One of the core features of Twitter’s redesign last year was the addition of the Discover tab in the web and mobile interface. Today, the company is launching its first major update to this feature. The new and improved Discover tab, says Twitter, will now begin to surface more personalized content. Starting today, the algorithm that populates this feature with stories will put a stronger emphasis on the tweets that are popular among the people you follow and their friends. This should make for a more personalized experience and highlight content that is more relevant to the individual user.

When it first launched the Discover tab last year, its users’ reactions were somewhat mixed. As our own Eric Eldon noted at that time, the stories Twitter included in this section were often not that interesting and Twitter didn’t want to really talk about how it picked these stories in the first place. In January, though, Twitter acquired personalized social news startup Summify and it looks like at least some of that company’s expertise is now flowing into Twitter’s own products.

This updated design for the Discover Tab will now also highlight who tweeted a particular story. This, says Twitter, will help users understand why each story it highlights matters to them. This will also make it easier for users to join into their friends’ conversation, as the new Discover tab also lets you reply, retweet and favorite these tweets.

Twitter will start rolling out this update today and plans to bring it to Twitter.com and its iOS and Android apps in the “coming weeks.” The company promises that it “will continue to work to make discover on Twitter a magical experience that brings you instantly closer to the information that matters most to you at the right time, any time.”

This is a few days old but it’s well worth revisiting if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s by English rapper Dan Bull and it’s about everyone’s favorite time-waster, TheFacebook. The best part?

He also does a Twitter one. Give it a listen and then download it for free to help Bull hit the record books.

See, Bull is aiming to have the first torrented single in in the UK and global charts so he’s giving the tracks away on BitTorrent and asking for a small donation once you’re hooked. It’s a noble venture and the music, needless to say, is really good and it’s a wild proof-of-concept for future artists.

via BB

Hey Twitter fanatics, your favorite social network for short bursts of information has released updates to its iPhone and Android applications so that you can feed the beast and find out what’s happening even faster.

Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android now feature a few fun goodies, including more discovery tools, better search, and additional notification options specifically aimed at the power users among us (the rest of you won’t notice the subtle upgrades).

In-app searchers, especially those looking for specific tweeps, will be delighted by the fact that search better distinguishes between people (accounts) and tweets (content) in both the Connect and Discover tabs. Search now also suggests related terms and different spellings. The improvements should make for a simpler, less frustrating search experience on mobile — because as any iTwitterer knows, search was definitely lacking on mobile.

With the update, Twitter has made over the Discover tab with an even stronger emphasis on hot stories. App users can tap a featured story to view related tweets. Below stories and above trends, Twitter has sandwiched in a section called “Activity” that displays the follows, retweets, and favorites happening among those in your information network. Activity is not new to the Twitter experience. The feature, first introduced in the New-New Twitter rollout, is exactly the same as what you’ll find in the Discover section on the web.

Finally, Twitter for iPhone and Android have been updated to allow for more push notifications. So when your next tweet is favorited or retweeted, or someone new follows you, you can be instantly alerted to the activity on your device.

The new versions of Twitter for iPhone and Android are out now, available on the App Store and Google Play respectively.

Twitter co-founder, and Square CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey sat down with Charlie Rose yesterday (you can watch the full video clip here) to talk about the two companies he’s developed as well as Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram and the “digital revolution.” The entire interview is just under 18 minutes, and is worth a watch, but here are some of the highlights:

Square

As Square revealed yesterday, the payments company is now processing $5 billion in annual payments (or around $416 million in payments per month), which is up from $4 billion in annual payments in March. Dorsey says that Square is moving fast, and this year will be expanding internationally, both to local shops and larger merchants. “We want to be the point of sale for every merchant,” he tells Rose.

He says that the best technologies disappear, and are relevant when you use them but get out of the way when you don’t. He believes Square falls into that category, especially with Pay With Square’s hands free payments experience.

Rose asked Dorsey which company has the biggest upside potential, Twitter or Square? Dorsey diplomatically answered that both companies did because of Twitter’s role in transforming communications and Square’s place in the exchange of value. “These are two foundational, essential things,” he added.

