Tag: Twitter Canada

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Twitter considers online auctions for usernames to increase revenue

Twitter is looking to boost its revenue by selling usernames through online auctions, suggests a The New York Times report.

The company’s CEO, Elon Musk, has reportedly been searching for new ways to generate income to make platform profitable, and had publicly stated that Twitter will start freeing “name space” of 1.5 billion accounts, back in December.

“These are obvious account deletions with no tweets and no log in for years,” he wrote at the time.

It’s worth noting that buying and selling desirable Twitter usernames goes against the company’s policies, but it remains prevalent on the ‘black market,’ according to TechCrunch. The practice of selling desirable usernames has also attracted hackers in the past, with a teenager being arrested in 2020 for hacking high-profile accounts, including that of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and more, to sell them.

Further, as reported by TechCrunch, the idea of selling usernames comes as popular messaging app Telegram announced in October that it would start auctioning both individual accounts and channels, through a ‘TON’ blockchain marketplace.

Elsewhere, Musk revealed plans for a Twitter UI overhaul earlier this week. Read more about it here.

Source: The New York Times, Via: TechCrunch

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Mobile Syrup

Elon Musk might temporarily serve as Twitter CEO post acquisition

Twitter’s new CEO Parag Agrawal might be in danger of losing his job, at least temporarily.

According to a CNBC News report, after Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition officially goes through, he’ll become the social media platform’s temporary CEO. The information comes from an unnamed source that is familiar with the matter, said CNBC News.

For those who don’t know, Agrawal was named CEO of Twitter in November of last year, when former CEO Jack Dorsey announced his resignation. Just over six months in, he is already in danger of losing his position. The report also suggests that Musk is in talks with Dorsey about him making a comeback.

On the other hand, a Reuters report from last week suggests that Musk has a new CEO lined up to take over Twitter.

While there’s a lot of uncertainty about the takeover, and no statements from Agrawal yet, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who also is a major investor in Twitter, believes that Musk will be an “excellent leader” for the social media platform. Considering Musk’s experience running other companies, there’s a possibility the prince might be right.

On the contrary, Musk’s yet-to-complete takeover has already frustrated some, so much so that people are leaving the social media platform. Since the news about Musk’s acquisition came out, popular left-wing figures have experienced a relentless drop in followers, including former President Barack Obama, the most followed user on Twitter, who has lost more than 300,000 followers in the recent week. If Musk was to take on the role of CEO, I would imagine that more people would leave the platform.

In other Twitter and Musk-related news, the world’s richest man reportedly plans to cut jobs and costs once the acquisition of Twitter is complete.

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Mobile Syrup

Twitter Canada partners with Sportsnet to bring a new live NHL Playoff experience

Twitter Canada has partnered with Sportnet to bring a new experience to NHL fans. This experience is already in effect and users just need to like a promoted @Sportsnet tweet to get started.

After interacting with the designated tweet from Sportsnet, Twitter Canada provides the #OvertimeAlerts experience for NHL fans. Throughout the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs, users receive push notifications when any game goes into overtime.

As part of this partnership, fans will be able to watch the opening minutes of the OT period live on Twitter through the push notification. This feature is free of charge for the user. The broadcast streams live from the Sportsnet Twitter account. This NHL experience is available to all Twitter users in Canada.

Rogers provides pre-roll content as part of the livestream. It will also promote its Ultimate Entertainment Experience with Ignite TV and Intenet bundle before game highlights as well.

In addition to providing the news of the partnership, head of communication at Twitter Cam Gordon reveals a thread of the most mentioned players, teams, and hashtags across the 2021/2022 NHL Regular Season. This includes the likes of Alex Ovechkin, Colorado Avalanche, and #LeafsForever all being the most mentioned on Twitter.

Additionally, Twitter Canada reveals that 65 percent of Canadian hockey fans claim that Twitter is the social media platform used to follow the sport. Canadians are found to spend more time on Twitter during NHL games as usage drops across other social media platforms.

Daily Canadian conversation volume in the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs grew 21 percent when compared to 2020.

Finally, when an NHL game goes into overtime, Twitter Canada claims the most-tweeted moment of the game follows the overtime goal, whether the outcome is good or bad.

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Mobile Syrup

Twitter is testing a new status feature codenamed ‘Vibe’

Twitter is reportedly working on a new feature called “Vibe” that will let users set a status to let the world know what they’re doing.

The in-development feature was spotted by researcher and app reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) and reported by The Verge.

According to Wong’s tweet, it appears that there are five preset ‘Vibes,’ namely “Eating yummy ramen,” “Driving highway,” “Shopping grocery,” “Lurking Twitter” and “Studying for the final exam.”

There’s no way that these would be the final ‘Vibes’ when the feature eventually comes out. Most of these are very situation-based, and I imagine Twitter would add a way for you to set custom personalized ‘Vibes’ as well.

Additionally, the tweet also suggests that there would be two kinds of ‘Vibes.’ One for your overall Twitter profile, and one specific to Tweets.

The same feature was also spotted by leaker Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) back in March where he hypothesized that the feature could be similar to Facebook’s ‘Feeling/Activity’ status picker.

There is no official word from Twitter about the rumoured in-development feature.

Source: @wongmjane Via: TheVerge

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Mobile Syrup

Twitter’s new reporting format will allow you to describe your reasoning

Twitter is revamping the way users report harmful Tweets/content on the microblogging platform to make it easier for people to describe what is wrong with the content.

The new reporting feature, which is currently live only for a small number of Twitter users in the U.S., is expected to be widely released in 2022.

The social media giant — which recently saw its former CEO Jack Dorsey step down — says, rather than being required to report how a tweet breaches Twitter’s rules, users will be asked whether they have been attacked with hate, harassed or threatened with violence, or shown content related to self-harm.

According to Twitter, users will also be able to explain the reason behind reporting content in their own words.

“Say you’re in the midst of an emergency medical situation. If you break your leg, the doctor doesn’t say, is your leg broken? They say, where does it hurt? The idea is, first let’s try to find out what’s happening instead of asking you to diagnose the issue,” reads Twitter’s release.

This new format of reporting content will allow Twitter to collect fine data on tweets that do not openly break its rules but that users may find harmful or unpleasant, essentially aiding the company to set out future policy updates.

“The intention of these reporting flows is to empower the customer, give Twitter actionable information that we can use to improve the product and our experiences, and also improve our trust and safety process overall,” said Twitter Health’s director of product management Fay Johnson.

Learn more about the upcoming update here.

Image credit: Twitter

Source: Twitter