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Popular social media networking site, Twitter, on Monday suffered a loss in shares after a security firm affirmed that the platform was hacked to enable the hackers steal users’ information. Prior to this episode, the platform had experienced an unusual traffic, causing an emergency investigation suggesting that the occurrence may be resulting from “state-sponsored” hackers. Twitter claims that while investigating a security bug that leaked data and users’ country codes, it also uncovered a malicious traffic to a customer-support forum. Accordingly, the traffic notably came from an IP address in China and Saudi Arabia. China, the prime suspect in this denies any ties with the internet hackers and promises to cooperate in cracking down such malicious behaviour. Twitter said in the blog post: “While we cannot confirm intent or attribution for certain, it is possible that some of these IP addresses may have ties to state-sponsored actor… We continue to e...

In an effort to push positivity and cut down on hateful conversations on its platform. Twitter is testing a number of new features and is already working on a new design for replies within the app, introducing a threaded UI. The company first showed off the feature a few weeks ago, and has refined the design to welcome more conversations. Sara Haider, director of product management at Twitter, and Mike Kruzeniski, senior director of product design, discussed the new features this week at an event hosted by Fast Company in New York City. “We want the best conversation for you coming to you as quickly as possible,” Kruzeniski said at the event. “Can you tell us what you’re interested in? And [can] we quickly get you to that conversation?” More importantly, Twitter is working on a new “status” feature. Soon, users will be able to set their availability — essentially showing if you are online or offline. Once you set your availability, you ca...

Twitter will now highlight when it takes an action on a reported tweet, making its over 330 million users understand that the tweet was forcibly taken down and not deleted by its user owing to public outrage. According to twitter when the tweet is about to be deleted, Twitter will display a notice stating that the Tweet is unavailable because it violated the Twitter Rules along with a link to the Rules. This notice will be displayed on both the account’s profile and the specific Tweet for 14 days after the Tweet is deleted. The users further complained that they do not want to continue seeing the Tweets that have been reported. So that too has been resolved once the update rolls out if a person had reported a Tweet, it will be hidden behind a notice and if there’s a need to see the reported Tweet, the user can tap the notification to view it. "Now, once we"ve required a Tweet to be deleted, we will display a notice stating that the Tweet is unavailable because it violated th...

How many characters is an emoji? It seems like a simple question, but on Twitter the answer has not always been clear. Some emojis count as a single character while others eat further into the character count. But now this is changing — Twitter has announced that all emojis will now be treated equally. Previously, emoji that could be modified in various ways — such as changing the skin tone of people — would use up large numbers of characters. No more! Twitter made the announcement about the change in a post to its developer forums : Due to the differences in the way written text and emojis are encoded, many emojis (including emojis where you can apply gender and skin tone) have counted as more characters than other emojis, limiting the room for people to express themselves in other ways. There was also a difference in character counts amongst emojis, adding to the confusion. Moving forward, in support of recent updates to Unicode, Twitter will now count all emojis equ...

If you’re on Twitter and like to have full control over data usage on your smartphone, then a new Data Saver mode will be of interest. Starting today, you will be able to switch to a data-saving mode on your iOS or Android version of the Twitter app, as spotted by 9to5Mac . You will be able to reduce the data usage by switching on the data saver mode. To get the feature, ensure that your app is up-to-date. Now, head to the Data Usage settings and turn on the mode. When enabled, the images will load in lower quality and the videos won’t autoplay. You can choose to see a higher quality image by tapping on the more icon and selecting ‘Load High Quality’. If you happen to be on a restricted or low-data plan, Data Saver is a sure-fire way to keep your Twitter data usage down and, if you’re a particularly heavy user of the social media app, perhaps give you some peace of mind toward the end of the month. Data Saver makes the app a little more like Twitter Lite, t...

After more than two years of complaints by users who have long clamoured for a return to the chronological timeline—Twitter has finally announced a change to the way it shows tweet posts to users. The announcement detailed a future that includes switching back and forth between an algorithmically sorted timeline and one that shows all tweet posts from your followers, in reverse-chronological order, much like the one Twitter launched with in 2006. Prior to the update, The default setting for Twitter "Show the best tweets first," which helps Twitter"s algorithms determined what posts you would see and prioritised those with a lot of engagement from people you followed. People have been complaining about this version of the timeline ever since it debuted. Before now, there has been an option to turn off "Show the best tweets first" in your settings. If you did this, tweets would mostly appear in reverse chronological order. There would, however, always be a disrup...

Twitter radio, sounds nice huh!! For years, Twitter has offered at least some form of live video, but what if you can"t or don"t want to put your face on camera? You no longer have to point followers to some other app else to hear your thoughts—The iOS versions of both the main Twitter app and Periscope now support audio-only live broadcasts, giving you the chance to reel in listeners without having to make yourself presentable or draw attention to your presence. You can track audience stats like you can with video, as well. When updating Periscope to the latest version, the live streaming video app now allows users to create audio-only broadcasts. The latest version description reads: “Ever want to just talk with your audience on Periscope? In this update you can go live with audio only, so your viewers can hear (but not see) you. To try out an audio-only broadcast, tap on the new microphone icon on the broadcast setup screen. You can select this option before you start yo...

