Google is rolling out a new feature called “Find My Face” to Google+ users allowing them to opt-in to a new facial recognition feature for photos shared on the service.  Of course this isn’t the first foray Google has made into the facial recognition arena, they have offered the feature on Picasa Web Albums for a little more than three years. The feature is not available to all Google+ users yet , but Google has decided to alert users to the presence of the new feature instead of just turning it on.

Facebook introduced a similar function last December, but required users to opt-out of the service causing much consternation in their user community.

Google’s take on this feature sounds sort of interesting. They call it “Find My Face” and when enabled will suggest to people in your circles or who have +1′d a post of yours to tag you in photos they post that appear to contain your face.

Matt Steiner from the Google+ teamannounced the feature including a description of how it works.

Find My Face will provide a prompt like “Is this Matt Steiner?” when it thinks you appear in a friend’s photo. You will be notified if you are tagged and have full control to remove the tag or turn off the feature if you find it creepy.

The comfort level Google+ users will have with Google associating their mug with their real name will likely reduce the adoption of this feature, but for users who use Google+ for photo sharing it might be a nice option.

Despite the fact that I am not comfortable with my information being gathered in this manner, providing people with a choice is never a bad thing.

It is up to every individual to make an *informed* choice about how their personal information is shared and asking their permission is the right approach.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

Related articles

• Google+ rolling out facial recognition feature (economictimes.indiatimes.com)
• Google+ Adds New ‘Find My Face’ Facial Recognition Feature for Photos (techland.time.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook has sent notes of apology and is changing automated systems that blocked environmental activists and other people from posting on like-minded Facebook pages.

The activists weren’t victims of censorship, but rather an anti-spam computer algorithm that was impersonally doing what it was designed to do.

“Facebook is not – and has never been – in the business of disabling accounts or removing content simply because people are discussing controversial topics,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in a statement to The Associated Press. “On the contrary, we want Facebook to be a place where people can openly express their views and opinions, even if others don’t agree with them.”

The activists were flagged by an anti-spam program and told they couldn’t post for 15 days. Other users, including an animal rescue activist, reported the problem, too. Some have even created new Facebook pages where people who’ve been blocked can commiserate.

“Our systems classify over 10 billion actions (suspicious logins, friend requests, etc.) and pieces of content (messages, Wall posts, etc.) every day,” Noyes said. “Of course, no system is perfect, and we do sometimes make mistakes.”

The activists weren’t blocked by a page administrator for making off-topic posts or for offering questionable commercial services. They couldn’t even post to pages run by people who agree with their views.

“The first feeling was surprise, because I’d been doing this for over a year, with no problem,” said Gloria Forouzan of Pittsburgh, who has been very active in protests over natural gas drilling. “Then I found out a few others were blocked, and we all started getting angry.”

Forouzan and others said this week they still don’t know what they did to trigger the blocks.

Their reaction also shows just how important Facebook has become to a wide range of groups who use the free service to network and spread messages. Pro-gas industry groups also have their own Facebook pages, too.

Facebook didn’t provide details of the problem. To do so, they said, might help spammers find ways around the anti-spam software.

Others note that people would complain if Facebook weakens its anti-spam programs too much, since spam would surge.

“Navigating that exact balance is always quite tricky. It’s automated, done by algorithm, blind to the political value of the message,” said Jules Polonetsky, the former chief privacy officer for AOL, and now a director of the Future of Privacy Forum, a Washington, D.C. think tank.

Forouzan said she posts links and comments to Facebook pages critical of gas drilling “every day, several times a day.”

She said the posts only relate to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process which injects chemical-laced water deep underground to break up shale rock and allow natural gas to escape. “Never jokes, never pat-the-bunny stuff,” she said.

Experts agree that Facebook and other social media sites must use automated programs to protect against spam, but said more can be done to protect innocent people from losing access. Erica Newland, a policy analyst at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology in San Francisco, which promotes a free Internet, said that when Facebook notifies someone that they’ve been blocked from posting, it needs to provide a link for legitimate users to appeal.

Facebook has an appeals process for people whose personal accounts were disabled, but doesn’t appear to have one for the 15-day spam sentence.

That lack of an appeals process is one of the things that angered Burr Hubbell, a Pawling, N.Y., critic of gas drilling.

