Chris Strouth Tweeted "sh*t, I need a kidney" then got one !!

Chris Strouth had been living with kidney disease for 3 years, but suddenly it was getting worse. He needed a transplant. Not knowing what else to do, he turned to Twitter and wrote:

"Sh*t, I need a kidney"

Within a few days, 19 people offered to find out if they might be a match. One of the people who replied was an acquaintance named Scott Pakudaitis, who hadn’t seen Chris in years.

After seeing the Tweet, Scott researched the procedure, talked to people who had been through it before, then decided to get tested to see if he would be a match.

When the match came back positive, he decided to donate his kidney. After the procedure, he sent a get-well-soon message to back to Strouth—on Twitter.

Twitter Shows Impact of a Single Tweet by Launching Twitter Stories !!

Twitter has launched Twitter Stories, a site that shows the impact single tweet can have.

According to the official Twitter blog –

"Today we’re launching the first in a series of Twitter stories. Read about a single Tweet that helped save a bookstore from going out of business; an athlete who took a hundred of his followers out to a crab dinner; and, Japanese fishermen who use Twitter to sell their catch before returning to shore. Each story reminds us of the humanity behind Tweets that make the world smaller. "

If you  have a story than you can submit by mentioning @twitterstories or by using the hashtag#twitterstories. Include a link to a photo or video that helps illustrate your story to the world. 

Hello world! Android is now on Twitter [Officially]

Android finally have their own official Twitter Account @android.  Android jumped right in by tweeting , "Hello world! Android is now on Twitter."

On the very first day  @android  has 50k+ followers and still counting. You won’t find much to read just yet, but if you want to follow android hit @Android and follow.

Twitter Revenue to Hit $400 Million By 2013

The success of Twitter‘s Promoted Products will propel the company into $400 million in revenue in 2013 compared to $45 million last year, says a new report.

Twitter will earn $139.5 million this year, a 210% jump over last year, according to eMarketer. Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at eMarketer, credited Promoted Products’ success for the rosy estimate.

“Since their debut in April 2010, Twitter’s Promoted Products have proven successful in the U.S.,” Williamson said in a statement from eMarketer. “Marketers have shown solid engagement rates with Twitter advertising — in some cases better than those on Facebook — despite Twitter’s relatively smaller audience.”

Twitter has 100 million active users compared to 800 million for Facebook.

The growth estimate for Twitter in 2011 is downgraded from eMarketer’s previous prediction of $150 million in revenues in January, a function of Twitter’s slower-than-expected rollout of various ad initiatives, including a self-serve ad platform and ad sales offices abroad. Twitter just created a sales staff in the UK– its first foreign office — this month, which is why 96% of Twitter’s ad revenues will come from the U.S. this year, eMarketer predicts. The researcher says that by 2013, 88% of revenues will come from the U.S.

Twitter to launch its services in Hindi

In a move that is going to delight millions of Twitter lovers in India, the micro-blogging site has said that it is going to launch its services in Hindi. After almost five years of its launch, Twitter now boasts of 100 million users across the world.

Earlier, Twitter had announced accomplishing 100 million active users worldwide. The micro-blogging site put up some interesting figures. It disclosed that 40 percent of its active users simply log on to the website to read out what’s others are posting. “Our 100 million active users range from passionate early adopters to recent coverts, notes the blog.

"After launching Hindi, Filipino, Malay and Simplified and Traditional Chinese in the coming weeks, Twitter will support 17 different languages," says the company in its blog. It’s notable that both Twitter and Facebook are highly popular in India. Facebook has already launched its services in Hindi and five other Indian languages namely Malayalam, Punjabi, Bengali, Telegu and Tamil. As per estimates, Twitter has now nearly 200 million registered users.

Twitter still trails far behind Facebook in the number game. Facebook recently announced it has more than 750 million active users worldwide. Twitter is also facing stiff competition from Google+. Earlier this year, LinkedIn had announced hitting 100 million users mark.

