Participating in hackathons is nothing new in certain parts of the world, especially Silicon Valley. Once in a blue moon, a small team of people creates something exciting that generates buzz, potentially selling to a larger company.

One developer took on 80 competitors at a hackathon called “TVnext” and won with a solution to save you from reading spoilers on Twitter with an app called Twivo. The developer has nabbed an internship at the company she built the hack on top of — Twitter.

This particular developer’s story took on a life of its own, not just because the app was really cool (I often don’t pay attention to my feed during Saturday Night Live, because all of the people on the other coast ruin it for me), but because Jen Lamere is a female developer who was up against an all-male group of hackers. She was 17 at the time. An attendee discussed the scene with Mother Jones, explaining: “the only other females in attendance, that I saw anyway, were an organizer, two camerawomen, a caterer, three judges, and a participant’s wife.”

The news of Lamere’s summer internship, which looks like it will be with the Crashyltics team specifically, came via Twitter, naturally:

Super excited to intern at @twitter @crashlytics this summer!—
Jen Lamere (@jenniee_l) May 16, 2013

There’s no word on what she’ll be doing, but the experience that she’ll get will be incredibly useful.

Whether you want to take this news as a win for female developers, teenagers or technology as a whole, the story is a great one. At its very core, you have someone who is fascinated enough with tech to take the step and build something without a team, present it publicly at a hackathon and then take it to the next level by pursuing an internship…and that’s inspiring.

While not every hackathon project will lead to some type of fundraising or exit, or even an actual startup, this is a nice lesson to learn that the networking and experience gained at an event like this can go a long way. It’s also nice to see Twitter, a company that is preparing for an eventual IPO, give chances to younger coders. Investor Chamath Palihapitiya told the audience at Disrupt NYC that “everyone should learn how to code,” and this story is a perfect example of that line of thinking.

Imagine if, instead of a spelling bee in junior high, you had entered a hacking competition? How different the world would be.

Yahoo and Twitter have partnered to bring tweets directly into Yahoo homepage’s newsfeed on web and mobile, the company announced this morning. The move follows the February relaunch of the front page. At the time, the company debuted a redesigned site with an increased emphasis on personalization, as well as a more modern design.

The Twitter partnership expands upon this earlier mission involving personalization – a key focus for Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer – noting that Yahoo will now ”seamlessly include relevant and personalized tweets alongside stories from Yahoo! and our other sources.”

These tweets will now appear directly in the Yahoo news feed, which offers an endlessly scrollable stream of content, divided into sections like “All Stories,” “News,” “Local,” “Entertainment,” “Sports” and more. The headlines that come from Twitter accounts will be indicated by referencing the source by its Twitter handle (e.g. “@ABCWorldNews” as opposed to “ABC News”) and there will be “Follow” buttons to the right of the stories, allowing users to click to add the news organization to their Twitter feeds.

“Updates direct from politicians, celebrities, media outlets, and other publishers have become an important source of real-time news and information,” Mayer explained in the official announcement today. “140 characters can connect athletes with their fans, capture live chatter from the red carpet, and inspire global debate.”

Though the post did not detail how the addition of tweets specifically ties into Yahoo’s overarching personalization goals, that refers directly to changes that took place following the homepage revamp earlier this year. The front page’s selection of news articles now starts out as a generic grouping of stories, but as users click on content that interests them, the site adapts. The more it learns about a user’s interests, the more relevant and personalized the surfaced stories become. (At least in theory). This technology will now also apply to the tweets.

Yahoo has been moving to reinvent itself under Mayer’s leadership, gobbling up startups, paring down its scattered lineup and launching well-received apps like a revamped Flickr and its new Weather app for iOS, the latter of which may be one of the highest rated iPhone applications we’ve seen, with 4,206 5-star reviews out of 4,832 ratings.

It’s worth noting, too, that the revamped Twitter-powered homepage has a mobile component as well. The update is rolling out to U.S. desktop and mobile users over the next few days, the company says.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has quit his position as a U.K. director of the company, days after Twitter subsidiary TweetDeck was dissolved as a separate U.K. business by business registrar Companies House, according to Sky News. We’ve reached out to Twitter for confirmation and comment and will update this story with any response.

Costolo stepping back from the U.K. directorship role appears related to the dissolution of TweetDeck: a U.K. startup which Twitter acquired in May 2011 for a price-tag that we reported as $40 million. Late last year TweetDeck failed to file U.K. accounts with Companies House, and continued failure to file ultimately led to the dissolution of the company as a separate entity earlier this month, on May 7.

TweetDeck’s failure to file accounts was part of a process to wind up its status as a separate corporate entity to its parent company. Earlier this month a Twitter spokesperson told the Guardian: “TweetDeck the product continues to thrive as part of Twitter, but the old company has been dormant for some time, with no outstanding liabilities; hence our agreement with the move to dissolve it.”