“I can’t figure out how to even get a response to an e-mail, let alone talk to a person,” said Hubbell, an attorney and stay-at-home-dad who was blocked about a week ago.

Hubbell said that during last year’s Gulf oil spill he posted a lot of comments on Facebook pages, and at one point he got warned about posting comments too quickly. But with the recent block, he said, “This came without any warning at all.”

Late Thursday, Hubbell and others got this message from Facebook:

“Your account was mistakenly blocked from posting on Pages. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. We’ve lifted the block from your account, and you should now be able to post again.”

On Friday morning he tried to post again – and got the same message saying he was blocked for posting spam.

Now, Hubbell wonders if Facebook has really solved the problem.

Newland, the San Francisco policy analyst, said Facebook and other sites face incredible challenges, given the volume of content they handle. And she noted that the 15-day posting ban was a type of warning, since the activists weren’t kicked off Facebook.

“They have created their own rules, and are trying to enforce these rules, and are trying to do so in a generally fair way. Facebook’s relationship to the content is very different from a newspaper,” she said.

Many other people have had similar problems with social media, she said.

“The decision that a company makes about when to remove content can have a real impact on discourse,” Newland said. “It certainly highlights the need for greater transparency from Facebook.”

Facebook’s problem isn’t new. Polonetsky said that during the most-active era of Internet spam, AOL’s automated programs were catching and discarding 1 billion pieces of suspect e-mail every day. He also noted that since Facebook is free, it won’t have huge customer-service call centers. And even if it did, the staff wouldn’t be able to make complicated decisions about whether someone had been improperly blocked.

Forouzan and others who were blocked made regular posts to the Facebook page Gasland, which was originally set up to promote the controversial documentary of the same name that sharply criticized natural gas drilling practices around the country. The film, nominated for an Academy Award, has been equally criticized by the industry and some independent commentators for exaggerating the risks and negative impacts of drilling. The page has grown into a kind of national bulletin board on the issue of fracking, and now has 58,921 members.

Josh Fox, the director of Gasland, said Facebook has been a tremendous resource, and he understands the challenge it faces. He also wants the activists to get their posting rights back.

“I don’t think that Facebook is editorializing at all. It’s clear there is a big problem with spam. I don’t want spam flooding the page either,” said Fox, who wants the activists to get their posting rights back.

“I do think for the most part people are playing fair, and they’ll work this out,” Fox said.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Related articles

• Facebook Apologizes For Spam Program That Catches Innocent Users (huffingtonpost.com)
• Facebook’s spam program catches activists (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Facebook’s spam program catches activists (sfgate.com)
• Facebook’s spam program catches innocent users (seattlepi.com)
• Facebook Apologies for Mistakenly Blocking Accounts of Environmental Activists (techie-buzz.com)
• KDDI au Lets Subscribers Find Facebook Friends Through Cell Phone Mail History (asiajin.com)

Image via CrunchBase

The Google+ project, launched on June 28, is now the fastest growing social network ever with over 25 million members, according to a report from Web tracking firm comScore.

Google+ has, so far, out-paced the meteoric rise of sites like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, comScore vice president for industry analysis Andrew Lipsman told the AFP.

The site is also catching on globally with significant membership in India, Britain, Canada, and Germany, according to the study. A July 2011 comScore study found that Google+ had attracted “20 million visitors in 21 days” and that the United States was home to approximately 5.3 million Google+ users. India was the country with the second-highest number of users on Google+, with 2.8 million members from India.

All good signs, but the big question for Google+ remains whether it can make a permanent dent in the social networking world.

Tech fans have closely followed the rise of Google+ during the past 5 weeks, trying to determine whether the social network will succeed amid a flurry of mixed reports–and staunch competition from the likes of Facebook, which has over 750 million members.

For example, PCMag on July 28 reported that Google+ traffic had begun to drop, but a Google spokesman quickly countered the report, telling PCMag that Hitwise’s data was merely a “blip on the radar.”

According to Mashable, comScore’s data apparently conflicts with Hitwise’s report. Writes Mashable:

A recent report from Experian Hitwise showed visits to Google+ fell 3% for the week ending July 23, compared to the previous week, and that average time spent on the site fell 10%. Meanwhile, comScore’s research shows people spent about 50% more time on the network in the week ending July 24 than in the week that ended on July 10.