Back in July this year, social network Twitter updated its Android app with a bottom navigation bar that makes it easier for the users to navigate around the app without requiring any hand gymnastics. Well now, Twitter has started testing two new features which the company hopes will make Twitter more “conversational”. Sara Haider – Head of Product at Twitter – announced that the company is testing two new features to make Twitter “feel more conversational”. One of these features is “reply threading” which will show replies on Twitter in a threaded (nested, if you want to call that) manner, thus making it much more easier to read them – something similar to the comments on Facebook (and Instagram too ). Haider says these changes are being considered in an effort to make Twitter more conversational. “hey Twitter, we’ve been playing with some rough features to make it feel more conversational here. Presence and reply threa...

Twitter, more than any other social media company, faces a unique challenge even after more than a decade of existence: It still doesn"t know how to explain it"s functionality to its new users. But 12 years after launch, the company is finally making a statement that can be heard. It has recently shifted its marketing strategy to a top notch and user growth is on the rise once again. Oh yeah, it"s also profitable for the first time in a long time. Keith Coleman, Twitter’s vice president of product, said in the blog post : “We’ve been working to change how you discover all the information around news, events, and stories, and today, we’re sharing a few steps forward,” also added “It’ll be easier to find and follow the big events and stories you care about in your timeline, Notifications and Explore. Also, there’s a new look and feel for Moments showing everything you’d want to see.” The company shared that it"s working on change...

There is no point in keeping a business website if it does not have any digital footfall. Your business website is the marketing tool for your company. This is why you should check whether it is generating sales leads for you or not. When it comes to website traffic ensure that you use social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and the likes. Social media platforms provide you with affordable traffic. There are some platforms like Instagram and Pinterest that focus on photo sharing. These platforms help you to generate inbound traffic consistently with images and videos. Planning a social media posting strategy Do you feel that your posts are getting lost in the social media world? If you experience such instances, the truth is you are not alone. If you closely examine the world of social media today, you will find that it is hard to increase traffic sans the spamming of links, automated bots, and the irritating sales pitches. This is where social media platf...

If you"re one of those people who enjoy using Twitter on their TV, you"re in for some bad news. Twitter today announced that it will discontinue its apps on the Xbox One, Roku, and Android TV. The apps will no longer be available beginning this Thursday, May 24. The report was first sighted on twitter support page , after a tweet on the cancellation of their app on listed device. The tweet which reads: “On Thursday, May 24, Twitter for Roku, Twitter for Android TV and Twitter for Xbox will no longer be available. To get the full Twitter experience, visit https://twitter.com on your device or desktop. The Android TV app was published in late 2016, and it allowed users to watch Twitter live streams (football, coverage of political events, etc) and view Moments. It was last updated in December 2017 and currently sits at 10,000-100,000 installations, so it"s not surprising why Twitter would decide to end development. The Roku and Xbox apps offered similar functionality. The...

Do you want to know what does a "healthy" social media network look like in 2018? For Twitter, it includes making "disruptive" tweets that "distort the conversation" less visible. Starting from today, The micro-blogging platform announced it will roll out a tweak to its algorithm that will obscure tweets categorised in this way, so that they are not immediately seen by users. According to Del Harvey, Twitter VP of Trust & Safety, a small subset of tweets have an outsize impact on the "health" of the Twitter platform. "Not necessarily in a way that violates our rules, but in a way that really detracts from the conversation," she said. The new feature is particularly aimed at search results and conversations — spaces it deems to be "communal" — Twitter will hide or push down "disruptive" tweets without waiting for them to be reported. The tweets will not be deleted if they don"t violate the site"s term ...

It is alarming, but yet nothing to worry about... just a few precautions to take. The micro blogging service- Twitter- discovered a bug that left the passwords of users in an internal log “unmasked”. This means that instead of showing up as an encrypted set of random sets of letters and numbers, the password itself was displayed in plain text. In a blog post released by the social media company, it was revealed that a bug had been identified that caused the password hashing process (which replaces your password with a random string of letters and numbers) to fail, leaving the unmasked passwords of its users stored in an internal log. Twitter is urging all of its more than 330 million users to immediately change their passwords after a bug exposed them in plain text. The bug occurred due to an issue in the hashing process that masks passwords by replacing them with a random string of characters that get stored on Twitter’s system. But due to an error with the system, a...