Once TweetDeck became a part of Twitter, with product development and other business processes moving in-house, there was no longer a need for it to exist as a standalone business in the U.K. It’s likely, therefore, that that shift also explains Costolo stepping back from his U.K. director role. His resignation took place on May 9, according to Sky News.

The news organisation reports that Costolo’s position has been replaced by a Dublin-based chartered accountant, Laurence O’Brien. That looks like a clear sign that Twitter’s main order of business in the U.K. is now minimising its tax liability, with the development that was associated with TweetDeck now rolled into its main business. The other two Twitter U.K. directors, Alex Macgillivray, Twitter’s general counsel and head of trust and policy, and chief operating officer, Ali Rowghani, remain in post.

Despite TweetDeck’s corporate dissolution and Costolo stepping back from his U.K. directorship there’s little doubt that Twitter remains committed to the product. Although it has recently shut down AIR-based versions of the Twitter client and shuttered mobile apps, it is focusing on developing TweetDeck’s web-based apps. Back in March,  Twitter noted that the TweetDeck team has doubled in size over the past six months.

Sky News notes that Twitter controls its U.K. firm through an Irish subsidiary known as Twitter International Company Ltd. And while Twitter has been expanding its staff headcount in its London and Dublin offices this headcount push is to build a multinational sales team for Europe, rather than being product development related.

It’s nice to see people in a power position in the valley give up their time for charitable causes. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, recently offered up his time for probably the most expensive cup of coffee ever, to benefit The RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. The current top bid is a whopping $605K, and the auction ends in two days if you’ve got the cash to donate.

If the “Cook Experience” is a bit too rich for your blood, then you might be interested in hanging out with Twitter co-founder and Square CEO, Jack Dorsey. His recent auction, benefitting BUILD.org, gets you a full-on lunch with the man at Square’s office in San Francisco.

Whereas Cook’s auction took off with huge bids immediately, Dorsey’s hasn’t quite gotten off to the same start. There’s only one bid right now, and it’s for $5K. Sure, Apple is a company with more mainstream appeal, and a visit to the offices in Cupertino does sound fun, but Dorsey came up with Twitter. That’s worth at least $100K, right?

All kidding aside, the BUILD organization is doing great things for entrepreneurs, stating their mission as: “…to use entrepreneurship to excite and propel disadvantaged and disengaged students through high school to college and career success.” Here’s the pitch for Dorsey, whose auction ends in four days:

Learn from one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time, Jack Dorsey, as you and seven of your closest friends sit down to lunch with him at his newest business, Square, headquartered in San Francisco.

At the end of the day, this is a great way to raise money for charities, but the winning bidders probably have a plan as to what they’d like to get out of the meetings. It would be interesting to get to talk to the person who meets either Cook or Dorsey, so if you’re that person, definitely reach out to us. Even if it’s under strict NDA…which would be nice to know, too.

If you score the Dorsey lunch, you can even bring seven of your friends. Maybe you’ll even get invited to cameo in one of his infamous Vine selfies:

Tweetwall, a Twitter display provider for events (you know, for “tweet walls”), which has been used by customers including CNN, PayPal, Yahoo, Intel, eBay, Microsoft, the Obama campaign, Sprint, and more, is today launching a revamped version of its service. The updated version of Tweetwall has been rebuilt from the ground up, and is also accompanied by a new iPad application offering AirPlay support, designed for smaller venues.

If you’ve ever been to a conference or other event where a big-screen TV or monitor was filled with live tweets, then you may have come across Tweetwall’s technology, without realizing it. However, prior to today, the service has only been available to larger organizations who have historically paid thousands of dollars for customized versions of Tweetwall, built to their own needs.

Founder and CEO Joel Strellner says that his business was almost like “a consulting company,” and attracted customers who wanted their own particular designs and configurations, as well as access to the Twitter firehose (which Tweetwall has via Gnip), so tweets wouldn’t get missed if their event began trending on Twitter.

He and his team would meet with the customers beforehand to determine their needs, then create a version of Tweetwall built to their exact customizations. Though the service offers analytics on the backend, it didn’t offer full moderation – and that led to some incidents in years past, when people figured out you could hijack an event’s Twitter stream and post disruptive messages.

The new product changes that, now adding full moderation capabilities.

“Over the last two years, we started getting the vibe that the way we were doing this isn’t the way we should be doing this,” explains Strellner. “We should be making it more of a self-service option – something people can sign up for, create a Tweetwall right away, and go with it,” he says.

The company inched in that direction starting last year, when it changed the pricing model, lowering the rate to a flat $500 per event in order to attract more of the smaller events. But even that price point was too high, given the competitive landscape containing a number of free options.

