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Tag: Twitter

Developers take notes as Twitter rebrands as X – and kills the bird for good

THE POWER OF A BRAND Rebranding could very well be the most strategic decision an organization ever makes. Brand equity, after all, represents the sum total of how customers, end-users, and other stakeholders feel about the organization – and why they choose to interact with it in the first place. It can’t be bought, it must be earned and strengthened over time. Executed well, a rebranding can build on that foundation. It can keep the brand fresh and competitive – even relevant – amid the relentless pace of changing consumer trends, and of course shifting competitive pressures. A botched...

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Is Meta Threads a Twitter killer? The answer may surprise you.

REWRITING THE LANDSCAPE Meta bills Threads as a new app “for sharing tech updates and joining public conversations.” At first glance, it looks a lot like a mashup of Twitter and Instagram. The visual language is all Instagram, while the functions are reminiscent of early-days Twitter – before the bots, the trolls, and the Elon Musk-imposed daily usage limits. None of this is a surprise given how Meta itself describes Threads: “Instagram is where billions of people around the world connect over photos and videos. Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does...

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DeSantis campaign launch livestream meltdown reaffirms Twitter’s tech decline

BIG HOPES, DASHED What should have been a 21st century digital political coming out party quickly turned into an unmitigated technological meltdown as Twitter’s servers failed under the load of an estimated 600,000 visitors. The plan was for Elon Musk to introduce the Florida governor in a Twitter Space virtual livestream, then have DeSantis take the stage and announce his bid. But it quickly devolved into a string of glitchy audio as Musk and his team wrestled with technology that refused to cooperate. After about 20 minutes, Twitter pulled the plug on the livestream. When...

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Twitter source code gets leaked online. Here’s why it matters.

THE SECRET SAUCE, NO LONGER SECRET The New York Times reported on March 26th that Twitter had sent a copyright infringement notice to GitHub. The company asked the developer forum to remove a repository containing what it said was leaked source code. GitHub removed the code the same day, and while it was not immediately known when the leak first occurred, the Times reported the code had been exposed for a number of months. The optics are troubling. Any leak of source code is worrisome for any company. For a software or platform company, however, it’s infinitely worse. Source code...

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Ongoing Twitter outages speak volumes about infrastructure’s importance

A GATHERING STORM Whether it’s an API error, or simply a notification that you’ve exceeded your allowed number of followed accounts, it falls well short of a complete outage or a network-wide meltdown. To the typical end-user presented with these errors, Twitter is still largely operational, but it seems to be experiencing a series of annoying glitches here and there. Over time, the annoyance factor adds up. None of this is enough to trigger a mass response from the platform’s 300 million users. Yet. But it is enough to highlight an unwelcome increase in the reports of intermittent outages...

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Twitter, Elon Musk, and a critical lesson for developers

OUTSIDE EXPERTS Hidden in the rapid-fire series of headlines, tweets, kitchen sinks, and aborted verification checkmark introductions was a tiny tidbit of information around programming languages. When Mr. Musk first settled into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, CNBC reported he brought along a core team of software engineers and other staff from Tesla’s Autopilot autonomous vehicle team. According to CNBC, Musk has tasked this team to review Twitter’s source code and begin planning for a revamp of the entire platform. It is this decision that deserves to be studied more closely...

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5 Social Media Tips to Prevent Pandemic Info Overload

1. STICK TO VERIFIED AND RELIABLE SOURCES It’s easy to get overwhelmed with information, from facts to opinions to everything in between, when your eyes are glued to social media all day. This information overload can get worse if your friends on Facebook and Twitter are posting and then sharing each other’s posts. Streamline the information you consume by sticking to verified and reliable sources. Start with sites like CDC.gov, the WHO website, official national websites (think Canada.ca) and their Facebook or Twitter pages, and the social media output of scientists...

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