• Twitter Rolls Out New Email Notifications For Retweets and Favorites

    // Gradly // blog, News, Social Networks, Twitter No Responses

    Twitter will start sending emails out letting you know when a follower retweets or favorites one of your tweets. The company has tweeted the news earlier today. Currently, users receive email notifications when they get new followers or receive direct messages only.

    Starting today, we’re rolling out an email notification that lets you know if someone you follow retweets or favorites one of your Tweets.

    Some users may find it helpful to know when a tweet of theirs has been particularly appreciated. For the others, email notifications can be turned off/on any time just go to “Settings,” then “Notifications” and “Activity.”

    The move may be part of Twitter’s effort to encourage its users to be more engaged with the service however, we welcome these kind of stuff. The notification will be rolled out gradually, so be patient.

  • The Online War: Transparency vs Anonymity [INFOGRAPHIC]

    // Gradly // blog, Infographic, Rants & Raves, Social Networks No Responses

    In the online world there’s a transition from hyper-transparency, real identity all the way to obfuscation, anonymity. The poles are represented by Facebook and 4Chan. In this infographic, we take a look at these opposing philosophies and some of the space in between.

    Are you who you say you are?


    [via Namesake]

  • Twitter Announces Redesigned Mobile Web App

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, iPhone, News, Social Networks, Twitter No Responses

    Twitter has just announced an updated mobile version for their web app, a redesigned experience on iPhone with seamless interaction allows to quickly scroll through your timeline, move between tabs and compose Tweets. The new app will show up selectively for some lucky users.

    We want you to be able to access Twitter no matter where you are; regardless of what device you use; or, whether you prefer to access Twitter through a mobile application or the browser. Today, we’re starting to roll out a new version of twitter.com for mobile devices. This web app allows us to provide a high-quality and consistent Twitter experience on high-end touchscreen devices – whether or not an official Twitter application is available. It was built from the ground up for smartphones and tablets, which have more advanced browsers that support the latest web technologies, including HTML5.

    The app is fast – you can quickly scroll through your timeline, move between tabs and compose Tweets. It’s rich – it takes advantage of capabilities that high-end device browsers offer, such as touch gestures and a large screen. And it’s simple – it’s easy-to-use and has the features you’d expect from a Twitter application, including your timeline, @mentions, messages that you can read in conversation view, search, trending topics, lists, and more.

    We are releasing this application today to a small percentage of users on iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android smartphones, and we’ll be rolling it out to additional folks with those devices in the coming weeks. You can use Twitter on your phone’s browser by going to twitter.com. If you don’t yet have access to the new web app, you’ll still be able to use the existing version of twitter.com for mobile browsers.

  • YouTube Founders Acquire Yahoo Delicious

    // Gradly // blog, News, Rants & Raves, Social Networks No Responses

    Yahoo has sold its Delicious bookmarking site to YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen in a move that likely signals a coming renaissance for the service, which Yahoo had decided no longer fit with its focus on media and communications properties. In a statement, Yahoo says that Hurley and Chen plan to “make the site even easier and more fun to save, share and discover the web’s ‘tastiest’ content.” Hurley, who stepped down as YouTube CEO in October, and Chen, who left YouTube in 2008, say they will run Delicious out of offices a few blocks from where they started YouTube in San Mateo and are “aggressively hiring.” The news come from the guys at moconews and here what they had to say about the acquisition:

    Yahoo, which purchased Delicious five years ago, gave the site a major refresh in spring 2009, but traffic has fallen off over the last year as people have turned to social networks like Twitter and Facebook to share sites they find. In December, Yahoo said that it was looking for a “home outside the company that would make more sense for the service and our users.”

    Several parties had been said to be interested in Delicious, but there were no hints that Hurley and Chen were among them, and in fact a report in March said that Yahoo had sold Delicious to a rival bookmarking service for $5 million. Yahoo is not disclosing how much Hurley and Chen are paying for it. Yahoo purchased the company for a reported $15 million.

    Here’s the full announcement:

    San Francisco, CA., – April 27, 2011 – Delicious.com, the leading social bookmarking service, has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.  As creators of the largest online video platform, they have firsthand experience enabling millions of users to share their experiences with the world. Their vision for Delicious is to continue to provide the same great service users love and to make the site even easier and more fun to save, share, and discover the web’s “tastiest” content. Delicious will become part of AVOS, a new Internet company.

    “We’re excited to work with this fantastic community and take Delicious to the next level,” said Chad Hurley, CEO of AVOS. “We see a tremendous opportunity to simplify the way users save and share content they discover anywhere on the web.”

    “We spoke with numerous parties interested in acquiring the site, and chose Chad and Steve based on their passion and unique vision for Delicious,” said John Matheny, SVP of Communications and Communities at Yahoo!.

    The YouTube founders plan to work closely with the community over the next few months to develop innovative features to help solve the problem of information overload. “We see this problem not just in the world of video, but also cutting across every information-intensive media type,” said Chen.

    Going back to their roots, Hurley and Chen located Delicious in downtown San Mateo, California, blocks away from where they started YouTube. They’re aggressively hiring to build a world-class team to take on the challenge of building the best information discovery service on the web.