Now the new self-serve version of Tweetwall is just $49 per day, and offers a rebuilt backend with full moderation capabilities and detailed analytics. During the setup process, customers can choose from one of four layouts, all of which are highly customizable. Tweets load in faster, include images, and overall, the service runs smoother than before. Instead of the Twitter firehose, self-serve customers have access to Twitter’s direct streaming API, which Strellner says should be more than enough for smaller events.

Tweetwall is still an HTML5 application, meant to run on a computer connected to a big-screen monitor or TV. However, the company has also introduced an iPad app version of the service that works with Apple’s Digital AV Adapter or AirPlay, to display tweets on a TV or through a projector.

The new service was soft-launched into beta just last week, with 15 customers testing it, and today has around 40 sign-ups in advance of a formal announcement.

Since its debut back in 2008, Tweetwall has served hundreds of enterprise-sized customers, some like CNN, which would use the service year after year, paying each time for new customizations. The Providence-based startup, which raised just $165,000 in the early days some through Betaspring, has been profitable for some time. It also operates Twitter analytics service Socialping, which has around 1,000 customers and is self-sustaining, though now a revamp for it is also planned.

Going forward, the self-serve version of Tweetwall, including the iPad app, will be offered alongside the full service offering for those clients who need the advanced customizations. More info is available here, or you can download Tweetwall for iPad here on iTunes.

When the AP Twitter stream was hacked a few weeks ago leading to a massive drop in the equities market, I went off. I found the fact that the AP – a news organization staffed by intelligent people and with a long history of adapting to new media – could be hacked through a phishing attack was unconscionable. It would be like Bank of America being hacked by a group of script kiddies.

Sadly, this happens over and over. Why? Thankfully the folks at the Onion had the foresight to explain what exactly happened when the “Syrian Electronic Army” “hacked” their Twitter stream.

If you run your company’s social media account, read it. The takeaways are here:

I think the third suggestion is the most important – always change your Twitter password on a regular basis and, more important, never ever ever ever click on a link that suggests you should change your Twitter password via the browser. If you must change your Twitter password, either do it through Twitter.com directly or, barring that, email Twitter. If you’re the AP or the ACLU or the Boston Pony And Terrier Lovers Of America Club, I’m sure they’ll help out.

Twitter itself needs to offer dual factor authentication or, at the very least, send you a text when someone changes your password. This is imperative. Twitter is now a medium for corporate communications and for it have the security of a web forum is unconscionable. The person in charge of your Twitter feed should also have a completely separate email address, outside of your domain, and that person should have a process in place to check the URL of the password change page and then only change the password if everything is kosher. At the risk of raising script kiddie, I would say that most “hackers” depend more on the stupidity of their marks and less on their technical skill.

Don’t be stupid.

Everyone’s favorite tiny video maker Vine just updated their app with a few important features. First, the service has added front-facing camera support, allowing you to swap camera angles mid-Vine. You can also now @ identify folks by pressing the “mention” button when publishing the post.

We attempted to try the new features here, resulting in some serious cinematographic art.

There is also improved people search so you can find friends in the service based on their Twitter handles. The more things change, the more they add front-facing camera support. The updated app is available for download now.

After three years of slow roll outs and testing with specific partners, Twitter’s Senior Director of Product for Revenue Kevin Weil just announced the general availability of its advertising options for all US business. Businesses don’t need an invite any more. Weil revealed the move on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, which could ramp up revenues and prep Twitter for a widely anticipated IPO.

Twitter first announced in April 2010 that it would begin showing ads. Since then it’s revealed Promoted Tweets and Promoted accounts, which let businesses pay to get their updates seen and their profiles followed. More recently, Twitter announced limited availability of a self-serve tool for buying ads in March 2012, and an Ads API for programmatic buying of huge campaigns in February 2013. Then just last week, Twitter announced that its ads could be targeted based on keywords tweeted or within tweets engaged with by users, which lets Twitter move toward demand fulfillment like Google Search ads.

Weil explained on stage, “As most of you guys know, the Twitter advertising platform has until today has been invite only. We’ve had brands and agencies, thousands of small businesses using the platform but all on an invite-only basis. Today we’re taking the next step and opening up Twitter ads to everyone in the US. Every brand, every business, every account, every individual. Businesses have been on Twitter since day one and we’re really excited that today every business in the US is going to be able to leverage the power of Twitter advertising, either through Promoted Accounts to build a loyal follower-base, or through Promoted Tweets to reach a broader audience.” In a bit of a cheeky move, he said on stage that he would tweet this link, giving the first 100 people to click $50 in free Twitter ad credits. You can watch the announcement below.

Anyone can now go to Twitter’s newly opened self-serve interface to start buying Twitter ads. Advertisers can choose a location to target, and the interests of the people they want to reach, decide what type of ads to run, and set a daily budget. Along with Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts, businesses can use Twitter’s business analytics system to track the impact of their spend.

