Twitter Sesh

Check out this funny video Ben Stiller (@redhourBen) made with Ryan Seacrest (@RyanSeacrest). "Yeah, why don't you come on Idol because that will help me. You showing up on American Idol. Again."

Twitter Wit

There's a new book out called Twitter Wit featuring "the Funniest Tweets of All Time." When Nick Douglas asked us about his ambitious plan to curate this collection it sounded good provided the right permissions were in place—and only if it was funny! After reading a draft, we bought copies for everyone at Twitter HQ. The tweets are irreverent, inappropriate, geeky, and pretty much hilarious. If you don't like one, you'll like the next. Twitter Wit is one of those books you can't help reading aloud to friends. Like this: "Why should I be the one to take the kids to see the their psychologist? I don't even love them!" via @fireland.

We have no financial arrangement with the publisher but Nick invited me to write the book's foreward. The first few pages of Twitter Wit provided an opportunity to share some behind the scenes perspective and highlight the significance of humor as a meaningful part of communication. The most important contribution I could make was to celebrate the team here at Twitter HQ as well as everyone around the world sharing, discovering, and building on the service. Nevertheless, @pagecrusher's question remains unanswered: "Why aren't martini glasses shaped so that they don’t spill so easily on the bus?" Also, there's a contest.

Location, Location, Location

Twitter platform developers have been doing innovative work with location for some time despite having access to only a rudimentary level of API support. Most of the location-based projects we see are built using the simple, account-level location field folks can fill out as part of their profile. Since anything can be written in this field, it's interesting but not very dependable.

We're gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won't be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.

For example, with accurate, tweet-level location data you could switch from reading the tweets of accounts you follow to reading tweets from anyone in your neighborhood or city—whether you follow them or not. It's easy to imagine how this might be interesting at an event like a concert or even something more dramatic like an earthquake. There will likely be many use cases we haven't even thought of yet which is part of what makes this so exciting.

Developer Preview

We're going to release geolocation to platform developers before we add the feature to Twitter.com. Most of the mobile applications people use and love are built by Twitter platform developers. Developers will have access to this new geolocation feature early which means it will most likely be available on your app of choice before it's available on Twitter's web site. Later, we'll add it to our mobile web site and Twitter.com as well.

We're very excited about the potential of location metadata combined with Twitter. Our platform team has been on a roll lately. Geolocation lead @rsarver is particularly enthusiastic about location given his personal interest and involvement in events such as WhereCamp and his career history with location-aware services.

Project Retweet: Phase One

Some of Twitter's best features are emergent—people inventing simple but creative ways to share, discover, and communicate. One such convention is retweeting. When you want to call more attention to a particular tweet, you copy/paste it as your own, reference the original author with an @mention, and finally, indicate that it's a retweet. The process works although it's a bit cumbersome and not everyone knows about it.

Retweeting is a great example of Twitter teaching us what it wants to be. The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact and the more efficient dissemination of information across the entire Twitter ecosystem is something we very much want to support. That's why we're planning to formalize retweeting by officially adding it to our platform and Twitter.com.

It's Not Ready Just Yet

Phase one of project retweet is to show the developer community how it will work from an API perspective as well as a user perspective. We're still working out the final details, but this sketch gives you the basic idea. Let's say you follow @jessverr, @biz (that's me), and @gregpass but you don't follow @ev. However, I do follow @ev and the birth of his baby boy was so momentous that I retweeted it to all my followers.

Note "retweeted by" attribution and "retweet" option.

Imagine that my simple sketch is your Twitter timeline. You'd see @ev's tweet even though you don't follow him because you follow me and I really wanted you to have the information that I have. (The star, reply, and retweet options only show up when you hover over a row on Twitter.com which is why you don't see them all the time.) Also, if you find my retweets annoying, then you'll be able to turn them off.

When Will It Launch?

We are still sketching out exactly how this feature and its API counterpart works. Sharing our thoughts before launching means developers will have the opportunity to prepare their applications. In a few weeks or so we'll launch the feature on our web site and because app developers had a chance to prepare, it should become available across most of the Twitter ecosystem about the same time. This way, we can all enjoy retweeting—however we choose to access Twitter.

The first launch of this feature will probably be a limited subset of folks for a short period of time so we can get an idea of how it works from a system perspective. After we kick the tires a bit, we'll do a full launch to everyone. As you can see, there are still some details to be worked out but congrats to @zhanna and her team for the awesome work done so far—it's looking really good and we can't wait to start using the feature!

The Adventure Continues

In the past 24 hours, we've been contending with a variety of attacks that continue to change in nature and intensity. We're working to restore access to apps built on the Twitter platform that were affected by defensive measures—there was some overcompensation on our part as we tune our system to deal with this scale of attack.

The ongoing, massively coordinated attacks on Twitter this week appear to have been geopolitical in motivation. However, we don't feel it's appropriate to engage in speculative discussion about these motivations. The open exchange of information can have a positive impact globally and our job is to keep Twitter services running reliably to the best of our ability.

As a reminder, no data or personal information of any kind has been compromised. Denial of Service attacks are a known quantity on the web and they are not going away any time soon. Nevertheless, we can and will improve system response to these assaults such that they don't interfere with our normal, everyday Twittering.

Update on Today's DoS Attacks

As noted earlier on our Status Blog, Twitter is back in action. The continuing denial of service attack is being mitigated although there is still degraded service for some folks while we recover completely.

Over the last few hours, Twitter has been working closely with other companies and services affected by what appears to be a single, massively coordinated attack. As to the motivation behind this event, we prefer not to speculate.

Please note that no user data was compromised in this attack. This activity is about saturating a service with so many requests that it cannot respond to legitimate requests thereby denying service to intended customers or users.

We've worked hard to achieve technical stability and we're proud of our Engineering and Operations teams. Nevertheless, today's massive, globally distributed attack was a reminder that there's still lots of work ahead.

Denial of Service Attack

On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack. Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users. We are defending against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate.

New Front Page!

Today we're trying a redesigned front page for folks who are new to Twitter.com. If you're a regular around these parts, then you won't notice the new look unless you sign out of your account. Helping people access Twitter in more relevant and useful ways upon first introduction lowers the barrier to accessing the value Twitter has to offer and presents the service more consistently with how it has evolved.

Twitter began as a rudimentary social tool based on the concept of status messages but together with those who use it every day, the service has taught us what it wants to be. From features invented by users to applications built on the platform, we're still discovering potential. Twitter has moved from simple social networking into a new kind of communication and a valuable source of timely information. Also, it's fun.

Learning By Experience

Defining a "tweet" for the uninitiated and explaining how to create an account doesn't resonate with everyone. "Why would I want to do that?" is a common reaction. However, demonstrating the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now through our Search and Trends often awakens a sense of wonder which inevitably leads to a much more compelling question, "How do I get involved?"

More Work Ahead

The open and timely exchange of information will have a positive impact on the world and Twitter has a role to play. We have a lot of work to do when it comes to the quality of our search results and trend analysis but repositioning the product to focus more on discovery is an important first step in presenting Twitter to a wider audience of folks around the world who are eager to start engaging with new people, ideas, opinions, events, and sources of information.

We'll likely continue to make changes to the Twitter home page as we respond to feedback and ideas. We're eager to see if encouraging a sense of wonder and discovery leads to a better first impression of Twitter.