Prior to comScore’s most recent study, the consensus about Google+’s success has been mixed.

In July, SocialStatistics.com released a stat that claimed roughly nine out of ten Google+ users were male. This prompted Business Insider to issue the following warning: “GOOGLE+ WILL EVENTUALLY FAIL unless it attracts something it doesn’t yet have: women.” However, two days later, All Things D countered that stat, writing, “[N]ew analysis performed by Paul Allen of FamilyLink and Ancestry.com shows a very different gender balance. Using a method he calls ‘surname-based random sampling,’ with which he correctly predicted Google+’s 10 million member milestone, Allen found Google+ to be 66.4 percent male and 33.6 percent female.”

The social networking site also drew ire from its users after Google deleted accounts due to doubts over their authenticity. In some cases, real users who had used a pseudonym when setting up their Google+ profile saw their accounts closed, much to their dismay.

Visit Reuters to read more details from comScore’s Google+ study.

Related articles

• Google+ becomes fastest growing website in history with 25 million unique users (9to5google.com)
• Google+ speeds to 25 million users in first month (news.cnet.com)
• Google+ hits 25 million users in one month (news.cnet.com)
• With 25 million users, Google+ becomes fastest-growing social network (digitaltrends.com)
• Google+ is the fastest website to ever reach 25 Million visitors (in.reuters.com)
• 25m Google+ visitors says ComScore as social use surges (slashgear.com)

Image by eirikso via Flickr

Randi Zuckerberg, who is director of marketing at Facebook and also the sister of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — is leaving the company after six years to start a new media firm to help companies become more social.

In her resignation letter, which is below in its entirety, Zuckerberg said:

“I have spent my years at Facebook pouring my heart and soul into innovating and pushing the media industry forward by introducing new concepts around live, social, participatory viewing that the media industry has since adopted. We have made incredible progress, but there is still much to be done and other ways I can affect change. Now is the perfect time for me to move outside of Facebook to build a company focused on the exciting trends underway in the media industry.”

Facebook confirmed the departure and in a statement said: “We can confirm Randi has decided to leave Facebook to start her own company. We are all grateful for her important service.”

There was no comment from Mark Zuckerberg directly.

The company Randi Zuckerberg is creating is apparently called RtoZ Media, which is obviously a play on her name.

The move is likely to be much noticed, since Randi Zuckberberg has been at Facebook since its early days and has also been a high-profile and charismatic personality both inside the social networking company and in Silicon Valley.

She has been on maternity leave for the last three months, after having her first child, and sources said she has told them that being away from the rapid-fire pace at Facebook has given her time to reflect on what she wants to do in the next phase of her career.

Presumably, leaving Facebook will give Zuckerberg greater freedom to work for a range of companies without a conflict. That said, it’s unlikely she’ll take on Google+ as a client.

Zuckerberg is certainly going out on a high note — she was recently nominated for an Emmy award in the category of live coverage of a current news event for her work on “Facebook Live,” a real-time news show she created and hosted for the company.

Zuckerberg, who is definitely not a geek like her brother, noted in her letter to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and communications head Elliot Schrage: “I am thankful for the strong mentorship, guidance, and support, which is empowering me to follow my dreams and show that you don’t have to be an engineer to be a hacker.”

Here is the letter and also a video I did with her last year when Zuckerberg was covering the Golden Globes in Beverly Hills for Facebook early last year:

Randi Zuckerberg Letter 8.3.11

Source :- http://allthingsd.com

Related articles

• Randi Zuckerberg leaves Facebook for her own startup (allthingsd.com)
• Randi Zuckerberg to leave Facebook to start social media firm (news.cnet.com)
• Exclusive: Randi Zuckerberg Leaves Facebook to Start New Social Media Firm (Resignation Letter) (allthingsd.com)
• Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg quits to start media company (digitaltrends.com)
• That Zucks: Mark Zuckerberg’s Sister Quits Her Job at Facebook (techland.time.com)
• Mark Zuckerberg’s Sister Leaves Facebook To Start A Company (thenewspundit.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook has released data that addresses a question that has recently taken on fresh importance for journalists: How do you get “liked” on Facebook?

