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  • RNC Night Two: Paul Ryan takes the stage

    Wednesday, August 29, 2012

    Tonight delegates from across the country gathered in the Tampa Bay Times Forum for the second night of speeches at the Republican National Convention. The headliner was Rep. Paul Ryan, who was officially nominated to become the Vice Presidential nominee. Ryan excited the crowd and got people talking on Twitter... In fact, Tweets about the #GOP2012 convention topped two million as Ryan took the stage—six times the Tweets sent about the 2008 conventions combined.

    The Republican VP nominee also drove the top three peaks tonight in Tweets-per-minute, the highest coming at the conclusion of his speech: 6,669. A big part of that conversation was people tweeting Ryan’s most quotable moments:
    And his “faded Obama posters” line has already inspired a Twitter parody account: @FadedObama.

    Among the other speakers, the night’s biggest star was former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Her speech peaked at 3,961 Tweets per minute, higher than any speaker outside of Ryan. Much of the Twitter conversation was about the style of her speech:
    And noting that she delivered the speech without a teleprompter...
    Stay tuned to @gov for more updates tomorrow from the big finale of the Republican National Convention!

    Posted by Adam Sharp, Head of Government, News and Social Innovation (@AdamS)


    Posted by @ at 8:28 PM

  • Twitter Certified Products: Tools for Businesses

    As the number of businesses that turn to Twitter to keep in touch with their customers grows, so does the variety of their needs. We hear continually from companies looking for tools to help them engage with customers, understand what people are saying about them on Twitter, and learn more about their followers so they can share more valuable, timely content.

    Meanwhile, there is a thriving ecosystem of Twitter developers building products and services that address these needs and help businesses grow. To make it easier for businesses to find the right tools, we’re launching the Twitter Certified Products Program. Certified Products represent some of the best offerings in these three categories:

    1. Engagement: To get closer to customers on Twitter. One example: Sprinklr has helped companies such as GM, Virgin America and Nike respond to Tweets at scale.

    2. Analytics: To measure activity on Twitter and offer insights into what people are saying. For instance, Crimson Hexagon has helped Hollywood studios better understand how conversation on Twitter relates to box office success.

    3. Data reseller: To make a large number of public Tweets available to partners to build products and services. For example, Gnip and DataSift power many of the monitoring and analytics products on the market.
    Today, we’re launching the program with twelve partners:


    We’re working closely with this group of partners to help shape their products to fit the needs we hear about from our brand, publishing and media partners.

    And this is just the beginning. We look forward to adding more partners to the program, especially as developers continue to invest in these areas. Our Developer Blog has more information about the types of products we want to see in the program as well as how to apply, here.

    Doug Williams - @dougw
    Manager, Business Development

    Posted by @ at 10:11 AM

  • Here come the Paralympics

    Tuesday, August 28, 2012

    Just as Olympics withdrawal is starting to set in for many of us, the 2012 Paralympics are getting underway. During the Olympic Games, fans around the world sent more than 150 million Tweets cheering for their athletes and teams. As we head into the Paralympics, Twitter will once again be the place to watch the competition unfold, as well as get closer to the extraordinary stories of the Paralympic athletes.

    One of the breakout stars on the track (and on Twitter) during the Olympics was South African runner and double amputee Oscar Pistorius (@OscarPistorius), with more than 250,000 Tweets celebrating his accomplishment. Now he’s heading to the Paralympics, and giving his fellow sprinters an idea of what to train for:

    Many other Paralympians are using Twitter to mark their journey to London. Track star Jarryd Wallace (@aleginfaith) tweeted a photo of a slight snag in his high-speed training:

    Alana Nichols (@alananichols21), a member of the U.S. wheelchair basketball team, tells us exactly what it takes to get the group to London:

    One the world’s fastest women, April Holmes (@AprilHolmes), has been tweeting about her journey to London. As she says, “I look at Twitter like it’s an extension of my leg.” Here she debuts the custom spikes she’ll be competing in:
    And among her many fans is NBA superstar @Shaq:

    As the Paralympians settle into Olympic Village, they’re tweeting about their excitement:

    We can’t wait to see what this awesome group of athletes will share from tonight’s Opening Ceremony and throughout the ten day competition. To keep up with all the action, follow the official Paralympic Games (@Paralympic), the US team (@USParalympics) and the 94 tweeting team members on this list.

