In a blog post Twitter has announced that it is to discontinue support for TweetDeck’s trio of non-web apps, TweetDeck for iPhone, Android and AIR, and that afterwards these clients will be pulled from their app stores and stop working shortly after that.

The focus here seems to be on Twitter as the platform and not as apps. Don’t despair if you’re a fan of TweetDeck, which Twitter paid $50m for two years ago, it isn’t going away. It is though going to be different as TweetDeck lovers are left with the web-based version of TweetDeck –  TweetDeck for web and TweetDeck the Chrome app.

Read More »

UPDATE: Twitter has confirmed the reports that it has made what is thought to be its biggest acquisition to date, outstripping that of TweetDeck, with the deal to buy social TV analytics firm Bluefin Labs, which if anyone was in any doubt, underscores the increasingly close relationship between the social network and television (see confirmation at the foot of post). Twitter has not said how much it is paying for Bluefin, but industry speculation is that it is spending more than $70m (£44m) based in part on the $20.5m (£13m) Twitter has raised over its four-year life from investors including Softbank and Time Warner.

Read More »

Sometimes owning a Blackberry can make you feel like a second class smartphone citizen. While the rest of the world (okay, Android and Apple) whiz along with their new apps there is not a great deal happening in the Blackberry App store.

One bright spot is that the social apps for Blackberry in Facebook and Twitter have always been good and now they are getting better. Not just improvements on the mobile front  there is a new version of TweetDeck too.

At the same time it is being reported that Twitter has acquired video-sharing start-up Vine. Read More »

A good addition here to the tips for journalists using social media file from the Wall Street Journal.

Social media and journalism have developed a symbiotic relationship evidenced as we reported recently by a study showing many UK journalists say they “can’t work without social media. It is only some on the fringes who continue to argue that social media destroying good journalism. That is simply not true.

You only have to look to how journalists have used it to cover the Arab spring and Syria — that conflict in-particular has been noted as a ‘War Reported by social media and citizen-journalists’.

The tips here while aimed at those working in the media are more widely applicable to many others working in social media. It’s about good practice and that is universal.

Read More »

Google+ is like a remote tropical island. Glorious white sand, perfect clear waves lapping against the shore… and yet, to ships sailing by, seemingly deserted. While I probably wouldn’t include myself in the tribes of natives that seem to have really embedded themselves at home on the platform, I do feel it’s a tool with some smart design behind it — and an initiative that’s working really hard to create a meaningful role in people’s everyday lives.

But while I’m a firm believer that the success of Google+ (neé Emerald Sea) is about more than just creating a Facebook-like newsstream product, I do believe there’s a factor here shackling the potential growth of this feature. And it’s the factor that causes G+ to be an almost literally separated and isolated entity. Read More »

If you find TweetDeck as useful as we do you’ll like this, Twitter has released a new version of TweetDeck with some much needed improvements.

The main improvements are new list management, new columns for activity and interactions, bigger and better display of images and videos and gone is the “Quote” retweet option. Read More »

Yesterday Twitter launched its Follow button and today we get a much needed new version of Twitter search and news of Twitter’s own photo sharing app that we heard about on Monday.

Twitter has really been shaking things up these last few weeks with the acquisition of Tweetdeck, a rival to Twitpic and now a revamped search designed to make results more hit than miss. Read More »

Twitter has confirmed it is to launch its own photo-sharing to rival TwitPic and others after rumours emerged at the weekend.

According to AllThingsD Twitter CEO Dick Costolo will announced the launch at the D9 conference on Wednesday. Read More »

This makes perfect sense. I was blogging yesterday that Twitter really needs a desktop app (wondering why it hadn’t launched one). And now it has apparently stepped in and acquired Tweetdeck for $50m from under the nose of UberMedia, which had been in talks to buy the British firm.

The deal has comes about after management changes at Twitter HQ, which has seen Jack Dorsey return and Evan Williams take a step back from the day to day running of the company. Read More »

CNN is reporting that app developer UberMedia is working on  plans to build a microblogging social network that could compete with Twitter.

The reports says that UberMedia, which is in talks to acquire TweetDeck and owns UberSocial, could offer a service that fixes some of the oft heard complaints about Twitter (the length of tweets et cetera), but is there really room for another microblogging site? Read More »