As part of a broader initiative aimed at encouraging reporters to use its service, Facebook has produced a report outlining what reporters can do to increase engagement on Facebook, measured in terms of “likes,” comments, and other feedback.

Facebook’s analysis of twenty-five Journalist Pages monitored over a two-week period offers social media insights that are relevant not only for reporters, but also for brands, businesses and individuals hoping to increase engagement with users on the social networking site.

Here are some highlights and tips based on Facebook’s data:

Include a question, call to action and/or some personality in posts: According to Facebook, just 10 percent of the posts they monitored contained a question, but those that did earned twice as many comments than the average post and 64 percent more engagement. Adding what Facebook calls a “call to read or take a closer look” garnered 37 percent more feedback, while including personal or behind-the-scenes details increased feedback by 25 percent. A Buddy Media study focusing on Facebook engagement found similar results: ending a post with a question corresponded to 15% more engagement, measured in terms of metrics such as “likes” and comments.

Add an image: The number of “likes” received by posts that included photos were 50 percent higher than posts without images. Attaching a thumbnail image with links posted to these Pages corresponded to a 50 percent increase in comments and 65 percent increase in “likes.”

Post later in the week and post content in the mornings, at the end of the workday, or late at night: Facebook’s study, like a several before it, found that user engagement was highest toward the end of the work week, with posts shared on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday garnering the greatest feedback. Facebook writes that items shared on Sunday received “the highest amount of feedback at 25 percent more likes and 8 percent more comments above average,” while “referral clicks were above average Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday — with links getting 85% more clicks on Saturday and 37% more on Wednesday than an average post.”

Likewise, Buddy Media’s report also concluded that engagement with brands’ Facebook pages was lower Monday through Wednesday, and higher on Thursday on Friday. However, their data suggested that engagement actually dipped on Saturdays.

Facebook also determined its users to be most active in the morning, during the final hours of the workday, and late at night, conclusions that corroborate other studies on Facebook usage. Buddy Media found that Facebook engagement peaked during off-hours as opposed to during the workday, yet a 2010 Vitrue study found users were most active around 11AM, 3PM and 8PM ET.

Post stories about “education, politics and behind-the-scenes insights and analysis:” According to Facebook these topics generate the most engagement from users: “Education posts got 2X more likes, politics received both 1.7X more likes and 1.6X more comments, and a journalist sharing their thoughts had 1.4X more likes,” Facebook wrote. Other research has suggested Facebook users’ interests aren’t quite so high brow: as the Wall Street Journal reported in 2010, a study by Dan Zarrella of HubSpot found that posts with sexual references in their titles were “nearly 90% more likely to be shared than average.”

Check out Facebook’s blog post to learn even more about its findings, or see its Facebook and Journalists Page for additional tips on how journalists can use the social network. Learn more about Buddy Media’s study about engagement with brands here.

Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Related articles

• Facebook’s Study of Journalist Page Engagement Reveals Page Post Best Practices (insidefacebook.com)
• How people are engaging journalists on Facebook (lostremote.com)
• 10 Best Practices for Bands on Facebook (mashable.com)
• Best practices for engaging users on Facebook (cyberjournalist.net)
• Publicis Groupe Offering To Buy Social Media Marketer Big Fuel (paidcontent.org)
• Facebook Fan Page Best Practices with Mari Smith [@InboundNow #18] (hubspot.com)
• 5 Ways To Improve Your Facebook Page Engagement with Fans (jeffbullas.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Nine months after the launch of New Twitter, the social media company is letting users know that the old version of Twitter will be completely eliminated “very, very soon.”

The old version of Twitter always asked users to switch to the new version of Twitter, but today the message was changed, and it’s more urgent. “You will automatically be upgraded to New Twitter very, very soon,” the top of Old Twitter now reads. The color of the top bar has also been changed to yellow as an alert to users.

We’re not sure what Twitter means by “very,very soon” — it could be days or even weeks until Twitter flips the switch (we’ve emailed the Twitter for comment). However, it’s clear that Twitter is finally ready to eliminate the old version of Twitter altogether and bring everybody into the new design.

Some users are complaining about the change, but it seems to be a very small minority of Twitters 100+ million users.

