With all of the buzz surrounding Google+, people tend to forget that Twitter is nearly 10X bigger than the new kid on the block while Facebook is over 30X bigger. Between the two, they have a billion users (granted most Twitter users have a Facebook account, but who’s counting?). When it comes to business, branding has become one of the primary focuses when it comes to using social media. Marketing directly has proven to be less effective than it once was, so getting advocates and fans has been the primary goal of social media managers at businesses large and small for a while now. This infographic…

Bitly, whose mission is to reinvent how people discover and share content on the web, has officially acquired Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed allows bloggers to “feed their blogs to Twitter,” Facebook, and other services using RSS. The acquisition will be used to bring the enhanced sharing functionality of Twitterfeed directly to bitly.com, making it easier to collect, organize, shorten and share links. Currently, Bitly is one of the leading URL shortening services. It was even Twitter’s preferred shortening service until the company decided to develop their own. “For years now, we’ve…

When Jack Dorsey from Twitter brought President Barack Obama to answer questions on the social networking site on July 6th, it marked something that has never been done before. Technology met politics in a fresh and potentially intuitive way. Was the end result what everyone expected or were we “left hanging”? The questions were reportedly unknown by Dorsey or the President and were selected by the Twitter community. Things started off well with Obama breaking the ice by saying, “First of all, everyone can sit down. It’s much easier to tweet from a seated position.” So far, so good, but then he…

Just weeks after snapping up TweetDeck, Twitter has acquired social analytics start-up BackType. The company’s main product, BackTweets, has helped companies like AOL and Microsoft understand the influence of their tweets. BackType has also been in the midst of developing Storm, a new data-processing tool that the company calls the “Hadoop of realtime processing.” “Joining Twitter gives us the opportunity to bring insight to tens of millions of publishers around the world that are using Twitter to communicate and connect with their audience,” BackType wrote in a blog post. “We’re also…

Twitter is a polarizing force. Most people, particularly those who are tech-savvy, either love the 140-character-social-networking-microbloggy-thingy or they despise it with an absolute passion. You tweet or you don’t tweet. Few are indifferent towards it. As a result of its popularity in both social media and mainstream media, Twitter is often the subject of infographics. Designers love taking the huge amount of data on and about Twitter and transforming that data into something visually stunning. We’ve combed through literally dozens of infographics about Twitter that have been…

If you someone asked you where you were from, you would probably reply with your city or state. That’s the real world. On Twitter, we tend to answer that question a little differently. Do you live in Funkytown? How about Naptown? Bucktown? There are more than a few people who live in “Gotham”. There are many who tend to use the nicknames of their areas to indicate where they are on social media. This map by our friends at inboxQ breaks it down and shows us how America would be viewed if from Twitter’s perspective. Click to enlarge. …

Have you ever asked a question out to the world in hopes of getting a crowdsourced response? Millions of people do this every day. They use social networks like Facebook and Twitter to get answers of various importance to them. Is it really working? “We answer more questions on Twitter every day than we do anywhere else,” said Gail Umbridge at Honda Naperville. “It’s an imperative tool for connecting with our customers.” For others, Twitter is more of a personal question tool. There are sites like Quora that are specifically designed for questions and answers, but Twitter is still the tool of choice…

Tens of millions of people use Twitter on a regular basis. While most agree that the numbers of users are inflated by spammers and inactive users, it has still established itself as a major player in the world of social networking. The site has gone through many challenges over the years. There were times when it seemed like Twitter wasn’t going to make it at all. The site was down, often for hours a day. People were coming on, checking it out, not understanding it, then leaving. There was no recognizable revenue model. A year or two ago, many thought Twitter was doomed. Most of the naysayers are silent…

TweetDeck, a groundbreaking dashboard for monitoring what people are saying in real-time, has officially been acquired by Twitter. After months of assessing fundraising vs. acquisition, the folks at TweetDeck decided to “join the flock” at Twitter. “Twitter recognizes the value in our audience, and how our products are built to serve their needs–this is a different audience than the one that uses the official Twitter services,” TweetDeck CEO Iain Dodsworth said in an interview with AllThingsD. “So our products will stay the same and we’ll continue to develop them, with obviously a…

Since the beginning of organized communication and transportation, networks have been embedded as an easier way to make things happen. It’s much easier to keep systems running properly when they are placed into a system of connected elements. Networks are everywhere. This graphic by our friends at GetSatisfaction brings it all into perspective from the 1800s until now and into the future. Click to enlarge. …