Twitter: The Best Of The Week (March 28-April 3, 2009)

Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 10:30 pm

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This is a new weekly feature. Check out previous Twitter highlights here and here.

The Growth of Twitter

Twistimage.com has some fantastically-detailed stats looking at the growth of Twitter (which includes an incredible 1,382% year-over-year growth).

Twitter tweaks replies…

Replies on Twitter are now ‘mentions‘, with the system now tracking any reference to your username (i.e., @sheamus), made at any point within a tweet, and not just at the beginning as previously. This is a positive and logical step-forward, and you can read my thoughts here.

… and hire’s ex-Google designer

Twitter hires Doug Bowman, former Visual Design Lead at Google, as their Creative Director.

Is Guy Kawasaki Single-Handedly Ruining Twitter?

If Kawasaki’s recommended approach to using the network becomes the norm, quite possibly, so says Traffic.com.

April Fool’s Day

Twitter was hit hard by japesters for almost the entire day; technically the cut-off point for April Fool’s jokes didn’t come to pass until midday in Hawaii. Here’s some of the best:

The Guardian switches completely to Twitter after 188 years of ink
Have you signed up for Twitter Pro yet?
Go back in time and backdate tweets to usurp your rivals using TARDIS Tweet.

Twitter Unveils The ‘Discovery Engine’

Which basically means they’ve added the real-time search box to the homepage for some users (it’s slowly being phased in for the rest).

Is Google Buying Twitter?

Rumours that Google were in the latter stages of an attempt to purchase Twitter (for a rumoured $250-500m) proved unfounded, but got a lot of folk twitching, with some speculating Twitter wouldn’t sell even for a cool $1 billion.

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