to reschedule this planned maintenance, we did so because events in Iran were tied directly to the growing significance of Twitter as an important communication and information network," Stone said.

"We decided together to move the date. It made sense for Twitter and for NTT America to keep services active during this highly visible global event," he said. Stone said "it's humbling to think that our two-year old company could be playing such a globally meaningful role that State officials find their way toward highlighting our significance.

"However, it's important to note that the State Department does not have access to our decision making process," he said. "Nevertheless, we can both agree that the open exchange of information is a positive force in the world." Stone also said the maintenance was a success and Twitter's network capacity had been "significantly increased."

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said meanwhile that the United States does not intend to meddle in Iranian politics. "We don't want to be seen as interfering," he said. Obama himself issued the same message Tuesday, saying: "It is not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations to be seen as ... meddling in Iranian elections."

Kelly went on to say that new media provided a good source of information for the US government, which has had no diplomatic relations with Iran for three decades. "We're of course monitoring the situation through a number of different media, including social media networks like Facebook and Twitter," he said.

Another Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, speaking at a two-day conference in New York on Tuesday about the micro-blogging service, described the usage of Twitter by Iranians as "amazing." "Just think about what's occurring over there and the accessibility that we all have to see this unfold in real time," he said. "It's amazing. It's huge."

"Suddenly everything that's happening over there feels extremely close," he said. "It feels approachable. And that's really important and that is really the greatest success of what Twitter is."

"If ever there was a time that Twitter mattered it was this past weekend in Iran," added Jeff Pulver, organizer of the 140 Character Conference.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090617/ts_alt_afp/iranuspoliticsunrestinternettwitter_20090617014955

Tags: US State Department, Obama, Biz Stone, Twitter, NTT America, Jack Dorsey, 140 Character Conference, Jeff Pulver, Iran, Iranians, Facebook, Election, Election Protests, Global Development News,

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Dell Is Monetizing Twitter

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Social media company Twitter is struggling to craft a profitable business model, but the Web-based service has helped Dell Inc chalk up millions of dollars in sales.

Dell said on Thursday it has raked in more than $3 million from Twitter followers who clicked through its posts to its Web sites to make purchases. The company, which has posted to Twitter about two years and tracks the sales with proprietary software, made more than $1 million in the past 6 months.

"We're going to watch it over time to make sure it's tracking at the right level," said Lionel Menchaca, Dell's chief blogger. "It is trending upward and that's what we're going to be looking at overall."

Three million in sales over two years is a pittance for Dell, ranked by IDC as the world's second-largest PC maker in the first quarter of 2009. Dell posted $12.3 billion of revenue in the first quarter of this year, alone. But the PC maker has become one of the first public examples of how companies might profit from Twitter.

Twitter does not charge companies for such benefits, but does not rule out doing so in the future.

"For now, monetization of this type of activity remains unknown," Twitter spokeswoman Jenna Sampson said in a statement. "However, as the network grows, the company will be committing more resources toward profitability."

Gartner analyst Allen Weiner said such financial success could provide a model for Twitter, itself, to make money. "Certainly one of the ways Twitter can begin to think of itself as a money-making operation is to facilitate a lot of these things, build it as part of the infrastructure. So if you're a company, you can pay Twitter a certain amount of money and they can directly distribute coupons on your behalf, or clear transactions," Weiner said.

Twitter is building add-on tools and services for businesses and professional users, co-founder Biz Stone told the Reuters Global Technology Summit last month. Dell said it posts 6 to 10 times a week to its DellOutlet account, which is where the majority of Twitter-based sales have come from. Stephanie Nelson, who manages the account, said almost every post includes a coupon or a link to a sale, and about half of the posts are Twitter-exclusive deals.

The PC maker, which has about 600,000 followers, is one of the Top 100 most-followed accounts on Twitter, according to private trackers TwitterCounter and Twitterholic.

Other non-media companies ranked in the Top 100 include Whole Foods Market Inc, Woot.com, Zappos.com, JetBlue Airways Corp. Whole Foods and JetBlue said they have not tried to monetize their Twitter presence. Woot.com and Zappos.com were not available for comment.

Twitter had approximately 17 million unique U.S.-based visitors in April, and about 24 million worldwide, according to Nielsen. Its number of users has grown by more than a thousand percent over the last year.

Small companies are also finding financial success on Twitter. New Orleans-based Naked Pizza, which turns $1 million in sales annually, is "betting the farm" on its Twitter presence according to co-founder Jeff Leach.

The company, which created a Twitter presence about two and a half months ago and has about 4,300 followers, last week said nearly 69 percent of sales generated during a one-day Twitter advertising blitz came from customers drawn in from the site.

Leach posts 1 to 15 times a day and said his company sees a sustained 20 percent of sales dollars from its Twitter presence. Leach recently put up a billboard advertising the company's Twitter presence and is planning mailings bearing the company's Twitter contact information instead of a phone number.

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090612/wr_nm/us_twitter_dell_2

Tags: Dell monetizing Twitter, Twitter, Dell, Jetblue, Woot, Zappos, Naked Pizza, Reuters Global Technology Summit, Biz Stone, Nielsen, IDC, Gartner DellOutlet, Global Best Practices,

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