The ads rollout means the microblogging platform can start more seriously competing with other social outlets like Facebook and LinkedIn for ad dollars. Some expect Twitter to hit $950 million in revenue in 2014, largely from ads. That could be enough to lure advertisers to invest in the company if it in fact IPOs. Getting its ad business humming on mobile before announcing any move to go public could let Twitter avoid the bashing Facebook’s share price received when it IPO’d. Facebook had mobile ads running for just three months at that time despite users shifting to the small screen in droves, and the lack of proof that its mobile ad business would work was widely cited by investors as why $FB lost 30% of its value soon after hitting the market.

With so many businesses now competing for followers, the ability to pay for extra visibility can make the difference between obscurity and prominence. Meanwhile, direct advertisers with things to sell online can capitalize on Promoted Tweets to get extra clicks to their shopping pages. While once seen as a niche service for techies, Twitter has grown into a core way the world communicates about their opinions, media, and current events. The ability to insert themselves into these conversations and take advantage of digital word of mouth is drawing dollars away from one-way traditional media towards Twitter where businesses can have a real dialog with their customers.

It’s only a matter of time before Twitter releases its own Google Glass app, as Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr dropped the hint that the company was looking into building one during this month’s Glass Collective announcement.

A tweet from an official Twitter Glass app has been spotted, interestingly enough by the gentleman who brought you the first unofficial Twitter app, GlassTweet.

The user that it came from had no information in their bio when I looked at the profile, but it has since been deleted, along with the tweet below:

Is @MogroothMuddler beta testing an official Twitter for Glass app? Certainly looks like it. http://t.co/lWyZaM6v20

—
Jonathan Gottfried (@jonmarkgo) April 29, 2013

You’ll notice the “Twitter for Glass” label, which denotes which app the tweet came from. That, coupled with the fact that the account has since been deleted, shows that somebody might have let the cat, or Glass, out of the bag a little too early.

I reached out to Twitter, but the company provided us with no statement or comment on its intentions for Glass. It will be interesting to see what an actual Twitter Glass experience will be, as I can’t imagine that anyone would want to see every single tweet from their stream pass before their eye. I could see the utility of getting direct messages, perhaps replies and mentions and most certainly sharing pics and videos.

Expect to see a lot of Glass apps popping up from companies like Twitter and Facebook in the next few months, as the companies are trying to figure out how best to tap into a device that could increase usage and let users share a brand new perspective with media.

The example that I always use with people is that Glass will be really fun at a concert or other live event, where I don’t have to take a phone out of my pocket and remove myself from the situation. It will be natural to snap a shot without disrupting my field of vision and attention.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Canadian broadcasting executive Kirstine Stewart has joined Twitter as managing director for Twitter Canada.

The announcement was just tweeted by Adam Bain, Twitter’s president of global revenue. He also noted that Stewart is the first team member for Twitter Canada, and that the company is looking to do more hiring in Toronto.

Stewart is leaving her position as executive vice president for English services at CBC-Radio Canada. According to her CBC bio, she joined the company in 2006 and “her role has been to revolutionize the CBC as the modern public broadcaster,” for example by developing a strategic plan for broadband and mobile content.

Following the announcement, I had a quick conversation with Stewart, who told me that she has been a “longtime champion of great content.” Twitter, she said, is doing “incredibly exciting” things on that front. Plus, through things like the recently announced partnership with ad giant StarCom MediaVest, the company is “really setting itself up as quite the partner.”

It sounds like the opening of a new office has less to do with making a big push with consumers (Stewart said Canadian Twitter usage is already significant) and more with ad sales and partnerships. Steart told me that the work of establishing that office — not just hiring a team but actually finding an office location — will be taking place over the course of the summer.

We’re on the ground in New York City at the Disrupt Hackathon and there are a lot of interesting things being created. Since I’m walking around wearing Google Glass, I’ve obviously been looking for teams building apps for it.

I met up with Jonathan Gottfried, Twilio’s Developer Evangelist, and he built a quick and dirty app called GlassTweet, which lets you share photos to Twitter, rather than the out-of-the-box experience of sending shots to Google+.

Once you’ve installed the app and connected it to Glass and your Twitter account, a new contact comes up that you can share to, called “Tweet”:

The excitement about developing for Glass reminds me of the early days on Apple’s App Store. Gottfried explained: “It’s a great platform and being able to create all of the fundamental apps for people is a tremendous opportunity.”

#throughglass http://t.co/SKoMLapsgu

—
drew olanoff (@drew) April 27, 2013

#throughglass http://t.co/bn4ubb8ti9

—
Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) April 27, 2013

There are only a few people testing GlassTweet out right now, but I imagine that small apps like this will be installed by most of the community who are looking for inspiration. It would be interesting to see a photo gallery of those who are using the app as well, perhaps with some geographic location attached to the photo. You can’t tweet videos yet, but Gottfried tells me that the feature is coming soon.