Twitter

Dorsey says that COO Dick Costolo “is an amazing leader,” and doesn’t get enough credit for Twitter’s revenue products that were developed and driven very quickly. And he adds that the company’s revenue products (i.e. advertising) beat all of their goals last year. Dorsey also believes that Twitter can monetize and says that the company is seeing 3-5 percent engagement on promoted products.

“Twitter is more than where I wanted it to be…truly great companies reinvent themselves…our users are helping reinvent Twitter…,” he explains. As for how will Twitter change, Dorsey explains that the service will be more focused on discovery.

Instagram

Rose pointed out that Dorsey was an early investor in Instagram. Dorsey explains that co-founder Kevin Systrom was an intern at Odeo, where Dorsey initially developed Twitter. Dorsey, who says he taught Systrom javascript, recalls that even then, Systrom impressed him with his love for photography. Dorsey explains that it was this passion and pride in the craft to do it the right way that helped sell him on investing in Instagram. “Kevin is an amazing craftsman and I knew would build a company of craftspeople.”

On the whole Facebook acquisition, Dorsey said it made sense for Facebook to pick it up. In his opinion, this is because Facebook’s core competency is in photos. But Facebook is known for being in the past tense, he says. Instagram represented the present, the now, which are a lot of the ideas that Twitter brought into the world. His remarks are interesting, of course, considering the recent report that Dorsey and Twitter were interested in buying Instagram.

Dorsey is always a fascinating interview, so the video is worth a watch if you have the time.

When you think Twitter, you may think realtime news, or CRM, or brand marketing, or maybe even Justin Bieber, but “eCommerce”? Probably not. In the social network landscape, Facebook is generally seen as the most eCommerce-inclined, what with its “F-Commerce,” but up to this point, consumers really haven’t fallen in love with the idea of brands replicating their storefronts on Facebook. Meanwhile, Twitter’s priorities lie elsewhere, so, in spite of its growth, the social network has yet to leverage its own eCommerce potential. That’s why Portland-based Chirpify has developed a platform that transforms Twitter from a broadcast platform into a transactional one.

In February, Chirpify rebranded from SellSimp.ly and launched a Twitter commerce platform that allowed brands and consumers to buy, sell, donate and transact through tweets without leaving the comfort of Twitter. Since launch, Chirpify has seen growing traction, thanks in part to a promotional campaign launched at SXSW, called “Tweet-a-Beer,” which used the startup’s API to allow people to buy each other a pint over Twitter. The campaign resulted in a huge boost of traffic for Chirpify, with two new users signing up every second — activity that Chirpify Founder Chris Teso tells us continued for several weeks after SXSW. Although it’s slowed down a bit since, the campaign proved that direct commerce over Twitter was not only possible, it was so easy a tweet could do it.

Today, the startup’s direct sales model for Twitter is officially getting further validation — this time in the form of capital — as the startup announced that it has secured $1.3 million in series A financing. The new round of investment, which adds to the $50K in seed it raised from its incubator Upstart Labs, was led by Voyager Capital, with participation from Geoff Entress, BuddyTV CEO Andy Liu, former Facebook exec Rudy Gadre, Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes, and TiE Oregon Angels.

Just in case there’s any confusion in terms of how Chirpify works, put simply, when users sign up for Chirpify, they connect their Twitter and PayPal accounts to the platform. Merchants upload whatever they want to sell to their dashboard, and tweet the link. Consumers simply reply to the tweet and include “buy.” Boom, Chirpify sends you a secure download over DM, the cost is deducted from your PayPal account, the funds instantly transferred to the merchant’s account, at which point they get a receipt.

Anyone can sell, buy, or donate on Chirpify. Even if the process sounds complicated, it’s not. So, the more one considers the fact that the platform offers a simple way to turn tweets into transactions, and seeing as people already use Twitter to follow their favorite brands, musicians, and other people they care about, why not let users buy the latest product or download the latest song by tweet? Well, in addition to its funding announcement, Chirpify is today launching Twitter Commerce for Digital Content, which enables musicians to sell songs and concert tickets directly to fans on Twitter (with the by-product being increased control of their own distribution).