Indeed, it has been an incredible year for this social media platform and we can only say Twitter is having a surprisingly good 2018 in all areas especially from a business perspective. Not only has the company made a profit for the second time in its history, but its users-base is also growing massively. Twitter also revealed while reporting its Q1 2018 earnings that it expects to be profitable throughout the rest of the year, which would be a significant turnaround after four years of losses as a public company. Twitter posted its first ever quarterly profit this last quarter and now its active users’ number has added 6 million new monthly users during their first quarter. It has only been this good twice since the start of 2015. In the most recent quarters, it added 3 million monthly users or fewer, and it even lost users in some period. Read more: More Users On Twitter But Still Can’t Break The Ads Earnings Ceiling Twitter also reported $61 million in earnings durin...

Uganda has revealed its intentions to impose a tax on social media users starting July. Although the lawmakers say it"s a way to generate revenue, activists have stormed the social media to denounce such imposition, claiming it"s another attempt by President Yoweri Museveni to limit freedom of speech and thus overrule his 32-year-old rule, Reuters reported. Uganda has a population of about 41 million, 23.6 million use mobile phones, and 17 million are internet subscribers. Unlike some other western countries, data costs in many parts of Africa are outrageous. In fact, according to statistics by the digital advocacy group World Wide Web Foundation, internet costs are among the world"s highest. The Finance Minister, in a telephone interview with Reuters, says that users of platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook would be taxed 200 Ugandan shillings ($0.027) daily. When asked about the effect on stifling people"s use of the internet, he declined to give a resp...

Been on Twitter recently? And have you tried quoting a tweet today? If you have, you will notice that the feature ‘Retweet with a quote” has been replaced with “Retweet with a comment” on the twitter mobile app. Users can still quote tweets, however, the micro-blogging platform simply changed the words that makes it happen. Most times, prior to rolling out new features, Twitter announces updates either through its official blog or handle. In this case however, the company did not hint users on the replacement. This is why it came as a surprise to many. The changes done by the company,  has been one of the many features the micro-blogging platform has added in the past few months. In March, the company introduced a bookmark feature which enables users to easily save tweets for later. In September 2017, the company extended the platform’s word limit from 140 to 280 characters , a move which got mixed reactions from its users. Most twitter users , noticed...

Nicola Sturgeon, Ruth Davidson, and Kezia Dugdale are supporting an Amnesty International campaign which claims that Twitter has become baneful for women. The three women reported that they had been threatened with death and rape on the social network. Twitter disagrees with the human rights group; says its network has no power to "delete hatred and prejudice from the society." It"s worse on social media because there"s no real conversation taking place, so it"s much easier for people to become toxic behind their keyboards. It emphasised further that it had reviewed its policies severally to improve safety and curtail abusive tweets on its network. The #ToxicTwitter campaign features interviews of over 80 women which give detail on violence and abuse against women on issues about race and sexual preferences.  These women are threatened with rape and death on a daily, with journalists and public figures being targets.  Twitter users who are not public figures w...

In the wake of the scandal involving the most extensive social network and the political consulting firm, it is likely that other software developers and internet companies will be investigated over how they share users" data. The latest decision to probe other tech giants will likely affect Alphabet Inc."s Google, Twitter, Uber Technologies, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and a host of many others that make users" data available to third-party developers, a similar case to what drove Facebook into the mess. Facebook allows numerous software developers to operate on its network, thereby granting them the access to harvest users" data. The main issue is how the collated data got into the hands of Cambridge Analytica. Given this, lawmakers in the US and the European Union have requested for an investigation into how the British firm was given the access to the data of 50 million users.  Notably, other internet companies are guilty of a similar offence because as long as user...

The latest allegations against Facebook is not going well with users as #DeleteFacebook has been trending on Twitter. Many users are uncomfortable with the knowledge that Cambridge Analytica accessed personal data from 50 million Facebook users to influence the 2016 presidential election in the United States. A lot of users have taken to Twitter to persuade other users to delete Facebook or boycott the social media with hashtags- #DeleteFacebook and #BoycottFacebook. A trending tweet read: " Finally deleted my @facebook account. If you"re angry about what Facebook has done with our data, then just #deletefacebook. We all moved from MySpace; we can move on from facebook too. Remember we aren"t the customers we are the product ." Nevertheless, it"s ironical to backlash a social media platform with another that could be guilty of a similar offense.  Without a doubt, every social media platform gathers data on users- Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and a host of man...

Following Facebook and Google’s footsteps, according Sky News . Twitter is  planning to ban advertisements for cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings (ICOs). Earlier this year in January, in an effort to combat deceptive marketers,  Facebook prohibited ads for currencies such as Bitcoin and other crypto currency while last week Google followed and announced its intention to ban all cryptocurrency ads on their site. Sky News reportedly (via Engadget ) , that the new Twitter advertising banning policies for ICOs to token sales and cryptocurrency wallets will commence worldwide. The report also added that the site might also ban ads for cryptocurrency exchanges, but with some possible exceptions. The ban could begin in as soon as two weeks. This isn’t the first set of steps that Twitter has taken to stop deceptive cryptocurrency scams: it says that it will start taking down accounts that ask for small amounts of a cryptocurrency while impersonating celebrities ...