Google+ Could Have More Users Than Twitter & LinkedIn in a Year

Google+ has signed up 13% of U.S. adults so far and could hit 22%, in a year, passing Twitter and LinkedIn as the number two social media network, according to a new study.
The report, based on a Bloomberg and YouGov poll of 1,003 U.S. adults from July 29 to August 2, revealed that 71% percent of U.S. adults use Facebook, but that number will drop to 69% a year from now.

Among people who use both services, 30% say they plan to cut the time they spend on Facebook. However, 31% of Google+ users say they’ve abandoned their Google+ accounts or never posted anything on them.

Twitter and LinkedIn will continue to grow, however.

Twitter is set to add 3% of the U.S. population over the next year for a total of 20% of the U.S. population. LinkedIn, which is expected to add 2%, will also hit 20%. Meanwhile, 45% of respondents who signed up for Google+ said they read content on the site every day. For Facebook, the figure was 62%. For Twitter it was 42% and for LinkedIn, 8%.

Google's first official tweet.

Google's 1st OFFICIAL tweet is..
F E E L I N G  L U C K Y
in Binary.... :P

Twitter stats, If Twitter community were 100 people!

What if Twitter only had 100 users? How many would be chatty, how many lazy? Based on the data from previous surveys – InsideTwitter and the PearAnalytics has constructed these gorgeous graphics showing the Twitter community represented as 100 people.

While beautiful, the data is being painted with broad strokes: those with 100 followers should overlap with the “loud mouths”, while having more than 100 followers in a population of 100 is technically not possible: it is, of course, a compromise to make the data more accessible via visualization. The original data is also the subject of some debate. Enjoy with a discerning eye. :)

SOURCE:THETECNICA

Facebook testing Twitter-Like 'Happening Now' feature

Facebook has begun testing a new feature in the news feed that allow users to see what their friends are liking, sharing and commenting on in real time.

The Happening Now sidebar appears in a column to the right of the primary news feed, duplicating much of that content in shorter form, as shown in the screenshot above from Dazeinfo.
Users can click on an update to pull up more information without leaving the feed:

At present, most users see a list of upcoming events, recommended Pages, ads and pokes.

It’s not yet clear whether the updates on the sidebar have character limits, a la Twitter, but the resemblance to the Twitter feed is unmistakable.

Facebook says that it is only testing the feature with a “fraction of a percent” of Facebook users, but “may expand it to more people” in the coming weeks.

Twitter Launches new one-click 'Follow' button for websites & blogs

Twitter has launched a Follow button, enabling users to subscribe to the Twitter feeds of companies and individuals directly from their websites with a single click.

Previously, website publishers had to redirect users to their respective accounts on Twitter.com before users could opt to follow them. The new feature will likely encourage publishers to increase the number of “follow us” prompts on their sites, because they won’t have to risk redirecting their audiences off-site.
Users will still be able to preview profiles before opting to follow them by clicking the username next to the Follow button.Those who are interested in adding the button to their own sites can set one up here.

Twitter crossed 200 Million Accounts, 70% of Traffic International

The number of people who have registered accounts on Twitter has now surpassed 200 million, a representative of the company said publicly yesterday. Katie Stanton, Twitter's Vice President of International Strategy, said at the Guardian Activate conference in New York that there are now more than 200 million Twitter accounts worldwide and more than 70% of all Twitter's traffic comes from outside the US. That means Stanton's job is very important and whatever her International Strategy is, it seems to be working.

Roughly 25% of all tweets come from Japan alone, she said. Twitter said last month that it was adding just under a half million new accounts per day and its business-facing page says there are 175 million registered users. 

Independent research by the blog Business Insider concluded last month that there are 56 million people who are following 8 or more other people on Twitter, a number that site used to estimate the number of active Twitter users. Twitter typically doesn't comment on 3rd party estimates regarding its users or their engagement. The company is focused on a long-term strategy of emphasizing read-only use cases for its service, as a means of increasing its user retention. Facebook's user numbers are several times higher than Twitter's.