Frankly, we’re surprised it took Twitter this long to make the switch permanent. The social media company launched the new version of Twitter more than nine months ago though. That’s more than enough time to introduce users to a new interface. It could be a technical issue, though; the social website did revert to the old interface after a bad code commit forced the company to take down New Twitter for several hours.

Source :- http://mashable.com

Related articles

• Social Media Spotlight: Floppingout.com (progressivemediaconcepts.com)
• GrowMap Twitter Thanks Strategy (growmap.com)
• How You Can Use Social Media in an Emergency (homesecuritysource.com)
• Why your medical practice should adopt social media (kevinmd.com)
• Social Media Spotlight: Six Must-Follow Rules for Minding Your Twitter Manners (blogs.cisco.com)
• Coba Uses Social Media for Rebranding (thoughtpick.com)

Disables New Twitter and Trends, shifts servers to a different location

Earlier in the week, Twitter page announced that it was experiencing trouble displaying home timelines. That was followed by a message declaring, “We’ve temporarily disabled #NewTwitter. Our engineers are working on re-enabling it and we’ll update you shortly,” which led to another update minutes later that announced that Twitter was “Temporarily Disabling Trends” as well. Something is terribly wrong in Twitter land then.

Apparently, Twitter was either in the process of introducing or had already launched a new homepage that departed from the “discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world” spin of the current homepage and took on a new avatar that invited users to “follow your interests”. The new interest centric search suggests users to follow categories and will throw up results with accounts dealing with the sought categories, instead of just dishing out account names bearing the search phrase.

However, users were greeted with either the pre-redesign version of Twitter or an error message that said “something is technically wrong” with Twitter and “back to normal soon”. The root of Twitter’s woes can be traced out to an announcement proclaiming that all of its server infrastructure would be moved to a new secret location, which is in Utah by the way. After the teething troubles with the brand new server farms, Twitter has been forced to move most of the same infrastructure back to its facility in Sacramento, California.

It seems the server relocation to the new Utah site hasn’t worked out quite as well as Twitter had intended, which put a spanner in the works of all the new features that had been touted in September last year. Reverting to the old format and axing the new features may have got Twitter working again, but that’s not a healthy sign. Twitter will have to be a lot more circumspect with the load testing and debugging of the new additions, before unleashing them prematurely on unsuspecting users.

Related Articles

• Twitter Reverts to Old Interface (utwitterit.com)
• New Twitter Homepage Starts With A Fail, Returns For Some Users (blogherald.com)
• Twitter breaks after server problems (telegraph.co.uk)
• Twitter.com Gets New Homepage Design (Screenshot) (mt-soft.com.ar)
• Twitter disables new version of website (canada.com)
• Twitter Search Is Now Three Times Faster (mashable.com)
• Twitter disables new version of website (msnbc.msn.com)
• Twitter Steps Into the Wayback Machine (mashable.com)
• Twitter Delays Homepage Revamp After Service Glitch (pcworld.com)
• Twitter disables new version of website (reuters.com)

An app that’ll make Barney Stintson proud

The dating game is cruel, and hot guys and girls don’t stay single for long. It’s a jungle out there and you have to act fast, before someone makes a move. So with a burgeoning friend list populated with hundreds of eligible mates, how do you keep track of potential marks? Developer Dan Loewenherz has found a way to make your life better with the Breakup Notifier App for Facebook.

This nifty little application lets you create a watch list of sorts containing all those who you covet, but aren’t available at the moment. It’s simple how it works; after populating the apps with the objects of your unrequited affection, it monitors their relationship status. As soon as the status changes to single, an alarm goes off in your stalker cave. Well, not exactly, but the app notifies you that your potential mate has just broken up and therefore a great opportunity for you to play the rebound (wo)man.

The good book may tell you not to covet your neighbor’s wife, but the Breakup Notifier app is just the workaround for that rule. So what are you waiting for? Click here to get the app.

