Posted by Alan

Twitter is all about you.

“Whether you are a real person, a business or a brand, and earlier this month, you got a makeover,” according to one bespoke web development firm. The first time you saw it, you might have thought there was something wrong with your browser. Something looked different, and you might have wondered if your computer had been hacked or maybe your browser was on the blink.

There were three changes to tweets:

• Best Tweets: Tweets that receive more engagement appear slightly larger
• Pinned Tweet: You can pin a Tweet to the top of your page
• Filtered Tweets: You can choose which timeline to view when reviewing other profiles

The pinned tweet is a nice idea, because it gives you a way to highlight a specific tweet, that isn’t pushed down by your less important tweets. I’ve always tried to handle this by choosing the order that I tweet at a particular time, but that only lasts as long as you can hold of saying something new.

Filtered tweets are good too, because you can set whether you look at tweets, tweets with photos or videos or tweets and replies. I like this.

Best tweets might have to grow on me over time. Increasing the size of the font for tweets with added engagement is a reasonable idea, but I’m not sure I like it yet. And what happens to a tweet that goes viral and gets massive engagement? Does it take over the whole screen?

The other things that changed are that the new web profile allows for a larger profile photo, and a customized header. Nice changes.

Posted by Alan

What the Trend says it is “The front page of the real-time web.”

If you want to discover the current trends on Twitter, and the reason they are trending, What the Trend tells you what and why.

Two types of messages drive What The Trend – short phrases and hashtags.

The site gets its trending information using the twitter API, then What The Trend members pitch in, to say why they think the items are interesting, providing a short description of it. Then, What The Trend staff moderate the descriptions and send them back out in their own feed. That feed runs on many other sites, including Twitter.

Tweeternet will keep an eye on it and it we think it is valuable, we may decide to run it at Tweeternet too.

The current top 10 things trending, as I write this are:

Currently Trending on Twitter, According To What The Trend

• Katie Couric
• #sincewebeinghonest people are being honest.
• #thingsthatpissmeoff people disrespecting my personal space.
• #iLoveWhen Things, people or activities you love.
• NHS NHS patients able to get free treatment almost anywhere they want – public or private – under radical reforms unveiled.
• TAYLOR WON Taylor Swift wins ACMA Entertainer of the Year.
• Pet Shop Boys The Pet Shop Boys will support Take That on their upcoming Progress Live tour.
• Kate Bush Singer Kate Bush says she is ‘likely’ to release new music this year.
• Alan Titchmarsh One Direction are going to be on the show 3/4pm tonight.
• Martin Luther King The third Monday in January is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the US, a national holiday remembering the famous Baptist preacher and civil rights pioneer.

Posted by Alan

Tim Martin, the NewsBlaze Technology Specialist says there is a new exploit affecting thousands of twitter users.

Twitter updated their website last week and there is now a vulnerability.

The Exploit

The exploit takes advantage of the Javascript function on MouseOver. It allows the links to launch popup windows, and some users are being directed to spam and porn sites.

This exploit only affects users who are on the twitter.com website, so anyone using a third party website or a software application, is not affected.

Twitter released a basic acknowledgment of the flaw and says that it’s working to correct it. “We’ve identified and are patching an XSS attack; as always, please message @safety (Twitter’s official security account) if you have info regarding such an exploit,” the company wrote in a tweet.

XSS is shorthand for Cross Site Scripting. This Twitter Exploit should be resolved quickly.

Tim Martin is a Technology Specialist, Follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/tsmartin75 or on Twitter @tsmartin.

Posted by Alan

For some time now, people have been talking about how twitter could improve the notification emails.

The previous notification format, that told you about a new follower, looked like this:

Bob Calvert (talkwithheroes) is now following your tweets on Twitter.

A little information about Bob Calvert:

Now, since July 15th, the new, more compact format provides more information. Now included is a mini bio for the person following you, their location and the number of lists they have.

This is a nice improvement. I like it because it helps me decide immediately if I should take a closer look now, or just wait until later, as I often do.

Posted by Alan

The email message says “Your friend invited you to twitter!”

Sadly, it isn’t true. The sender isn’t twitter at all, but a spambot, sending you a virus-infected file, in zip format.

So delete the message and be sure it is purged from your mailbox.

Here is one of the messages, so you can see what it looks like:

Your friend invited you to twitter!

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question:

What are you doing?

To join or to see who invited you, check the attachment.