While Chirpify is working with musicians and music labels, at first, the goal Teso says is for this to work for any brand, event, product, or service. (Next, Chirpify plans to work with eBooks vendors, for example.) That’s because the cool thing about Chirpify is it that it works wherever Twitter is, on mobile, desktop, or tablets, and this direct commerce even applies to re-tweets — which has the potential for some serious amplification by allowing for-sale items to reach more streams and thus more eyeballs.

But what if your brand or band is already using a storefront to manage transactions? Chirpify also offers integration with existing eCommerce storefronts (like Magento, for example) so that brands can leverage back-end fulfillment, listing, and transaction management. Merchants just click the “list on Twitter” button when creating a listing for sale, either in their eCommerce or Chirpify dashboard, and can then set the price, quantity, shipping price, and shipping timing.

Chirpify’s solution starts off free, with the startup taking a 4 percent commission on each transaction, but for those merchants looking to conduct more frequent business using Chirpify, the platform offers an enterprise plan, which is priced on a case-by-case basis. The pricing generally starts at around $500 a month, but removes 4 percent Chirpify commission and adds eCommerce platform integration, priority support, co-branding, etc.

For now, Chirpify’s sole payment system is PayPal, but Teso says that they’ve had interest from just about every payment solution out there, and the team plans to add additional payment options in the near future.

But for now, Teso says that the company is focused on scaling and will be using its new capital to ramp up hiring, with additional specific forms of digital content (like eBooks) to come later. The solo founder has already had conversations with reps from Twitter, who are following the startup’s progress with interest. Although he wouldn’t comment on any specifics, if Chirpify can sign continue to sign on big brands (HP and Nestle are already using the platform) and get back to that two-new-users-a-second kind of traction, my guess is that those conversations with Twitter would change in tone. Hard not to see Chirpify as being serious acquisition bait down the line.

For more on Chirpify, check ‘em out at home here.

In late 2010, Sun Microsystems Co-founder Scott McNealy and finance veteran Scott Johnston, launched WayIn, a mobile Q&A and polling service designed to let individuals and brands quickly create and respond to polls on anything their hearts desire. Thanks to the managerial clout behind it, the Silicon Valley-based startup has gone on to raise $20 million in venture funding. Now WayIn is extending its functionality with a new service called Twitpolls, which enables users and brands to engage with (and gather) realtime feedback from their Twitter followers.

While there are plenty of websites and apps that allow content producers, brands, or individuals to take the pulse of their readers and customers (like Gopollgo, Quipol, Poll Authority, Poll Everywhere, Precision Polling, and CMSes like WordPress have their own polling functionality, thanks to startups like PollDaddy, for example), few have been able to build that much-coveted end-to-end platform that enables simple, direct polling inside the Twitter platform.

And that’s how WayIn believes that TwitPolls can differentiate — and succeed where others have come up short. You don’t have to use a another website or app, meaning that users don’t have to leave the comfort of their tweet streams to respond to polls, an experience that can be a deal killer on a mobile device. As to how it collects its poll data, TwitPolls uses Twitter’s public APIs, and WayIn CEO Tom Jessiman tells us that Twitter is very much aware of TwitPolls and is helping the team find the best ways to engage with its platform.

Naturally, this raises the question of why Twitter doesn’t build its own proprietary polling app, and whether the team sees its host as a potential threat down the road. But, as has been the case over the past few years, both Twitter and Facebook have focused on building platforms, allowing third-parties to build the applications and tools that best extend its service. This basically has allowed them to keep watch over the flock, acquiring or acqui-hiring the teams and apps that prove most successful — or would be best suited by integration.

While Jessiman doesn’t see Twitter building its own app as a real, near-term threat — or TwitPolls as an acquisition target (yet) — Twitter yesterday acquired stealth startup Hotspot.io, to beef up analytics tools for its advertising and publishing partners.