During the Glass Collective announcement this month, Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr mentioned that Twitter was thinking about working on its own app, and it’ll be interesting to see how they adapt their service for the small screen. Surely you don’t want every mention or reply lighting up in front of your face. At least I don’t.

Gottfried has built a few Glass apps so far, including ones that lets you purchase a dedicated number through Twilio for texting.

Let the Glass games begin.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

The saga of PeopleBrowsr vs. Twitter appears to have come to a close, AllThingsD reports. Last November, PeopleBrowsr took Twitter to court after the company had informed them that they’d be losing access to its full firehose of data. This was a move happening with nearly all third-party developers, but PeopleBrowsr contested that its four-year long relationship with Twitter could not be cut off that easily.

After a somewhat astonishing public back and forth between the two companies, it sounds like the terms of the out of court settlement will be that PeopleBrowsr keeps firehose data until the end of the year, at which time it will shift over to one of Twitter’s approved data partners, Gnip, Topsy or DataSift.

A Twitter spokesperson issued the following statement to us:

We’re pleased to have this matter dismissed with prejudice, and look forward to PeopleBrowsr’s transition by the end of the year off of the Firehose to join the ecosystem of developers utilizing Twitter data via our reseller partnerships.

While it’s not a win, it is the close of a case that kicked up dust from developers, some seeing PeopleBrowsr as fighting for the “little guys” who were slowly losing the access to Twitter’s data that they once enjoyed. This was not the case though, as PeopleBrowsr’s products, namely Kred, rely on this data to function. Basically, it had been paying Twitter $1 million a year to keep their business going. That’s not little. There’s no word on what it will have to eventually pay someone like Gnip for the same access.

A spokesperson from PeopleBrowsr says that it’s “business as usual” now. Good, because it got really ugly there for a while.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Twitter for Mac has long languished, not seeing an update since 2011, but Twitter just pushed out a new one that brings Retina display support to the official client, as well as a revised interface for sharing photos, and 14 additional languages. The update is available now through the Mac App Store, and Twitter promises further improvements to come in the future.

The official Twitter for Mac app was originally Tweetie, a third-party client by developer Loren Brichter, which was acquired by Twitter. Brichter left Twitter late last year, re-founding his own development studio atebits and releasing Letterpress, a social word game that has been tremendously successful so far. Twitter for Mac fans had likely mostly given up hope that the software wasn’t abandoned, after it failed to see any kind of substantial update since June of 2011.

Twitter has been making other moves that indicate it wasn’t crazy about standalone clients, as it is sun-setting TweetDeck for iPhone on May 7. But TweetDeck for Mac continues to be supported for now, and it looks like they’re even willing to make fresh investment in the Twitter client itself. Twitter’s Ben Sandofsky said inn a tweet that he’ll be working full-time on the Mac version, in fact.

P.S. I'm taking a break from iOS to work on Twitter for Mac full time.—
Ben Sandofsky (@sandofsky) April 25, 2013

For my money, you’re still better off with Tweetbot for Mac, even if the official version is free, but the slightly tweaked compose window looks at first glance like an improvement, and Retina support goes a long way towards making it more usable. Also, the icon tweak, which brings it up-to-date with Twitter’s current branding, is pretty nice too, even if it only contributes to the existing sea of blue most OS X users find in their dock.

Less than one week after Twitter Music’s launch, Kevin Thau, the man responsible for the standalone app, is leaving the company to become COO of Jelly, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s mysterious, mobile-focused startup, according to AllThingsD.

Thau will be the second high profile Twitter employee to join Jelly: a couple days ago, Stone introduced former Twitter engineering manager Ben Finkel as his co-founder. In addition, Twitter’s first designer Vítor Lourenço, who left the company in November, is also serving as a consultant for Jelly.

Thau joined Twitter in 2009 as its “first official business development guru,” after a stint as vice president of sales and business development at Buzzwire. Before leading Twitter Music, Thau managed the mobile engineering and design teams responsible for launching the first versions of Twitter’s mobile apps before moving on to become VP of business and corporate development.

Jelly is still very much under wraps, but the startup released a few hints earlier this month. In a blog post titled “What Is Jelly?,” Stone said the startup will be for “everybody” and “developed first and foremost for mobile devices,” which means the addition of Thau to its roster is a logical move. TechCrunch’s Drew Olanoff and Josh Constine speculated that the Jelly team might be developing something that will help connect people to connect to social causes and show off their contributions.

We’ve emailed Twitter for comment.

The juggernaut that is search advertising grew so popular and lucrative because it offered businesses the ability to reach and persuade people with true purchase intent. But now keyword targeting is available on Twitter and Facebook, which could loosen Google’s stranglehold on ads that convince us what to buy.

