Twitter has long had one of the greatest assets on the internet: knowing what information is hot right now. But while many companies pay to receive and search Twitter’s stream of tweets for such diverse uses as predicting the stock market and finding flu outbreaks, Twitter itself has never done much with it.

That is about to change.

With today’s purchase of Summify, and the long-lasting rumors that Twitter may purchase Flipboard from Twitter board member Mike McCue, Twitter is preparing a wholly new service for users: Finding and delivering information relevant to you in real time.

Twitter: Your Smart Assistant?

Both Summify and Flipboard use smart learning algorithms to produce collections of information personalized to you. And both have strong followings, proving that they’re onto something.

Twitter goal is likely nothing short of replacing some of the news and search resources you use now. For an example of other services besides Summify and Flipboard that Twitter may emulate to a degree think of a personalized version of Newser, LinkedInToday or NewsWhip. Or, as one report put it: “[This] Could Turn Twitter Into Your Newspaper.”

Twitter could potentially offer a personalized dashboard of information that you customize, perhaps even including email and texts to create a single page on the internet for most of your information needs. And even if Twitter doesn’t offer such a dashboard itself, they could expand their API to help other services be created that could do so.

There is a scale of how important an communication method is. At the top are emergency services, which can literally save lives.

Twitter and phones are both life-saving services when used for emergency services. Because of that, neither should be taken offline for any reason.

But Twitter has other important uses in the sharing of real-time information. Many real-time reporting services, such as crime, weather and traffic reporting, are built on it. For some people in some situations, removing Twitter could have a serious negative impact, even if not life-threatening.

So taking Twitter offline should not be compared with taking Wikipedia or Reddit offline, for example. While all three allow real-time changes, Twitter is heavily relied upon for real-time emergency services, Wikipedia and Reddit much, much less so.

Not even Wikipedia’s founder thinks Twitter should go offline:

Occasionally someone from a large organization tweets me to tell me I have tweeted misinformation.

When the Wall Street Journal reported from the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco:

 Costolo opened the door to sharing revenue with Twitter users that post interesting content on Twitter, though he said Twitter wouldn’t pay such “content producers” for each tweet they post. “Our thoughts are a little more nuanced,” he said, adding that Twitter would have a “narrow set of publishers we would do that with.” He didn’t elaborate further.

In “Twitter’s Thinking About Paying People to Tweet,“ The Atlantic Wire said this about that:

The idea of paying people–pardon, content producers–to tweet isn’t completely outrageous. Various Twitter-based startups have been doing this kind of thing for a while.

But when I tweeted using the phrase “Twitter preparing to pay people to tweet” I received this complaint:

So imagine The New York Times comes to some arrangement with Twitter where they earn revenue from Twitter for being a content producer. Then one day they stop tweeting, and after a bit call Twitter to complain that they aren’t being paid any more. I can only imagine, as part of the call, that the Twitter representative would have to point out “You won’t get paid if you don’t tweet. We’re paying you to tweet.”

What Was Wrong With My Tweet?

I didn’t quote @DickC in my tweet, so Sean saying bringing that up is a bit off the mark. Is Twitter considering paying people who tweet (and not paying them if they don’t tweet) or not?

The “Twitter preparing to pay” part seems absolutely, 100% accurate, so the “ people to tweet” is likely what is at issue here. Perhaps “people” should be “content producers,” but, c’mon, we all get that a Twitter account can be handled by several people and be part of an organization.

And I didn’t say “for each tweet” or imply that. But if they don’t tweet, they won’t get paid, right?

Probably “pay people who do something we’ve established as worth paying for via their tweets” is more accurate. But I think everyone gets that you have to meet some conditions to get paid. Does anyone thing that they can tweet “123xyz” and get paid for it? So perhaps that is not clear, but I doubt there will be any confusion about that.

