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It’s no secret that Twitter hasn’t been growing as well as it should have done in the US in the recent few months. Twitter isn’t growing to such a short extent that it’s not growing properly. Seesmic, coupled with a lot of support, heavy distribution, and a recent partnership with Microsoft, hope to change it over time with the launch of a new product that makes Twittering very easy: Seesmic Look.

Sometimes, Twitter isn’t about sharing your own tweets. People are puzzled by the difficult to navigate user interface, and can get confused from Twitter’s lack of explanation. Twitter is something more complicated than Facebook, and although there’s a bounty of gossip and celebrity information stored in the massive archives of Twitter; it’s fairly unlikely that people will be able to find it with ease – it’s user experience and user interface are not controlled around entertainment.

It’s an attractive app with a slick user interface that could give Twitter a chance to help new users discover what the site is about. It’s a shame the program isn’t going to be available for Mac, but it’s going to appeal to the majority of the masses.

Seesmic have a powerful alliance, both with Twitter and Microsoft. Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur is confident and pleased for the “powered by Twitter” icon in the lower-left hand corner – they’ve gotten Twitter’s blessing, and this means Seesmic is the first to get this, according to Le Meur.

Microsoft also played a large parter with Microsoft, who showed the limits of the Windows 7 GUI and making everything ready for touchscreen computers. Look could be preinstalled on new PC’s, something that has plenty benefits for promoting Twitter in the future. Le Meur is in discussions with multiple hardware manufacturers to get this to happen.

In addition to celebrity and other interest ‘channels’, there’s brand channels – in which companies like The Huffington Post & Red Bull, among others, have custom designs, tweets from multiple Twitter accounts, advertising within the app and much more.

It’s not a powerful app. If you’re a seasoned Twitterer, then this just really isn’t for you. You can’t have custom lists, you can’t update multiple accounts, and if you have Tweetdeck or Tweetie, or even Seesmic Desktop itself, you’ll probably not need Look and miss a lot of the functionality.

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There’s not much to say about it, but Bill Gates has joined twitter. His account is @BillGates; and it’s got an official status.

Cool, no? 200,000+ followers.

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[blippr]Twitter[/blippr] have assured us that their recent flatline activity is not an accurate representation of growth. Not only is their flatlined growth only affecting the US (it’s still growing rapidly elsewhere), but Twitter has hit record hits.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams stated in a tweet a few days ago, “Across all metrics that matter, yesterday was Twitter’s highest-usage day ever (and today will be bigger).” It’s likely that this is based on tweet volume, and that really means how active the users are. It is the reason Twitter is so popular for the sharing of news, realistically, that so many people tweet so often.

Even though Twitter has been shown to flatline in the US for the 4th month in a row, it’s probably either not making as huge of an influence in the US as it is in other countries (growing rapidly in France, Italy and Germany thanks to its translation efforts), or it’s simply because the older users are moving to the numerous desktop apps like [blippr]Tweetdeck[/blippr], Tweetie, [blippr]Twitteriffic[/blippr] and Seismic Desktop, as well as the Twitter Android apps, and [blippr]Tweetie[/blippr]/Tweetdeck for the iPhone.

Yeah, maybe Twitter isn’t growing as much as it was in 2009, but it’s still growing. And maybe Twitter will end up being something amazing -  but I think we’re being too negative to it. Give it a little time and it’ll be like nothing else, trust me.

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Before anyone argues the point, it’s clear that Twitter is popular now for its news-sharing capabilities. People love to find out information and news via Twitter. Not only that, but news companies like @Mashable, @TIME and @Engadget use Twitter to broadcast and share their news. It’s an innovative and useful way to make sure that your content is spread around.

And because of that it’s become increasingly popular for not only businesses to spread the news around but it’s also a way for users to find out about information – Twitter’s trending topics, a bit like Facebook’s ‘News feed’ (sigh) has been a classic way to see what’s going on since Twitter started. For example, on the day Apple released the Magic Mouse, ‘Magic Mouse’ was a trending topic. That’s how I found out about the release, anyhow.

Facebook, however, is famous for connecting friends – but it’d seem that’s not what it wants to do. Facebook have been criticized for trying to grab a slice of Twitter’s fame for a long time, most recently for it’s ‘@mentions’, exactly the same concept as @mentions on Twitter. And even more recently, have you noticed the recent attempt at pushing your Status Updates to ‘Everyone’? That doesn’t mean everyone on your friends list. That means the whole world. And that’s what makes it kinda obvious what Facebook is wanting to do.

Because of Twitter’s growing popularity, I guess Facebook could be jealous. Twitter is stealing users away from it. But under no circumstances do I feel it is appropriate to slyly allow users to give away all their data, in an attempt to become a news-sharing site. Images like the one to the right are just classic examples of the changes Facebook is making to try and emphasize news.

People on Facebook don’t wanna share news though – they want to connect with friends and chat. And that’s all I really use it for. That’s all most people use it for. A few businesses encourage users to subscribe to information and share with friends, but nowhere near as much as Twitter.

Facebook, you’re not a news-sharing site. Don’t try to steal Twitter’s spotlight, either.