    Posted by Karen Wickre, Editorial Director (@kvox)

    Posted by @ at 11:48 PM

  • Tweets rev up as RNC kicks off

    The Republican National Convention officially began yesterday but the big ticket activities kicked off today. First order of business: formally selecting @MittRomney as the Republican nominee for President. Tweets related to #GOP2012 during today’s roll call peaked at 1,448 per minute at 5:44p ET — the first large spike in conversation of the convention.

    But #GOP2012 tweeters were just getting warmed up. Tonight’s speeches helped drive peaks in conversation far higher than at any point earlier in the day.

    One of the night’s most anticipated speakers was @AnnDRomney. In fact, the highest Tweets per minute spike of the entire night — 6,195 — came when Governor Romney joined his wife on stage at the end of her speech.

    Garrett Jackson, the Governor’s body man, tweeted a photo of Romney watching his wife’s speech from backstage.
    It wasn’t just that Mrs. Romney’s speech inspired a lot of conversation, but Twitter responded positively as well. Her Twitter Political Index score nearly doubled over the course of her speech, from 45 to 83— the biggest increase for any of the night’s speakers.

    Gov. Chris Christie’s speech inspired the second highest spike in conversation for the night (6,079 Tweets per minute), at the point of his line about a “second American century”. Right after he was finished, the Governor began tweeting from the special account he set up for the night: @ChristieKeynote.
    @RickSantorum’s speech inspired a lot of conversation, though much of it was satire about a moment in his speech mentioning hands. Even David Axelrod stepped across the aisle to join the conversation.
    Keep following @gov this week. We’ll have more to share as the convention rolls on.

    Posted by Adam Sharp, Head of Government, News and Social Innovation (@AdamS)

    Posted by @ at 8:45 PM

  • Tweets from Tampa

    Here in Tampa at the 2012 Republican National Convention, hashtags are the new political slogan:
    While the speeches will be at the podium this week, the conversation will be on Twitter: we’ve already seen more Tweets about this week’s confab than we saw during the entire week of the 2008 Republican convention. To gather the most relevant, interesting Tweets during the convention we’ve created an event page at Twitter.com/#GOP2012. Here you’ll see Tweet highlights from behind the scenes and on the floor. You’ll find Tweets from Romney campaign staff, convention organizers, delegates, insiders and some of the 15,000 journalists and observers on the ground. For political junkies who can’t be in Tampa themselves, the event page offers an insiders view of the action.

    Of course, our Twitter team is spending the week on the ground to provide support to our users, the convention organizers and the media. We’ll also be releasing interesting data to share as big moments unfold on the convention floor and on Twitter.

    Here’s a great Tweet from @johnboehner from the floor:
    Besides keeping up with Twitter.com/#GOP2012, be sure to follow @gov for more Twitter insights from the convention floor. And stay tuned next week, when we head to Charlotte for the Democratic National Convention.

    Posted by Adam Sharp, Head of Government, News and Social Innovation (@AdamS)

    Posted by @ at 7:11 AM

  • Bootstrap 2.1 and counting

    Monday, August 20, 2012


    A year ago we introduced the world to Twitter Bootstrap, a sleek and powerful open source project that helps you build awesome stuff on the web with speed, ease and style. Bootstrap was made to help our engineers improve the tools we use to run Twitter internally; we quickly recognized that folks outside the company could make use of it as well. Fast forward one year to today, Bootstrap's first birthday, and we have a massively popular project that keeps growing while staying true to its ultimate goal: helping anyone make amazing software for the web.

