I wanted to take an opportunity to do some quickies and address a few issues out there that I don’t feel warrant a full blog post each. Since all of this news is about Twitter, it seemed appropriate to keep it short.

Let’s Talk About:
Twitter Kicks Justin Bieber Off Its Trending Topics
What’s the deal? Twitter changed their algorithm for trending topics, meaning that things that get a lot of tweets every day (like Justin Bieber) won’t show unless they are experiencing an unusual spike.
My take? While it meant that Bustin Jieber, Jick Nonas and the like were tending topics for a few days, it really makes it more possible for the common user to have one of their topics trend. From a marketing standpoint, I love this. Get people really excited about your brand name or hashtag, even for a day, and your growth could be exponential if it hits the trending topics. I like knowing that it is possible, even if its only possible in theory.

Let’s Talk About:
Has @Twitter Declared War on Traditional Retweets? #TR
What’s the deal? Twitter blocks retweets from search. The same changes that kept Bieber fever in check also changed the way Twitter search works, excluding anything with “rt” and then an “@” symbol out of search. Considering the fact that Twitter’s own retweet has mixed popularity, people were upset. But then Twitter undid it anyway so it was much to do over nothing.
My take? Since they undid it, it’s kind of a moot point but, as someone who watches a few Twitter keywords and hastags via RSS, this would actually be a very good thing, in my humble opinion. When you are trying to watch a hashtag or keyword or even a chat, retweets really clog up the works and make the results near useless. So if they brought it back, I’d actually appreciate it.

Let’s Talk About:
Links and Twitter: Length Shouldn’t Matter
What’s the deal? People keep reporting this as “Links no longer count towards your 140 characters on Twitter” but that isn’t true, at least from what that post says. All this means is that Twitter is finally developing their own, in house, URL shortener.
My take? About time! Seriously, the fact that you had to go off site to get a URL shortener for all this time is dumb. Only thing I don’t like? They say their plan is to shorten every link on Twitter but I hope they still let us opt out. Saying, “You can visit my blog at http://thewhineseller.com” is a lot more useful than “You can visit my blog at http://bit.ly/aLnU2Q“. Even if they go the same place, sometimes you just want to put the actual URL in someone’s mind.

Let’s Talk About:
The Top Tweets (@toptweets) Twitter account.
What’s the deal? Twitter created an account that highlights the best tweets of the day.
My take? I love this. You can just follow this one account and it lets you catch whatever is trending, popular or hot that day without actually having to follow anyone they highlight. You can retweet or choose to follow the individual users as needed. They also highlight these top tweets in search, making it more likely you’ll get a useful result.

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