Twitter Gets a New Front Page

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newtwittercomsplash.jpgTwitter just rolled out their new front page, which was known to come. I’m a bit ambivalent about it, mainly because it seems to follow all of the design trends out there at the moment.

Anyway, the new front page features search from the front as well as a selection of trending topics, which is good. The reason for this is, well, I’ll let Biz Stone tell it himself:

However, demonstrating the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now through our Search and Trends often awakens a sense of wonder which inevitably leads to a much more compelling question, “How do I get involved?”

So what’s the verdict? [Read more…]

Where Twitter Wants to Be

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From the official Twitter blog:

A small business like a bakery will send out a tweet that the cookies just came out of the oven and a few dozen local followers will rush over and buy warm cookies. The customers like it and the small businesses owners love it. Big companies are using Twitter in interesting ways too.

You’d love that, wouldn’t you, Biz? If Twitter was used that way, it would be hyperlocal and worth ten times more than any guesstimate out there today.

The featured Best Buy mashup Twelpforce thing is pretty far from what you’re dreaming of above, Biz, but at least it is a step in the right direction.

Worms strike Twitter and no one sent me a twit

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How did I miss this over the weekend? No one sent me a twit about this. I’m talking about the different worm attacks on Twitter that started Saturday and until Sunday.

Michael “Mikeyy” Mooney, the 17-year-old creator of StalkDaily, has admitted creating the worms that exploited a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the Twitter service to infect user profiles.

“At about 2 a.m. on Saturday, four accounts were created that began spreading a worm on Twitter,” co-founder Biz Stone announced in a blog post. “From 7:30 a.m. until 11 a.m. [Pacific time], our security team worked on eliminating the vectors that could identify this worm. At that time, about 90 accounts were compromised. We identified and secured these accounts.”

The company also said that they would review its coding practices. I suggest that they hire Michael “Mikeyy” Mooney.

Biz Stone’s First Name Becomes News

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There’s a pretty interesting piece on Twitter’s Biz Stone in San Francisco Chronicle. Actually, it hit the web two days ago, and I glanced it, deciding not to cover it here. After all, there really wasn’t anything new there.

Then I read this post by Silicon Alley Insider, built around a bullet list of trivia pulled from the SFC piece, and headlined by the shocking fact that Stone’s first name is Christopher. Granted, the Silicon Alley Insider piece is light-hearted, but come on? Isn’t this what Twitter is for, tweeting links and trivia stuff like this?

This Is How Twitter Suggested Users Work, And Freemium Is The Business Model

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Biz Stone writes about how Twitter picks its suggested users. Basically, it’s a search for “potentially interesting Twitter accounts” users and then they pick a few. This has been puzzling people for some time, so there you have it. Naturally, it hit Techmeme…

The most interesting part of the blog post is the last paragraph, however:

So, that’s how we’re doing the list today. We may very well change the way we populate this list or stop using it altogether if there is some other way to get the job done.

Keeping all the doors open, are we?

In other Twitter news, Biz Stone confirms pro accounts, but nothing’s been decided as to how these will work. It is a freemium model, so Twitter will remain free for all.