Related Articles

• Facebook Breakup Notifier App — Cool or Creepy? (jsyk.com)
• Facebook Breakup Notifier Tells You When People Breakup or Are Single Again (techie-buzz.com)
• Get Facebook Breakup Notifier: Find When Your Crush is Available (quickonlinetips.com)
• Singles Status-Stalking Apps – The Breakup Notifier Takes Facebook Creeping to a Whole New Level (trendhunter.com)
• Crush-Stalking App Breakup Notifier Amasses Over 3.6M Users, Is Shut Down By Facebook (daaaveeeee.wordpress.com)
• Breakup Notifier App Tells You When Your Facebook Crush is Single (appscout.com)
• Facebook Breakup Notifier Doesn’t Do Much Stalking (allfacebook.com)
• Breakup Notifier: find out when Facebook friends are single again (geek.com)
• Facebook: Breakup Notifier app Goes Live (daaaveeeee.wordpress.com)
• Facebook Breakup Notifier Tells You When Your Crush Is Single (huffingtonpost.com)

An Egyptian father has proudly named his daughter “facebook”. According to Al-Ahram(one of the most popular newspapers in Egypt), he did so in tribute to the role the social media service played in organizing the protests in Tahrir Square and beyond.

Wael Ghonim, “We Are Khaled Said” Facebook page showed up within 5 days of Said’s death in June and served as a hub for dissidence against Egyptian police brutality and anti-government protests until Mubarak’s resignation. Other activist pages like “Tahrir Square” cropped up shortly afterward. There are five million Facebook users in Egypt, more so than any other country in the Middle East/North Africa region. Facebook itself has reported an increase in Egyptian users in the past month, with 32,000 Facebook groups and 14,000 pages created in the two weeks after January 25th .

Facebook has become the umbrella symbol for how social media can spread the message of freedom. There was a graffiti in Cairo that said “Thank you Facebook” as a protest sign and Wael Ghonim himself personally expressed his gratitude to Mark Zuckerberg on CNN.

Related Articles

• To Celebrate The #Jan25 Revolution, Egyptian Names His Firstborn “Facebook” (techcrunch.com)
• Egyptian Names Baby ‘Facebook’ (abcnews.go.com)
• Egyptian Baby Girl Named ‘Facebook’ After Revolution (allfacebook.com)
• Wael Ghonim: If You Want To Liberate A Government, Give Them The Internet (techcrunch.com)
• Egyptian man reportedly names daughter ‘Facebook’ in wake of revolution (inquisitr.com)
• Report: Egyptian dad names child ‘Facebook’ (cnn.com)
• “Egyptians Name Their Daughter “Facebook— and related posts (uncoached.com)
• First Tunisia, Now Egypt, What’s Next? Wael Ghonim Says “Ask Facebook” (mediaite.com)
• Egyptian Man Names Daughter “Facebook” To Celebrate The Revolution (businessinsider.com)
• Subtitled Video of Wael Ghonim’s Emotional TV Interview (thelede.blogs.nytimes.com)

Twitter is having little trouble in the past days. Many of its users are unwillingly being directed to a page names @anywhereboosh . This is causing enough frustration and complaints are pouring in from across the globe.

Users are being directed to a blank screen and an absurd error message flashes. Although the issue related to the delay in posting tweets was thankfully resolved many are still complaining about being directed to a blank screen. Users have also pointed out that the link for accessing the old twitter and the link for their home page is also being redirected to the blank page.

It was unusually quite in the otherwise fast and noisy blogosphere.

The problem is affecting both the websites and the clients. Some clients are also noticing a cluster of unwanted tweets in bottom of a specific Tweetdeck search. Although the twitter officials say that the problem is being resolved but they are unable to specify a reason. From the looks of it this seems like an ongoing problem.

Related Articles

• Twitter Is Having A Bad Day: Bizarre “Blank Page” Is The New “Fail Whale” (techcrunch.com)
• Twitter cuts off two fat client apps (go.theregister.com)
• Must Tweet Monday: The Bird is Back! cc @UberSoc (fingercandymedia.com)
• Twitter Flexes Muscles over UberMedia, Ecosystem Shudders (socialtimes.com)
• Will Deck.ly Change the Way You Tweet(deck)? (newsgrange.com)
• Twitter bans Twidroyd and UberTwitter clients for shadiness… and Tweetdeck might be next (geek.com)
• UberMedia Acquires TweetDeck, Aims for Twitter Monopoly across Platforms (techie-buzz.com)
• Manage Twitter Accounts with Twitilla twitter client (madrasgeek.com)
• Twitter: 140 or bust? (colinwalker.me.uk)
• TweetDeck: Now With Longer Tweets (marketingpilgrim.com)