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Twitter have completely redesigned their web-page for World AIDS Day. Well, they've colorized it red and it looks nice. Sadly, this only affects the homepage – however, appending the twitter hashtag '#red' to your tweets colorizes them red aswell. How cool!

There's also a campaign for World AIDS Day on Facebook, and Google have inserted a link on their homepage.

However, Twitter appears to be the only major website completely changing its theme. Oh well, next year TekCube will.

World AIDS Day is in support of supplying medicine to people affected with AIDS in Africa. With only 27% of the world's population yet 83% of its AIDS cases., help is needed.

@joinRED on Twitter
Join (RED) on Facebook
Google.com

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Yes, failing to tweet landed a 44-year-old man in Jail, all because of a storm from 3,000 fans for 15-year old YouTube sensation Justin Bieber.

James Roppo, 44, has been charged mainly for failing to post to his twitter to tell fans to back off. Funny thing is, there’s proof he complied with the order. The event was cancelled, and Justin never made it into the building. Disappointed fans, some of which had been camping out since before dawn for the 4pm event, left, disgruntled.

We asked for his help in getting the crowd to go away by sending out a Twitter message,” said Nassau County Police Det. Lt. Kevin Smith. “By not cooperating with us, we feel he put lives in danger and the public at risk.”

An associated press reads:

“People started screaming, ‘Justin!’ And they ran forward and the ropes collapsed,” said 13-year-old Aimee Macchi. She said she was knocked to the floor in the rush. “Everyone was pushing. There was no room to breathe.”

Police arrested a vice president from Bieber’s record label, Island Def Jam Records, saying he wasn’t cooperating with attempts to disperse the crowd.

James Roppo, 44, of Hoboken, N.J., was charged with a series of misdemeanours, including endangering the welfare of children and obstructing governmental administration.”

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Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Myspace, Google Wave, Flickr… they’re all social media networks. They all are for the connection of people and the sharing of information from one person to the next. And luckily for us, people keep making programs to allow us to share the information brilliantly, without needing to go to the web page of the social network which is often too cluttered. Even better, some applications allow us to cover multiple networks in one program. In this issue, we’ll be looking at the various examples of great social media programs and what to do with them. But let’s start with the best, this time.

Socialite

If there had to be a single application for keeping up to date with everything, I’d pick Socialite. I love it, even if it is only in beta. Socialite covers virtually everything you can imagine – Facebook, Twitter, Digg, RSS, Flickr and Google Reader. They plan to add even more, soon, but for the moment they cover enough. Socialite is currently a beta-stage program, but they plan a proper release at the end of November. Socialite is everything I want to see in a program of this type, and I hope to see more from it – especially integration with loads of other services (Live, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, anyone?)

Socialite is currently in beta. If you wish to download the proper version, keep checking their full release page. Else, if you really wanna download the pre-release software, read this forum page. The link to the Beta (Socialite 1.0 Beta 3) will be included in the text.

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5+
Price: Free
URL: http://realmacsoftware.com/socialite/

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is another force to be reckoned with, as similarly to Socialite, it supports a variety of platforms for its service – Twitter, Facebook and Myspace. Tweetdeck is already regarded as one of the most useful Twitter platforms, and while being a tad useless for Facebook and Myspace, it’s still a great platform for multicapable social media sharing. allowing users to not only share from one account but to select all the accounts they wish to share a single message with, it’s a powerful tool for telling many people something from many accounts.

Tweetdeck works on Mac, Windows and Linux through the use of Adobe AIR.

Operating System: Windows XP+, Mac OS X 10.3+, Linux Ubuntu
Price: Free
URL: http://tweetdeck.com

Seesmic Desktop

We seem to be dropping a feature each time, but Seesmic is still a great tool, and recently releasing a special version of its software for Windows. Similarly to Tweetdeck, it operates on all 3 major OS, through Adobe AIR.

Seesmic recently supported their new ideas by releasing a Windows program that makes full use of the Windows 7 interface. They also created a version that works well on Android smartphones.

The main thing for Seesmic is brand tracking, which it is great for.

Operating System: Windows XP+, Mac OS X 10.3+, Linux Ubuntu
Price: Free
URL: http://seesmic.com

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So, what exactly are the most useful Twitter desktop apps? Well, TekCube will be reviewing this – and more.

Should we start with the 5th to the 1st? Sounds right.

Number 5: Tweetie

Tweetie, while not having any extremely amazing services that other Twitter apps do not, is on this list due to its amazing handling of graphics. The program is beautiful in its own right, making full use of the already graphic-strong Mac interface. Either way, unfortunately, if you like graphics and own a Mac, this is going to be the application for you.

Tweetie comes in two versions: A free version that allows you to resume normal activity, but will occasionally show a nag screen on rare startups, or will rarely post an advert in your stream based on the type of content you tweet about. Then, there’s a paid-for version that costs $19.95 (that as far as we’re aware can be used more than once.)

You can find out more about Tweetie at their website, http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/.

