(screenshot via CNN) Twitter is warning media outlets to be "extra vigilant" in light of today's incident involving a fake tweet sent out by hackers that had gained access to the Associated Press' Twitter account, @AP. It's also good advice for brands and marketers -- and for all Twitter users, actually. Shortly after 1:00 pm EST today, the AP's account sent out a (fake) tweet saying that President Obama was injured after "two explosions in the White House." The Dow Jones stock market index momentarily tanked almost 150 points. The AP disabled its Twitter accounts, at least temporari [...]

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Good news for brands, marketers and anyone with a highly visual or image-based Twitter presence: The "view all" option for Media Galleries is showing again on Twitter profile pages. Visit any Twitter profile and you should see the "View all photo and videos" link below the most recent six images/videos that the user has tweeted or retweeted. Here's an example from @gap (The Gap): The "view all" option was present when Twitter launched galleries back in the summer of 2011, but it curiously disappeared sometime this past winter. When the link went away, the only way to see an accoun [...]

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Like many today, Google+ offered to upgrade the cover photo of my Google+ profile page to the new larger size, up to 2120x1192. Wow, would that even fit on my screen? And would anything even show other than the picture? Let's have some fun comparing profile pages at Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Oh Say What Can You See? For this test, I loaded up all the pages on my MacBook Pro Retina running at the default display resolution of 1440x900. I normally run the screen at a higher resolution, 1680x1050, giving up a tiny bit of quality for more screen real estate. But I wanted to stick with wh [...]

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If you manage a Twitter account, you likely know the endless phishing attacks that come with the territory. Twitter has long been the target of various scammers who do their darnedest to make their email appear to be official Twitter messages. Well earlier this month Twitter began using a new technology, DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance,) to combat phishing attempts. Basically DMARC uses authentication for those emails that are trying to cloud the specific domain where they are being delivered from. Using established authentication protocols, those us [...]

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Yesterday, it was Burger King. Earlier today it was Jeep. And now it's MTV. It's a brand marketer's nightmare -- getting your Twitter account hacked. About a half hour ago, the MTV account tweeted "MMM. THIS BURGER TASTES GOOD!!!!!!!!!! #MTVHACK." MTV is the third major brand account that has been hijacked this week. The account was temporarily branded as the BET Experience, a live music event in Los Angeles. It's not confirmed if promoters of the event hacked the account. Sine then, the MTV Twitter seems to have been frozen, and the BET Experience branding removed. Earlier to [...]

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The alleged collaboration between American Express & Twitter was true. Soon, users will be able ditch the malls and start shopping straight from your Tweets. Users can quickly set up their accounts on the AMEX Sync website. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUXQYrn8zds[/youtube] According to the Wall Street Journal, American Express customers that connect their card to their Twitter account will be able to purchase a specific set of products, including Kindle Fires and Donna Karan Jewelry, directly on Twitter. This AMEX-Twitter relationship isn't just a fling, as the two hav [...]

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In an era when brands are flocking to Pinterest because of the opportunity it provides for high-quality visual marketing, and Instagram is taking steps to be more attractive to its growing brand users, Twitter has made a curious decision that essentially takes away similar visual marketing opportunities on its platform. I'm talking about those media galleries that were in the news this week. They now show both photos and videos, but they're a lot less useful than they were both for brands and regular Twitter users. Here's why: sometime in the last few months, Twitter removed the ability [...]

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Twitter says a group of "extremely sophisticated" hackers may have recently accessed limited user information for about 250,000 users accounts, prompting the company to reset the passwords associated with those accounts and remind all of its users to create a stronger password. The investigation is still going on, but Twitter says the hackers might've accessed some users' personal information: This week, we detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data. We discovered one live attack and were able to shut it down in process mom [...]

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Twitter announced a couple changes to its interface today, the most interesting of which (in my opinion) is the addition of videos to media galleries. Media galleries were originally called User Galleries when they rolled out in Summer 2011. They show(ed) the 100 most recent photos that a user shared or retweeted. Twitter says videos from Vine, YouTube, Vimeo and other sources whose videos show in expanded tweets will show up in Media Galleries now. Brands that are actively tweeting quality images, or already adopting Vine, should welcome the expanded galleries as a place to collect more [...]

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In an ever expanding effort to grow, Twitter is now partnering with cell carriers to help users Tweet on select feature phones. According to Bloomberg Twitter has now partnered with nearly 250 operators in 100 counties to help users read and post Tweets without having to pay high data charges. In some deals, operators have agreed to waive text fees for those using the service, and in others Tweets can be  read or posted with the data charges being waived. A shining example of this feature is in Turkey where Twitter has partnered with carrier Turkcell. The partnership allows us [...]