Maybe “some people” would have been better phrasing. Perhaps what Sean is concerned about is that I am implying that EVERYONE will be able to get paid. But some people right away began tweeting “pick me!” showing clearly that they didn’t think that just anyone would be able to get paid.

So I have left some things to be implied without stating them myself, but only things I don’t think people will be confused about.

Probably people will be disappointed that Twitter selects very few people/accounts to get paid. But in five years, I could imagine a LOT of “content producers” could get paid. Look at how YouTube has done it. They are opening up their paid program very widely, after a couple of years of testing it.

What say you, Sean? Will Twitter pay people who Tweet to Tweet?

UPDATE: Sean replied with a tweet that said “simple answer: No.“

My interpretation: “Yes, but it’s complicated.”

Tweets can be deleted via the remove button…but many people wish they could edit them, not just delete and repost.

A true “change what you have already posted” feature wouldn’t work, because the Twitter.com retweet link shares exact copies of your tweet. So if there was an edit button, you could change what people retweeted any way you wanted…which might not make the people you retweeted too happy.

For example, you could say “Vote for candidate #1″ and after it had been retweeted, you could change it to say “Vote for candidate #2.” Sure, they could make the edit button good only for a few seconds, but it would wouldn’t eliminate the problem, it would just make it smaller.

However.

Twitter could implement a “delay before posting” button, kind of like Facebook and Gmail’s feature, where you have a few seconds to correct your tweet before it gets sent. That…would be terrific! What do you think?

Update: On August 2, 2011, Twitter announced the end of Old Twitter:

UPDATE: On June 23—Twitter added this warning:

Will turning off the old Twitter.com interface cut down on spammers?

Interestingly, some third party services use browsers to access Twitter, instead of through the API. Why? Because they’re doing things Twitter doesn’t want users to do, like over-automating following and unfollowing. By doing it through a browser, and setting delays on actions (follow someone every so many seconds, for example) they are trying to trick Twitter into thinking they are human.

But new Twitter doesn’t work the same way, and I’m told not all third party software systems have figured out how to use it for following/unfollowing in order to trick Twitter into thinking they are human. So the day that the old Twitter.com interface is turned off, some Twitter automation software will stop working, or will have to operate less aggressively by using the API. Since spammers use Twitter automation pretty much exclusively, getting rid of the old Twitter.com could cut down on some of the more aggressive following and unfollowing by spammers.

When Twitter introduced the new Twitter.com site on September 14, 2010, they began saying that the old Twitter.com would go away in “several weeks.” Later they began saying that the “older version of Twitter…won’t be around much longer.”

Smart move by Twitter

Waiting to make the change seems like it was a wise move. When Twitter came out with the new interface, there were a lot of complaints. The majority of users stayed with the old interface initially. If Twitter had just forced the change onto users, there would almost certainly have been a loss of some users (and many switching to different interfaces).

Shortly before Twitter rolled out the new interface, Digg.com rolled out their new interface. Within a few weeks it was clear that Digg was losing users rapidly due to the change. Twitter could have shared the same fate.

But now, more recent polls show Twitter users adapting to the new Twitter.com interface, with many preferring it, or switching to other interfaces. So it seems like it is about time to retire the old Twitter interface.

UPDATE: I’ve corrected some misinformation in the original post. Thanks to @WebTrawler for pointing it out. I should have known better. Twitter long ago announced they were going to do it this way, but they changed how things displayed, and it fooled me! My apologies.

Most tweets with links will be shorter/get more characters

Most URLs will be shortened in such a way that you get more characters than 140 for what you type. But some will not, because Twitter isn’t actually counting what you see. Here’s what’s happened:

As part of Twitter’s new automatic link shortening service (on #NewTwitter), it will often remove the http:// from your links and still show the result as a clickable hyperlink. So, for example

• http://bit.ly/iTKvg9 becomes
• bit.ly/iTKvg9

This means that any tweet with a link tweeted from Twitter.com (and eventually, elsewhere) seems to save 7 characters by removing the “http://”

What really happens

But actually, Twitter does NOT count what you see. It converts all URLs to t.co URLs even if it shows you something else. And Twitter counts the length of the t.co URL, regardless of what is displayed!

