Twitter

Following Twitter CEO Evan Williams’ keynote interview at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, where he unveiled the site’s new @anywhere service – the details of which Twitter are still being a little vague about – there was controversy over the interviewing techniques of reporters present at the conference.

As a result, Williams has participated in a number of subsequent interviews; in one of which he discusses the company’s goal to increase the amount of valuable information on Twitter and cut down on users tweeting rubbish. He believes that users can get maximum value out of Twitter without sharing anything about themselves or their personal lives.

Williams has said that the direction Twitter was heading in involved becoming a valuable real information service, rather than simply a social networking site. Discussing the amount of time users spend on Twitter, Williams has said:

“If anything we’d like to decrease it. We want to make Twitter a tool for you that helps you get stuff done.”

He went on to say that Twitter wants to help users find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible, and that they hope to achieve this by ‘increasing the signal-to-noise ratio’.

One of the co-founders of Twitter, Evan Williams, has been telling the BBC how he believes that social networking sites such as Twitter are the future of communication.

Williams says that the open exchange of information as a means of combating censorship and will fundamentally alter the way we interact with our governments.

He also confirmed that Twitter still had no intention of charging users.

“Our goal at Twitter is to be a force for good,” he said. “We have a fundamental belief, having worked on this type of thing for 10 years, that the open exchange of information has a positive impact on the world.”

The challenge now is to extend Twitter’s reach into areas where technology is not so well advanced. Williams thinks that the site’s influence will be even greater in these areas as there is less access to information. Efforts are being made to improve SMS coverage in remote areas of India and in Haiti, as this would allow people to keep in touch with the world even via a relatively low-spec mobile phone.

“My hope is that eventually the open exchange of information will prevail in most regions, but we don’t have any specific plans in China or other areas where we’re blocked,” he added.

According to a new report published by Barracuda Labs, only around one fifth of all users registered on Twitter regularly use their accounts. The study categorises users as active if they:

• Follow more than 10 other Twitter accounts
• Have 10 or more followers
• Have posted more than 10 tweets since signing up to the micro-blogging service

The results of the study showed that only 21 percent of Twitter users match this description and can be classed as active.

Implications
This percentage of active users is much lower than most people’s expectations of Twitter’s total user base. Promotion from celebrities and high-profile figures – dubbed the ‘Twitter Red Carpet Era’ by the report - as well as frequent reports of the service’s popularity in the media result in a misleading impression of how many people actually use Twitter. The results of the Barracuda Labs’ study could have a detrimental impact on Twitter’s ability to attract advertisers, although the strength of the brand nowadays seems to overshadow the total number of users.

Active users are on the rise
Despite these surprising results, the report does however demonstrate that the number of active Twitter users is on the rise. The number of accountholders gaining followers has risen to 34% from 17%, whilst figures for inactive users with no followers have dropped from 30% to 17% since June 2009.

The Director of Trust and Safety for Twitter, Del Harvey, has announced this week that the mini-blogging social networking site is launching a new service to prevent against phishing scams, spam and abuse.

Posting on the Twitter blog, she explained how the site has taken steps to protect users from phishing scams through what she calls ‘bad links’. This is basically where a link is sent through Direct Messages on the site, which the user receives and clicks on, resulting in malicious viruses and other attacks.

How the new service works
Basically, Twitter is routing all links submitted to the site through the new service, so that the Trust and Safety team can identify and effectively stop the spread of deceitful links throughout the whole Twitter network. Users will not notice this new service; except for the fact that link URLs in Direct messages may be shortened to twt.tl. Without this system, the team is only able to detect scams and malicious links after problems have already occurred.

Harvey went on to explain that they are focusing primarily on Direct Messages at the moment because this is where the most problems occur, but that the team is also looking at email notifications relating to these untrustworthy messages.

Ads on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter are set to be regulated by the Advertising Stands Authority, and stricter rules on how companies use profiles on the sites to advertise are also likely to come into play.

The proposals would see social networking sites regulated in the same way as other forms of advertising, such as television commercials.
Although the new plans have not yet been approved, it is obvious that there is wide support for the changes. Chief Operating Officer at the Advertising Association explained:

“The industry has delivered a clear mandate that first and foremost will protect consumers and children [and] that will also protect editorial content.”

Nick Stringer, from the Internet Advertising Bureau also welcomed the move, and added:

“This is a significant step for both advertising and the internet.”

The non broadcasting advertising code is currently being revamped, in order to address the major changes in that social networking sites in particular have brought about.

If the proposals are given the go-ahead, it is likely that they will come into effect towards the end of the year.