Number 4: Seesmic Desktop

Seesmic Desktop is well-targeted at the more business-like Twitter user – the one who’d have more than one or two accounts to manage data with. We’re talking about sites like ours. A site that would need to manage replies, responses and messages to multiple accounts, especially user feedback to it’s own. Previously being an Adobe AIR app, it’s now moved onto OS integration with a Windows program already created, and rumors of a Mac app in the works (poor Linux!)

Seesmic Desktop prides itself on being free, and has recently been working on integrating into various formats. Tweetie is especially useful for brand checking, for example, if TekCube release TekCube ‘SearchCube’, we could have feeds that monitor mentions of our name and our product, SearchCube. It’s a pretty good tool for monitoring recent trends, too. We can definitely see this being something very important.

Price: Free
Website: http://seesmic.com

Number 3: Grackle86 Twitter Client

This is on the list for being an amazing idea for Twitter – a proper Twitter client for System 6 through OS9 – all the black and white Mac OS!

There’s not much to say about this apart from it being incredibly simple and the fact it doesn’t show tweets. It’s just here for the novelty.

Price: Free
Site: http://www.retards.org/projects/grackle68k/

Number 2: Twitterific

Twitterific has the icon that’s now simply associated with Twitter itself. It was one of the first for Mac OS, and it still looks really good – designed to look like the quick look. It can stay on top of all windows, so you can frequently check up on your tweets. It’ll also appear on all of the spaces you set. With a simple interface, a sweet Dock Icon that many people mistake for being created by Twitter, it’s pretty much one of the nicest I’ve ever used.

Price: Free with occasional ads appearing in feed, $14.95 to buy.

Number 1: Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck pretty much brought around a newer era to the Twitter desktop client age – by having an entire host of amazing ideas and things going on – including integration with the Facebook ‘live feed’ and Myspace friend updates. Tweetdeck boasts a host of new ideas, like @reply autocompletes, and various columns, with an interesting UI.

Tweetdeck, much like Seesmic, runs on Linux, Mac OS and Windows, thanks to Adobe AIR. There are no news reports of a Windows-program or Mac App in the works.

Find out more at http://tweetdeck.com

End transmission.

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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has recently criticized Rupert Murdoch over his recent decisions.

Rupert Murdoch, as you may be aware, has recently made a decision to block all his content from Google, accusing the robotically-powered search engine of stealing his headlines to promote themselves (failing to realise that Google is used as a search engine, not a news site.)

Recently, the News Corp owner has finalized this, as well also blocking all content to non-subscribers – you know that means? That means that the entire content of many news websites, including The Sun in the UK, and the New York times in the US, will force users to pay a regular fee to access content – an idea to monetize the web (who can forget Murdoch’s famous quote: “Few internet businesses barely break even, or maybe make a few million”).

Biz Stone became famous for his invention of the popular update sharing website, recently becoming more information focused by changing “What are you doing?” to “What’s happening?”. Twitter is currently one of the most recognizable forms of media sharing, although recent growth rates have shown stalling in the websites activity – however, that’s no indication, as less people are using the web interface and more are moving to applications such as Tweetie or Seesmic.

Biz Stone’s argument is that news should be open to the pubic and that we shouldn’t have to pay for content that is nearly free to produce or that is already produced. More and more people turn to Twitter, especially Twitter’s trending topics as a way of recovering news articles and realize that what’s going on is most likely on Twitter. Twitter’s trending topics are a good way of seeing news that is happening at the moment – for example, ‘iMac’ and ‘Macbook’ were trending topics just 10 minutes after the release of their new iMac and Macbook. (Trust me, Trending topics have helped me write numerous articles on many occasions).

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Twitter have released their website in French, and il ecrire a Blog Post about the subject, all in French.

http://blog.twitter.com/2009/11/nouvelle-saveur-twitter-en-francais.html

Here’s a friendly english translation, thanks to Mashable:

“With the addition of the Spanish version of the site last month, many people have joined the conversations on Twitter. More and more people twittent outside the United States and we are now able to accommodate users of nearly 30 Francophone countries. It is now possible to change the language settings in French with the participation of translators who have helped turn Twitter into a platform for truly global communication.

The French twitteurs golds can already track people and companies they are familiar. Whether you attended or @ @ Lepicerie lopera for your gastronomic outings, you read @ lemondefr way to work or you listen @ theteenagers on the way home or you’re a fan of @ CanadiensMTL, there is a wealth of information useful to discover at any time.

To see Twitter in French, just check your settings and select “French” from the menu.”

Now, for me, who personally actually speaks French, I’m in love with this. J’adore Twitter. Twitter’s attempts to translate the entire site into European languages, and soon into Japanese and Chinese, are valiant, and we can only hope to see more from them.

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UPDATE: Video added. Vague, but legible.

Calvin Harris, today, stormed onto stage during John & Edward’s song with a Pineapple attached to his head. It’s now a Twitter Trending Topic.

The star, 29, has a recent reputation for living for the spotlight and the attention, rather than the thrill of pleasing fans. However, on tonights X-Factor, he paraded onto the stage with a pineapple on his head (previously posted to his twitter feed) and hugged John, chanting for his pineapple, then running offstage, slapping the boys on the way out. This has been met with heavy criticism already, especially from Louie Walsh, who applauded the twins on keeping their cool and continuing singing.

Click to Read More.

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