So http://j.mp/123456 (19 characters) is displayed as j.mp/123456 (12 characters, appearing to save seven characters) but is counted as http://t.co/Xh8YoOk (20 characters) so you actually lose 1 character.

Who saves the most?

So if you’re using a non-shortened URL (such as http://blog.tweetsmarter.com/) the new URL shortening will save you a lot of characters. But if you’re already using a shortened URL, it’s going to make very little difference, and could end up costing you characters, rather than saving you characters.

Why does Twitter do this?

Twitter tests all URLs as part of converting them to t.co links in order to try to ferret out malware. In other words, they’re doing it to protect Twitter users—which is a good thing. I would expect that many Twitter clients will also provide this shortening/protecting feature to their users eventually.

Twitter search “WILL go farther and farther back” as they have time to develop it! With Twitter’s new image-sharing service (hosted by PhotoBucket) “users will own their own rights to their photos.” Read official announcement of search and photo sharing changes here.

The biggest change? You see first only “Top Tweets,” sorted by relevance plus a drop-down menu with choices to see all tweets or only tweets that contain links.

Update: Here are some of the differences between new and old Twitter.

Controversy?

The new and old Twitter web interfaces are extremely different. Even some people who find the changes worthwhile report trouble changing. But more importantly, many users can’t access the New Twitter. Twitter has been working on the problem, but will the new interface be available to all users by the time Twitter gets rid of the old interface? Twitter now places a warning along the top edge of the screen if you are using the old interface: “You’re using an older version of Twitter that won’t be around for much longer.”

Unfortunately, Twitter has a poor track record of introducing new features. Hopefully, they will not only work out the bugs with new Twitter, but also listen to user feedback and make it easier to work with. You can use this form to send Twitter your feedback (choose “something else” from the first drop down box).

Here’s how our poll of 400 users came out:

(Click to enlarge:)

Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

Twitter regularly introduces new features—or feature updates—that are badly broken. Why is that? Why are they always acting first, thinking later?
UPDATE: Other people have noticed the same thing: “From top to bottom Twitter has made product mistake after product mistake, fundamental and obvious mistakes that have significantly confused and detracted from the simplicity of the service, for little or no gain.”

Minor Twitter update reverses a key security patch

Nearly a half-million Twitter user accounts were afflicted before Twitter “re-fixed” the security hole it had “unfixed” in the update. The official explanation. In other words, Twitter itself caused the security hole. This is the second time an exploit of this kind has been taken advantage of at Twitter. Then, two days later, a similar XSS attack hit Twitter.

Twitter changes usernames without consulting

An organization wanted to work with a Twitter user who had a name they had internationally trademarked. Their first step was to contact Twitter, who, without consulting either party, simply forced a name change. Neither the original user nor the organization was happy with Twitter’s heavy-handed approach.

Twitter’s OAuth implementation: a study in bad decisions?

Recently developer Ryan Paul detailed how Twitter “seriously botched its OAuth implementation and demonstrated, yet again, that it lacks the engineering competence that is needed to reliably operate its service.” Paul went on to say specifically that “Twitter should review the OAuth standard and take a close look at how Google and Facebook are using OAuth for guidance about the proper approach.”

Paul says Twitter’s approach is “a textbook example of how to do [OAuth] wrong.” He “received no response from Twitter after writing several posts outlining [his] concerns.” He points out that “The OAuth specification … says explicitly that implementors should not do what Twitter is trying to do.”

Moreover, Facebook and Google both do NOT take Twitter’s approach to the same situation. What’s an example of a kind of problem Twitter’s approach could cause? Hackers could put application makers (TweetDeck, HootSuite, et al.) “in a situation where their users are locked out for weeks when a key is compromised.” Paul demonstrates the problem by easily hacking a Twitter application. He also notes that Twitter’s approach to free and open source (FOSS) client software clients is even worse, a “really bad idea … because of Twitter’s misguided requirement.”