As we see ads infiltrate our tweet streams, some look back fondly on the time when the company didn’t have a business model. Yet, as the company continues to focus on ads as its main source of revenue, it’s looking to provide brands and publishers (advertisers) with more advanced targeting and segmentation tools. Advertisers want to optimize their branded content, and, in turn, they want to know how effective their campaigns are at reaching their intended audience, and whether or not they result in conversions.

TwitPolls doesn’t fit in neatly to Twitter’s advertising strategy, but there’s definitely overlap. Twitter is also increasingly being used by brands as a form of social CRM — for sentiment monitoring and realtime customer interaction. Brands can easily ask their followers how they like a new feature, for example, and see the results in realtime. If they find the response is 90 percent negative, probably time for some iteration, and they can react immediately.

What’s more, when it comes to live events, Twitter reigns, especially if you want to see that stream of consciousness from those outside your social network — why Twitter beats Facebook in this regard. TwitPolls can potentially make enjoying live events even better, because, instead of having to leave another app or website open while watching a sporting event, users can just look for the TwitPolls link in their tweet stream and reply directly. Responding to those hashtags counts as a vote, with TwitPolls utilizing Twitter’s APIs to wade through all the hashtag noise, funneling it into signal by directly linking responses to their original questions.

Obviously, for TwitPolls to really take off and offer significant value to everyday users, it’s essential that it encourage big-name brands and organizations to begin using its platform. If TwitPolls links can become regular citizens of your tweet stream, the more recognizable the name becomes as it starts to sound familiar to users (like TwitPic), and engagement increases as a result. The TwitPolls team tells us that, within 48 hours of launch, brands like the NFL, PGA, WebMd, UnderArmour, EMC, the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, Washington Redskins, Texas Christian University, and Liferay had begun using the platform to communicate with their followers.

In this regard, the TwitPolls team fancies its service as an enterprise product, designed for companies. Thus, while the platform is initially free for all to use, it’s employing a freemium model that offers a set of advanced features for a fee. In the next few months, it will begin offering leaderboards, games, and customized charts and graphs, making these features available for companies willing to pay a premium.

Considering that WayIn already exists as a product that brands can use to increase social engagement in standalone form, or by embedding into iterations on other websites, mobile apps, and Facebook pages — and has over 65,000 developers already in its fold — moving to Twitter is a natural evolution for the service. Twitter holds the most potential for the service, as it can become a smart B2B and consumer play, allowing anyone with more than a handful of followers to tap into the pulse of their network.

There’s a good chance that TwitPolls can succeed where other Twitter-based polling systems have fallen short, but time will tell.

What do you think?

For more on TwitPolls, check it out at home here, or find WayIn here.

In an effort to rev up the social engines of race car lovers everywhere, eBay is launching an extreme Twitter conversation hub for the Toyota Grand Prix in Long Beach.

eBay, in partnership with social media experience generator BumeBox, is going all-in on social with an eBay Motors’ branded microsite that aims to bring the live and behind-the-scenes drama of the IndyCar event to viewers at home.

click to enlarge

The eBay racing page, which pulls in Twitter content with #ebayracing and other hashtags, includes official photos and videos from event participants, fan tweets and photos, a live leaderboard, tweets from the track, a Twitter-powered voting module for cheering on drivers, and social sharing options for site visitors.

“We think the needs of the consumer have changed,” BumeBox founder and CEO Jon Fahrner told VentureBeat. “The consumer wants a compelling real-time experience, especially if it’s from a premium brand, and we’re the framework for those types of experiences.”

BumeBox, the mastermind behind eBay’s Twitter-ific racing page, makes a sophisticated application that powers real-time social experiences for large companies that want fully-branded “Twitter parties on steroids,” live video experiences, and interactive events on their own websites or Facebook Pages. The one-year-old Palo Alto-based company counts 20th Century Fox and Marc Jacobs as clients.

For eBay Motors, already a sponsor of IndyCar events, the social media push is designed to make gearheads think of eBay for their car parts and accessories needs, Fahrner said. This weekend’s Grand Prix is just the first of several #ebayracing events BumeBox and eBay Motors are collaborating on.