Demand Generation Vs Fulfillment

A solid model for understanding web advertising is the purchase-intent funnel. At the wide top of the funnel is demand generation — raising awareness about a product and engendering the brand to the consumer. Demand generation is more about ad views and changing your perceptions than clicks and driving immediate action. Imagine banner ads for Coca-Cola, Facebook sidebar ads for a movie coming to theaters next month, or a Twitter Promoted Tweet about Clorox bleach. They’re designed to keep those brands stuck in your mind so you pay them later, and they’re targeted based on your demographic and interests.

At the narrow bottom of the funnel is demand fulfillment — convincing someone ready to make a purchase of what specifically they should buy. These ads typically seek a click through to a purchase page or sign-up form. Imagine searching for “Buy camera” on Google and seeing sponsored results for Best Buy’s website and specific Canon camera models that you can click through to purchase. Or searching “San Francisco lawyer” and seeing ads for specific local firms you could click through to book an appointment. They’re designed to attract the final click before you purchase, but to do that they need to know you’re actually in the mood to buy something. Since they directly inspire purchases and are more easily tied to return on investment, these ads can command high prices.

Until recently, Facebook and Twitter were stuck in the demand generation part of the funnel. With all their biographical and interest data, they were good for brand and institutional advertising but not at delivering dollars directly into advertisers’ hands. Google has long ruled demand fulfillment with its AdWords product that lets advertisers compete in auctions to show their ads to people who’ve searched for specific keywords that demonstrate purchase intent. But those dividing lines are rapidly blurring, and it could shift the axis of power in online advertising.

Mining The Bottom Of The Funnel

Twitter and Facebook are now aggressively trying to drill down the funnel into demand fulfillment, and they have the data they need to succeed. They might not have traditional web search engine queries, but they have plenty of internal searches and a near infinite amount of chatter.

Intentful Tweets

Twitter last week announced the launch of keyword advertising, which lets businesses target ads to people who recently tweeted or engaged with tweets containing certain keywords. Tweet about a band and you might see ads for an upcoming concert by them. Retweet someone saying they haven’t been to the dentist in forever, and you might see ads for nearby dentists.

Searching for and tweeting a word are two very different things, but Twitter keyword ads are certainly much closer to purchase intent than targeting based on who you follow. And with some savvy multi-keyword targeting, for example “[Product name]” and “want”, businesses could deduce purchase intent out of 140 characters.

Social Invading From All Sides

Facebook meanwhile currently offers “search typeahead ads”. When you search for a specific Facebook Page or app, businesses can set up ads to to show their own Pages or apps above or just below the organic results. If you’re searching for “Candy Crush Saga”, you almost surely want to play a puzzle game. Search typeahead ads for other puzzle games at the moment could be very effective. Gadgets, games, professional services and more brands can all take advantage of this signal of purchase intent.

And that’s just the beginning for Facebook. Last week it revealed its first ads within its new Graph Search feature. For now, these ads can’t be targeted by keywords, just the standard biographical targeting. But it’s very likely that keyword targeting is on the way.

Along with creating big advertising opportunities for online conversion businesses, they could be with local businesses. Facebook is making a big push right now to challenge Yelp as the place you find a business’ address, open hours, photos, reviews, and recommendations. Just yesterday Facebook redesigned its mobile Pages for businesses to highlight this info. That shift in focus means people looking for Facebook business Pages aren’t just trying to see their news feed updates. They’re trying to find out how to get there because they want their service right now — aka purchase intent.

Now imagine if you query Facebook’s Nearby local business browser or Graph Search for nearby Italian restaurants. Graph Search keyword ads could let an Italian restaurant show up more prominently in results, even if Facebook’s quality and relevance algorithms didn’t peg it as the best.

Then there’s Facebook Exchange. These are real-time bid, cookie-retargeted ads based on what websites you’ve visited. For example, you might see an FBX ad for a flight to Hawaii you looked at but didn’t pull the trigger on. While retargeting is in a whole different category than search keyword ads, they have the same ability to reach people who are deciding where to spend their money. And in the past, Facebook has tested sidebar ads related to the keywords you post in status updates. Facebook is trying everything it can to get to the juicy bottom of the funnel.

Fragmented Budgets

Many businesses keep essentially separate ad budgets for search, display, and retargeting. Until recently, Twitter and Facebook were only tapping the display budgets. But now they’re smashing open the other piggy banks. Businesses aren’t likely to suddenly expand the total amount of the spend on online advertising, even as the market steadily grows. Instead they experiment a bit at first with some spend borrowed from what’s usually devoted to Google, and if the ads work, they’ll cleave that Google budget and divvy it up among the newfound channels.

That is not what Google wants.