Beyond the problem with hacked applications, Paul points out there are a number of OTHER “bugs, defects, and inconsistencies that pose challenges for users and developers.” And this isn’t the first time Twitter has demonstrated problems in introducing new features:

Official tweet button slows sites…

Twitter first implemented its official buttons in such a way as to prevent or slowdown sites from loading if using the new Twitter button when Twitter is having problems. As reported by TheNextWeb, user @tschellenbach shows how you can modify Twitter’s code to prevent your site from being affected by Twitter problems. I have implemented @tschellenbach‘s change on this site.

…and crashes browsers:

More dramatically, within 24 hours of being released, Twitter’s new tweet button for websites was briefly crashing browsers like Firefox, as widely reported:

A brief problem is not much of  a problem, but who wants to have to keep checking to make sure the Twitter button isn’t crashing visitors’ browsers? Twitter acknowledged the issue in this tweet:

Twitter for iPhone crashes for a month

Most recently, Twitter for iPhone was updated…and version 3.0.2 promptly began crashing, failing to open, and having various other types of total failure. It took Twitter three weeks to provide a fix, which Apple took several days to approve. (The updated version is now in the app store here.)

Twitter for Android released with lots of bugs

Even as of early September these issues still were not resolved by Twitter:

1. Retweet works only from the home timeline and from nowhere else
2. The app force closes when scrolling the timeline
3. Cannot add @usernames in the Tweet. Says ”cannot get users names at this time, please try again latter” (later is misspelled as “latter”).
4. The “sync contacts” feature does not work.
5. Viewing private lists returns an error message.
6. Notifications don’t work and/or respect the notification volume.
7. Re-tweets from Private accounts can not be re-tweeted even if the original tweet is public.
8. Auto refresh does not work on Nexus ones and Droid with Froyo 2.1
9. Cannot delete search results on TwiAndroid

Facebook Blocks Twitter’s Way To Look Up Friends

This Facebook app made by Twitter was a big announcement, but as soon as they announced it…it stopped working. When the problem occurred, Twitter wasn’t in touch with Facebook for a couple of days. Eventually, Twitter posted

“Facebook has notified us that they have blocked the update to our application, and we are working on a resolution with them.” as reported on TechCrunch.

Why didn’t Twitter check with Facebook first, rather than later? The app turned out to violate a Facebook policy…that Twitter could have easily learned about beforehand.

Does Twitter have its act together?

This isn’t the first (or the second or the third) time they’ve announced a feature just before it stops working or has to be rolled back because it broke other things. Heck, even the second ad run by @EarlyBird had a typo in the discount code. Part of Twitter’s issue is admittedly that they are in the midst of an endless infrastructure change. The old joke about jumping off a cliff and having to build wings on the way down applies to Twitter pretty aptly. I agree Twitter can’t stop developing features that benefit its user base just because it has other teams working on infrastructure upgrades and problem resolution. But even though they have rolled a number of features out in limited release betas, they still end up too frequently having to go backwards due to issues found once they go into a full rollout. Also, as ReadWriteWeb points out, tongue-in-cheek: “Twitter has made numerous changes to fix its API. Those experiences have taught providers what mistakes not to make when launching a service.”

Is there a culture of carelessness at Twitter?

This is the company that got hacked because they let employees use passwords like “password” and “happiness” on important infrastructure—and the FTC went after them for being so easily hacked. Hopefully there is a key hire that has just not been made yet that will provide better oversight. Because to date, Twitter has a poor record. Since Twitter is already widely untrusted because the service is unreliable, you would think they wouldn’t introduce new situations that cause users to lose trust. But they at least appear to be avoiding problems like this one now: “Twitter timelines stopped updating hours ago. Why no word from the mothership?“