    Today, we want to highlight Bootstrap's growth and impact over the last 12 months and introduce the newest version, Bootstrap 2.1.

    Popularity

    Within a few months of its launch, the project grew to be the most popular project on the world's largest social coding service, GitHub. Since then, we've released a handful of updates to continually close bugs, add awesome new features, and make it easier to use for those who are less familiar with web design. In all, we've closed thousands of bugs while adding dozens of features to help make more compelling and visually pleasing web sites and applications. The open source community has been incredibly kind and appreciative about Bootstrap over the last year, so we're delighted to keep giving back.

    Community

    Speaking of community, Bootstrap wouldn't be the success it is today without a lot of love and support from the development and open source communities. Looking past just the bug reports and feature requests, we have an amazing set of people contributing directly to Bootstrap. More than 100 people have pushed code to Bootstrap. That's a stat we're not only proud of, but excited to see grow.

    We're constantly amazed at the number and scope of projects using Bootstrap. Some of our favorites come from larger organizations: NASA's code.nasa.gov, NBC's BreakingNews.com, and the White House Digital Government initiative. Looking back to the startup community we’ve come from, there are many teams like SoundReady, Kippt, and Jetstrap using Bootstrap to create brand new products and services.

    Bootstrap 2.1

    With Bootstrap 2.1, we focused on simplicity. We completely overhauled the documentation to make it easier for people just getting to know Bootstrap and web development. We placed more emphasis on live examples and succinct, thorough text to walk people through each aspect. And, as is the case with every release, we've added a handful of new features and made existing ones even better. But that just brushes the surface: we've closed over 100 issues in Bootstrap 2.1—issues all reported and documented by the very folks who use it.

    Looking forward

    The Web is a constantly changing place, and the tools we use to build for that evolving landscape need to reflect it. Looking ahead, we will continue focus on simplicity as we add new features, improve mobile functionality, and encourage developers to embrace new techniques as we add them to the framework. The last year has been a blast, and we're excited to keep improving Bootstrap with every release in order to help others make the web a better place.

    Posted by Mark Otto (@mdo), Designer

    Posted by @ at 5:38 PM

  • #OnlyOnTwitter: Unforgettable music moments

    Friday, August 17, 2012

    After so much (well-deserved) focus on the incredible feats — and notable Tweets — of Olympic athletes recently, we wanted to switch gears and shine a light on some of the best musical moments to come out of the London games.

    The theme of last Sunday night’s Closing Ceremony was a “symphony of British music”, and music ruled the night on Twitter too. Besides the Opening Ceremony’s unforgettable “Chariots of Fire” performance featuring Rowan "Mr Bean" Atkinson, Britain’s music legends like The Who, Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Elton John, to name a few, also captivated the crowd.

    A special shout-out goes to Scottish-Zambian singer Emeli Sandé (@EmeliSande), one of the stars of the Closing Ceremony, for live-tweeting her performance. Her Tweets offer a lively perspective on what it’s like to sing in front of thousands and share the stage with the UK’s most famous acts.


    She’s since gained tens of thousands of followers, and is seeing a positive outpouring of conversation around her music.

    A few more of the world’s favorite artists found time to live-tweet the Closing Ceremony’s unforgettable moments. A high point: when the much-loved Spice Girls reunited for the big close, which sparked more than 116,000 Tweets per minute. They gave us all a blast from the past as they performed two of their hottest hits, “Wanna-be” (classic) and “Spice Up Your Life.” Suffice it to say that Baby, Sporty, Ginger, Posh and Scary Spice were in full Girl Power mode.

    English singer Jessie J (@JessieJ) performed her songs “Dynamite” and “Price Tag,” she also debuted a light remix of the Queen’s classic “We Will Rock You.” British rap star, Tinie Tempah (@TinieTempah) joined Jessie J and Taio Cruz (@TaioCruz) to end up their show with the Bee Gees’ song “Dancing.”