“We want to make it so that the experience means something to someone at the race and to someone at home,” Farher said. The companies have even put the #ebayracing hashtag on a race car. “It may be the world’s fastest hashtag.”

And, according to Fahrner, the campaign should slip in nicely with the existing Twitter culture of racing events. “This is just a natural progression, a reaction to what was organically happening for racing fans.”

Now this is a pretty nifty use of a corporate Twitter account. Smart Car’s Argentinian division has filled practically its entire Twitter stream — which is currently 456 Tweets long — with ASCII art images that turn into a stop-action movie when you scroll through them.

Check it out for yourself: While on the @SmartArg Twitter page, hit the letter “J”, which is the hot key for scrolling to the next Tweet. You’ll see a simple motion picture depicting a car driving down a street. You can also play it in reverse by pressing the “K” button. Most of the Tweets were written in late March, but the account just seems to be catching some viral popularity right now. The ad was conceived by the Argentinian division of global ad agency BBDO, according to Fast Company.

In general, stop-action animation has enjoyed a moment in the sun on the web in recent days. Yesterday, Google’s homepage logo “doodle” was a low-fi animation of a horse, in honor of stop-action animal photography pioneer Eadweard Muybridge’s 182nd birthday.

It’s also worth noting that Twitter has become more friendly to corporate users in recent months with the addition of dedicated brand pages with extra perks such as new page design options and enhanced feed controls. The Smart Car Argentina account is certainly an ambitious example, but it is a good illustration (yuk yuk) of how brands can use Twitter to reach out to potential customers — and have a bit more fun doing it than they typically have with more traditional forms of media.

After hiring a new VP of Communications, Twitter is adding key engineering staff. Chris Fry, a former exec at Salesforce, has joined Twitter as VP of Engineering.

According to Fry’s LinkedIn profile, he was previously the Senior Vice President of Development at Salesforce, where he was responsible for all development including Chatter, platform, applications and other core products. Fry joined Salesforce in 2005 as an engineering manager. Prior to his time at Salesforce, he was an engineer at BEA.

It looks like Fry will take over the role left by Michael Abbott, who left Twitter last Fall, and is now a partner at Kleiner Perkins. Fry will also join recently hired VP of Infrastructure Engineering, Adam Messinger.

We hear Twitter also hired Ruslan Belkin from LinkedIn as Director of Engineering, Search and Relevance.

A warning: You can only spam Twitter so much before it brings in the law. As Twitter grows — the company now claims to have 140 million active users — naturally, it’s become an attractive target for spammers, which have collectively made their drek a familiar part of the social network’s user experience. Now Twitter is officially putting its foot down and enlisting the help of the federal courts, filing a suit in San Francisco today against its five most aggressive spammers. In pursuing legal action, Twitter said in a statement on its blog, it believes it’s going “straight to the source”.

By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal. Further, we hope the suit acts as a deterrent to other spammers, demonstrating the strength of our commitment to keep them off Twitter … While this is an important step, our efforts to combat spam don’t stop here. Our engineering team continues to implement robust technical solutions that help us proactively reduce spam.

So, not only is Twitter pursuing legal action, it’s using other tools at its disposal to silence the peanut gallery, launching anti-spam measures that, among other things, specifically target @mention spam. Twitter also said that it has been using its link shortener, a.k.a. “t.co” to analyze data on spammy content and its origins, and give it the kabosh.

Obviously, spam has become a real problem on Twitter, and its taking legal action definitely functions as a clear signal that the company is taking the problem seriously. Nothing like “federal courts” to drive home the point. As Twitter users know, spammy followers are a routine occurrence, like those one-link spam tweets that end up in your “mentions” tab, for example. Twitter does implement sweeps to reduce the overall reach and tally of these spam accounts — one of the reasons we see our follower numbers periodically drop.

Of course, this is not a problem they can fight alone. The company is also asking users to help police its network, and users can find out how to report and block spammers here.

Will be updating.