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Gone will be the days of scrolling through pages and pages of your Tweets or Twitter's clunky search to find something you once posted. Twitter is in the process of rolling out a "Download all your Tweets" feature, which has been formally announced today on the Twitter Blog. To get your archive, go to the Settings area and look for the new "Your Twitter archive" feature: Due to high demand, don't be surprised if you get an error message like this: But keep trying, until you get a success screen that offers a link you can use to download the archive: You'll then get an email like th [...]

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If you prefer your old/current Twitter profile format, you've got about 48 hours left to enjoy it. Twitter says it's going to convert all user profile pages over to the new, image-heavy design beginning on Wednesday, December 12th. This is the big change that Twitter announced on NBC's Today show back in September. I haven't updated my personal Twitter profile page yet, but we quickly updated the @marketingland account to look like this: If you still plan to hold out and not upload some custom image for the top of your profile, Twitter says it'll show a gray image in that space b [...]

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You may not have noticed the link, but it's there in the footer of Twitter's home page if you're logged out: "Directory." It's a link to Twitter's unannounced user directory, an alphabetical collection of all Twitter account holders from A to Z that also includes profiles with non-Latin character names. Twitter launched the user directory "a few weeks ago," according to a spokesperson, but hasn't made a formal announcement about it. That's likely because it exists more for search engines than for Twitter users -- a topic that I cover today in my Search Engine Land article, Twitter’ [...]

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In case you missed the big announcement on the Today Show yesterday morning, Twitter has updated profiles with a new Timeline-like header photo that will appear across platforms, transitioning the social channel to become more visual and image-centric. How To Update Your Twitter Profile Header There isn't an obvious "update" on your profile, though, you'll need to go into your account settings and make these changes yourself (take it from someone who waited an hour to see if the roll out would "hit" my account.) To get the new look, you'll need to log in, go to the gear icon in the top right [...]

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This morning's Today show promised to unveil big changes that are happening with Twitter. Twitter's CEO,  Dick Costolo, sat down with Matt Lauer & Ryan Screast to chat about the "big" new changes. The biggest change? Making twitter more visual and engaging. In order to achieve this, Twitter has released a "timeline-y" feel for profiles that feature a large image at the top. The main image now displays the users info (Twitter handle, account name & description) over the new feature image. Costolo stated that: "what we've hear over and over again from our users is that they [...]

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Sometimes, it is the size of your hashtag that matters. In Seattle this week, the Space Needle launched a contest that will let one person place his/her own design atop the iconic structure for six months. And one of the ways the Needle is promoting the contest is with a Twitter campaign around the #topthis hashtag -- which has also been painted on top of the Space Needle. [caption id="attachment_19767" align="alignnone" width="600"] Courtesy the Space Needle[/caption] The hashtag and campaign has already gotten pretty heavy press coverage in Seattle, with news helicopters showing how [...]

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The sad reality of Twitter is that the majority of users believe that a user's number of Twitter followers is a metric of affluence. Of course, this perception as opened up a market of purchasing popularity, or buying Twitter followers. Presidential candidates, national journalists and TV stars have been accused of artificially inflating their follower counts through purchases. A new post from Barracuda Labs takes a look a bit further at some of the stats around the artificial follower economy, and the results are quite staggering. Baraccuda uncovered 20 different sellers of Twi [...]

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Nevermind kicking kids off the lawn; some brands want (and need) to keep kids off their Twitter follower lists. That's now possible thanks to a partnership between Twitter and Buddy Media that gives anyone -- not just brands -- with a Twitter account the ability to screen the age of their followers. To make it happen, brands have to begin by signing up for Buddy Media's Age Screening service, which can be done via age.twitter.com. The content there explains that there's an approval process, which suggests that regular folks (non-brands like me, for example) will be a lower priority tha [...]

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Sometimes when visiting a Twitter profile page users can be inundated with a list of reply Tweets to other users instead of seeing what someone is up to.  This reply-heavy timeline typically ocurs during back and forth exchanges.  Today Twitter has announced the release of a reply-free user profile option to help users cut through the clutter and conversations. When visiting a profile page users will be given the option to either view all Tweets from a user or showing "No replies": If you are following both a user and the person they are exchanging with, you will still see the ex [...]

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Currently new Twitter users visit the site and are all recommended nearly the same accounts to follow.  This will soon be changing thanks to new "tailored suggestions."  So not everyone will be advised to follow Justin Bieber, Katy Perry or one of the Kardashians.  The new functionality will match up top accounts with information collected from the user.  So those that like sports might not have Paris Hilton recommended to them. When displaying the list of tailored suggestions, a list of tweets from the accounts can be viewed to provide a better sampler platter for the user: Cu [...]

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