    Before hitting the stage, @JessieJ tweeted a photo from backstage in full costume:

    @VictoriaBeckham (‘Posh Spice’) tweeted her unforgettable moment:

    And who knew that British rapper @TinieTempah is a huge Spice Girls fan?

    Twitter brought us closer to everything we love about music and the Olympics during the London Games. And as the world watched, performers captured unforgettable moments and shared their life-changing moments.

    Posted by Tatiana Simonian, Head of Music (@tatiana)

    Posted by @ at 12:30 PM

  • Olympic (and Twitter) records

    Sunday, August 12, 2012

    On the closing day of the 2012 Summer Olympics, we’re looking back at all of the memorable moments of the London Games: the wins, the losses, the drama, and above all, the Tweets. No matter the sport, Twitter was your front row seat for all the action.

    We saw more than 150 million Tweets about the Olympics over the past 16 days. Let’s take a look at some of the big trends within that massive conversation.

    The biggest moments of competition, as measured by Tweets per minute, were:
    -Usain Bolt (@UsainBolt) of Jamaica wins gold in the 200m sprint: 80,000+ TPM
    -Bolt wins gold in the 100m sprint: 74,000+ TPM
    -Andy Murray (@andy_murray) of Great Britain wins gold in the men’s tennis singles: 57,000+ TPM
    -Jamaica wins gold and sets the world record in the men’s 4x100 relay: 52,000+ TPM
    -Team USA beats Spain to win gold in men’s basketball: 41,000+ TPM

    The biggest tweeting moments that came during the heat of competition (not at a medal-winning conclusion) included Kobe Bryant’s dunk towards the end of the USA-Spain basketball game, and Hope Solo’s (@HopeSolo) land-diving save in the women’s USA-Japan soccer match.

    In addition to inspiring the biggest conversation spike with his 200m win, Usain Bolt also took home the record for being the most discussed athlete of the Games. But he had company — nine other Olympians garnered more than 1 million Tweets each:

    1.Usain Bolt (@UsainBolt)
    2. Michael Phelps (@MichaelPhelps)
    3. Tom Daley (@TomDaley1994)
    4. Ryan Lochte (@ryanlochte)
    5. Gabby Douglas (@gabrielledoug)
    6. Andy Murray (@andy_murray)
    7. Kobe Bryant (#GetKobeOnTwitter)
    8. Yohan Blake (@YohanBlake)
    9. Lee Chong Wei (@Lee_C_Wei)
    10. LeBron James (@KingJames)

    With so many of the athletes on Twitter, we were also treated to some incredible perspectives of their historic accomplishments:


    And which sports saw the most Twitter conversation? Whether you know it best as football, fútbol, soccer, or サッカー, the action on the pitch drove well over 5 million Tweets. Other popular sports were the swimming events, the track & field (athletics) events, gymnastics, and volleyball.

    Finally, the thrill of Olympic sport just wouldn’t be the same without the over-the-top spectacle of the opening and closing ceremonies. Both events drove an incredible volume of Twitter conversation, and experienced their own giant spikes in Tweets per minute. Tonight’s Closing Ceremonies didn’t disappoint — with performances by The Who, George Michael and so many more. But it was the Spice Girls who stole the night, inspiring more than 116,000 Tweets per minute.

    The London Games have been an incredible experience. Like you, we were caught up in the roar of the global crowd and amazed by what the athletes shared — and of course thrilled to watch the world come together on Twitter.

    What do you say we do this again in Rio?

    Posted by Andrew Fitzgerald, Manager, Editorial Programming (@magicandrew)

    Posted by @ at 6:27 PM

  • End of the #Veepstakes

    Saturday, August 11, 2012

    News of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s (@MittRomney) selection of Paul Ryan (@PaulRyanVP) as his running mate spread quickly on Twitter. The conversation peaked at 3,749 Tweets per minute at 9:29 am EDT this morning as Ryan took the stage at a rally in Norfolk, Virginia:


    Speculation about Ryan’s selection began building shortly after 11 pm EDT with word from Romney’s Communications Director (@GGitcho) that an announcement would be coming today, with NBC’s Chuck Todd (@ChuckTodd) confirming the choice shortly after midnight.