Search ad money is what funds its moonshots and sustains its enormous engineering staff for free products like Chrome. Despite Google’s legacy, Twitter and Facebook have formulated advantages. Twitter’s relatively un-ad-cluttered interface keeps people’s guards down which likely contributes to the reportedly high click-through rates on its ads. And Facebook has the might of the social graph to throw in the ring. Sticking the face of a friend who Likes Canon cameras on an ad for Canon cameras shown when you search for “Cameras” or “Nikon” could persuade you to click the ad, when on Google you’d ignore it. Plus there’s Amazon. The traffic to the ecommerce leader comes with implicit purchase intent, and whose shopping history data helps it target ads on-site as well as in its burgeoning off-site and mobile app ad network.

Now, Google is still the heavyweight of purchase-intent web ads. That’s not going to change overnight. But the Lilliputians have finally developed the technology to drag down the search giant’s revenues and claim some of those ad dollars for their own.

[Image Credits: Bryce Durbin for TechCrunch, John Swift / Inyamuakut / WebBooks]

We all make mistakes, but for the AP and Twitter to futz up a phishing attack so royally is an embarrassment. As you’ll recall, the Associated Press’ Twitter account was compromised due to a phishing attack yesterday during which a tweet went out that said “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.”

This in turn sent the markets into a panic and, for a few horrible minutes, the world was in the dark. Given recent events, there was also little reason not to believe the AP, that vanguard of news dissemination. Now we know we can’t trust even them.

Today, all that got worse. For a few minutes this morning, at about 8:30, that Tweet was back. Now, at 9am, the feed is clearing itself and the follower count is slowly inching up. It’s clear that someone at Twitter is fixing this account in live production.

A brand’s Twitter account manager should not be reading email or changing passwords online. He or she should have a direct line to a dedicated support person at Twitter who, in turn, can confirm identities through multi-factor authorization. Whoever fell for a phishing attack at the AP is an idiot and Twitter, in this case, is idiotic for bringing the account live with the hoax Tweet intact.

The spry among the startup set will chalk this up to a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, gitter’ dun aesthetic that means you fix what you broke as quickly as possible. That would be fine if we were talking about my Twitter feed, which is most probably a list of bad dick jokes and sloth photos. Instead, we are talking about a feed that can move markets.

We are asked every day to put our trust in new media. That new media has to earn our trust. It’s true that the AP, a dinosaur to be sure, should not have put the keys to their million plus broadcast medium in the hands of an idiot. However it’s also true that this should have been repaired as quickly as possible and with a minimum of damage. Every time a disruptive technology fails we learn a new lesson. However, at this point, school should be out for giants like Twitter and the AP.

UPDATE – The AP’s Social Media Editor has updated the feed.

An update on @AP: The false tweet has been removed and the account will be up and running normally soon.—
Eric Carvin (@EricCarvin) April 24, 2013

For those in the United States and other locations that are lucky enough to be able to purchase huge data packages for their smartphones, thinking about deciding to “tweet or not to tweet” based on the cost that it could incur is a foreign concept, pun intended. For cell customers in India, it’s a very real situation, and Reliance Communications has partnered with Twitter to bring free, unlimited access to the social network to its prepaid GSM subscribers.

This is yet another example of how important Twitter has become in our daily lives and how integral the communication platform is to locations all over the world. The service will be bundled with live cricket match updates, the most popular sport in the country.

A customized version of the Twitter app has been created, reminding customers that they’re getting free access thanks to Reliance Mobile. If someone taps a link to an outside site, they will be reminded that doing so might incur extra charges.

Reliance is the first operator to partner with Twitter in India, and its Chief Revenue Officer of Wireless, Nilanjan Mukherjee, had this to share:

We are delighted to be the first operator to partner with Twitter in India on Twitter Access and offer the first of its kind unlimited Twitter access on our superior network. Our partnership with Twitter in India further strengthens our offering on the social media platform and is in line with our continuous efforts to offer innovative products with incredible affordability for our customers.

Since prepaid cell phones are prominent in countries like India, signing deals like this makes the services more attractive. Back to how important cricket is to India’s culture, though. Mukherjee feels like this announcement could cause a “significant shift” of cricket fans to move over to Reliance.

That’s knowing your customers.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

In what was a mind-boggling series of events in real time, one Associated Press hack and a false tweet about the White House sent the stock market into a momentary free fall. Twitter hopes to stop intrusions like that in the future by introducing a two-factor authentication process, Wired has learned. When this offering will be available to users is unknown.

The company has been working on this at least since we talked to them in November, and became more apparent when it was seeking to hire engineers with specific experience with login security. Why has it taken so long? That’s a question that only Twitter can answer.

Google rolled out its two-factor authentication offering in 2011, but Microsoft only just introduced their own last week. Making additional authentication steps mandatory for all users is a non-starter, since any friction standing between a social service and engagement would be a nightmare.

