Twitter’s been busy this week. Really, really busy.
First, they’ve rolled out that Retweet Beta to what has to be almost everyone. I’m not really a fan of it – I miss the personal WHY behind the retweet that I don’t get anymore, and I think it’s hard to see who the retweet is from at first glance. I’m glad my third-party apps are still using the old Retweet. I don’t really think I’m alone in my reception to the Retweet option.
Next, they’ve gone French. Twitter is now translated into both Spanish and French, just in time for the big Le Web event. Speak French? Twitter wrote the announcement en français.
Twitter also now knows where you are. Or rather, it could. Twitter has rolled out the API for geolocation. What this means is that third-party apps like Seesmic and FourSquare can start integrating the location of your tweets. I’m pretty sure that some mobile apps already do this, such as Twidroid, if you turn on the option. I think it’s just better integrated now. This is only in the API though, and hasn’t yet been implemented on Twitter.com. At the recent Social Media World Forum I attended, location-based anything was definitely one of the top topics. Twitter has also updated their privacy policy to reflect geolocation.
They’re not done yet. In what I think is the smartest thing they could have done, they changed the question. Back in April, I begged them to change the question. While we occasionally answer “What are you doing?” it led to terrible discussions with people who didn’t “get” Twitter. After all, What are You Doing? can lead to stupid discussions. I’ve always thought people were more communicating what they were learning, but “What are You Learning?” isn’t really a cool question. Twitter has updated the question to “What’s happening?”
Sure, someone in San Francisco may be answering “What are you doing?” with “Enjoying an excellent cup of coffee,” at this very moment. However, a birds-eye view of Twitter reveals that it’s not exclusively about these personal musings. Between those cups of coffee, people are witnessing accidents, organizing events, sharing links, breaking news, reporting stuff their dad says, and so much more.
The fundamentally open model of Twitter created a new kind of information network and it has long outgrown the concept of personal status updates. Twitter helps you share and discover what’s happening now among all the things, people, and events you care about. “What are you doing?” isn’t the right question anymore—starting today, we’ve shortened it by two characters. Twitter now asks, “What’s happening?”
So the folks at Twitter have been swamped. In the midst of all that, @lukester at Twitter was forwarded my Locked Out issue by a friend and in 10 minutes had me up and running again. I don’t know what took four days (other than, you know, they’re swamped), but I’m ever grateful to the awesome @lukester who gave me back access to Twitter and Twitter via mobile 3rd party devices, which is really important to how I communicate. Thanks Twitter!
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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.