    Now that Ryan is on the Romney ticket, his momentum on Twitter is already starting to build. His new @PaulRyanVP account gained about 60,000 followers in the first eight hours following its official launch, and his congressional office account (@RepPaulRyan) is approaching 175,000.

    We’ve also been able to use the Twitter Political Index to measure conversation around the rumored Vice Presidential candidates, which showed mounting support for Ryan relative to other presumed front-runners over several months. With an average Twindex of 33 for the week of April 29, Ryan trailed other rumored candidates, including @MarcoRubio, @RobPortman, and @TimPawlenty. By this week, Ryan was leading the others with an average Twindex of 63.


    The Twitter Political Index is a measurement of Twitter users’ attitudes about the candidates, relative to other topics discussed on Twitter. Scores below 50 indicate a more negative attitude is reflected in Tweets about the candidate, while scores above 50 indicate the average Tweet about the candidate is among the more positive on Twitter.

    The Index is built in partnership with the data analysis team at Topsy (@Topsy) and two respected polling firms: The Mellman Group (@markmellman) and North Star Opinion Research (@northstaropin).

    Both Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) tend to perform better in the Index than the candidates at the top of the ticket. But while President Obama (@BarackObama) has generally scored more positively than Governor Romney over the past six weeks, Ryan has most recently generated more positive sentiment than Biden.


    Ryan’s weekly average Twindex has ranged between 32 and 67 since April 29, with an average just below the neutral point. This range put him right in the middle of the pack among other rumored candidates, and a little bit behind the Vice President, who has ranged between 41 and 77 in the weekly counts.


    The Twitter Political Index also reflected positive shifts for both Obama and Romney following the Ryan announcement. Official Twindex scores are updated each evening at election.twitter.com and from the @gov Twitter account.

    With the volume of Tweets every two days today exceeding all those ever sent prior to the 2008 election, Twitter now provides unique insights into conversations previously limited to coffee shops, water coolers and dinner tables across America. Be sure to follow @gov for additional insights and real-time data as the campaign continues.

    Posted by Adam Sharp, Head of Government, News and Social Innovation (@AdamS)

    Posted by @ at 1:22 PM

  • Countdown to #Chompdown

    Tomorrow night, the world will meet Sharkzilla. That’s right: Discovery Channel’s Shark Week (@SharkWeek) is back! And for the first time, viewers will get to see what it’s like being in the producer’s seat for one of the most popular TV events. During the nightly “chompdown”, viewers will get to choose what they want to see Sharkzilla sink his teeth into. Using the #Chompdown hashtag and item names displayed on air, they can cast their vote for what unlikely item will be consumed by the massive mechanical megalodon.

    It may be Shark Week’s 25th anniversary, but this is the first time we’ve seen a TV program put the outcome of a show right into their viewers’ hands. Viewers can participate in the #chompdown from Sunday through Thursday (Aug 12-16), beginning at 9pm ET and 9pm PT. In true choose-your-own-adventure style, both the east coast and west coast Shark Week audiences will have a chance to choose the outcome that they’ll see at the end of the 10pm hour.

    Fin-atics will also have a chance to be on air by tweeting about #SharkWeek and joining the
    Shark Week Twitter Frenzy, as Discovery Channel puts live fan Tweets on air each night in the 9 and 10pm hours.

    Follow @SharkWeek to stay updated on all the jaw-dropping action, and get ready to cast your votes for what you want to see happen on your TV. Sharkzilla is waiting for everyone to pick his next meal:

    Posted by Grace Chu Lee, TV Partnerships Team (@gracelee)

    Posted by @ at 10:25 AM