Having said that, this type of authentication is something that every verified account on Twitter should have had long ago. When Twitter verifies an account, it’s saying that it’s gone through some type of procedure to approve that the person or entity is who they say they are. Keeping that integrity safe is essential to the entire concept.

In Twitter’s defense, a two-factor authentication for accounts that might be used by multiple parties in multiple locations, such as in the AP’s case, could be a hard problem to solve. In Google’s two-step process, as well as Facebook’s, you’re sent a text message with a code to enter when logging into your account from an un-authenticated device:

How something like that will work for an account managed by multiple people is a head-scratcher.

Until two-factor authentication rolls out, it’s smart to be vigilant when it comes to clicking on unknown links, and it’s always a good idea to change your password from time to time. Word of advice, though: Don’t make your password something like “APm@rketing.” That could get hacked at any time, no matter who you are, but especially if you’re the Associated Press.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

When Twitter #Music launched last week, it wasn’t a surprise at all to those following tech stories, since rumors had been kicking up about its existence for months. However, it was a surprise to the Frances Cone Band, which is popping up in the “emerging artists” section of the app.

In a world where we focus so much on “big stars,” especially ones with millions of followers on Twitter, it’s important to remember that these platforms can make all the difference for those who are just getting started and are waiting and hoping to be discovered.

I spoke with their lead singer, Frances Cone, who didn’t get a chance to play with the app before it was launched. She wasn’t a big Twitter user before, but has been pleasantly surprised thus far: “I was a pretty light Twitter user before the music app because I felt like it should be reserved for jokes. Only the best jokes. Or original feelings, of which there are few.”

She says that “Twitter and I are in love” when discussing the new experience, giving us some insight into what it’s like to start getting tweets, and more importantly new listeners, from a group of people that have never heard of you before:

It’s been really, really great. I wasn’t sure how to engage potential followers/fans and they basically just perfectly did it for me… like they set up a meet and greet and I get to hug all of these music lovers.

The “meet and greet” aspect is an interesting one, as we knew that Twitter could be a massive distribution platform if some order was brought to it. Twitter #Music pulls in all of the tweets that include links to music that people are listening to, and then drops them into pages in the app that show trending information in order to get people engaged. More than likely, you’re not going to catch every song that the people you follow are listening to, so this is a way to trap all of that to go back to at any time.

The mix of new fans and the devastating news out of Boston gave Cone mixed emotions, but reminded her that people can rely on music to get through tough times:

It’s been so nice to be able to engage with actual people all over the world. It started happening simultaneously to the Boston news coverage on Thursday night and my Twitter feed was ridiculous. These very, very heavy things were occurring and then someone on the other side of the world would post about “Rattles Your Heart” and it made me feel so many things.

Until the Twitter #Music launch, Cone tells me that the band has been pretty active on Facebook and Instagram, but that Twitter has more of an advantage since the app now links to actual songs.

It will be interesting to see what other experiences bands and artists have, as more people start discovering their music, following them and interacting with them over Twitter. It could help them make money, as well. Full songs are only available to Rdio or Spotify account holders, so those listens make their way back to the wallets of artists. For iTunes, a 30-second preview is given, and someone can pay for the full track if they like.

This is distribution at its best, and Twitter was smart to jump on all of the data flowing through its network when it did. The next “YouTube” star could actually be a “Twitter” star, skipping YouTube altogether.

Will Twitter be able to provide actual data other than followers to these artists and labels, though? The total number of plays that a song gets is data that will be as important as the distribution that Twitter is providing, which could be a huge potential for revenue in the future. The music industry is a messy one, to say the least, so Twitter has a lot of work ahead of it.

BBC America has announced via a tweet that it will partner with Twitter to offer the “first in-Tweet branded video synced to entertainment TV series.” News of the deal comes after a few days after a report that Twitter is in talks with Viacom and NBCUniversal to host TV clips and sell advertising on the site.

BBC America’s tweet didn’t offer any specific information about the deal or which of its TV shows would be involved, but it did namecheck hit series Doctor Who and Top Gear.

.@twitter and @bbcamerica, home of #DoctorWho & #TopGear, ink deal to offer 1st in-Tweet branded video synced to entertainment TV series

— BBC AMERICA (@BBCAMERICA) April 18, 2013

This has been a busy week for Twitter as it seeks to move beyond being a microblogging platform.In addition to the TV network tie-ups, the company also just launched Twitter Music on Good Morning America.

As Jordan Crook notes, the decision to debut the standalone app on network television is a sign that Twitter is aiming directly for a mainstream audience, instead of seeking to first build an audience of early-adopters.

The company has been building out its site as a multimedia platform with a series of acquisition: Twitter Music was built by startup We Are Hunted, while video-sharing service Vine was launched in January after Twitter bought it in a low-profile buy out.