Instagram is preparing to launch a new ‘text-based’ app that could compete directly with Twitter, according to a leaked presentation. The post Leak: Instagram’s plans for a text-based Twitter competitor appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Twitter owner Elon Musk’s latest smart idea is to bar non-paying users’ tweets from appearing in the service’s ‘For You’ feed. The post Twitter’s ‘For You’ feed will soon only include paying users appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

“I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” tweeted Elon Musk in April. The post Twitter blocks Mastodon links and suspends prominent journalists appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It turns out that even ‘free-speech absolutists’ have, well, an absolute limit to the hate content that they’ll tolerate. The post Kanye West suspended from Twitter again after swastika post appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Sound the klaxons! Elon Musk is picking a fight with Apple. Twitter’s new owner blasted the tech giant yesterday in a tweet. The post Elon Musk picks a fight with Apple over ads and the App Store appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

What’s the plan for Twitter’s verification system? Three colours, ‘tentatively’ launching on Friday, according to a tweet from Elon Musk. The post Twitter verification to return as Musk trumpets signup stats appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Musk had stated that he would not reinstate prominent banned accounts until he had formed “a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints”. The post Kanye West back on Twitter, but Jack White and Trent Reznor quit appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s possible you don’t want a daily blow-by-blow account of what Elon Musk is doing and saying as the new owner and CEO of Twitter The post Elon Musk has ‘killed’ Twitter’s official labels… or has he? appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Another day, another update in how Twitter is planning to change its verification system for public figures and brands. The post Twitter plans ‘official’ label for ‘some public figures’ appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Mastodon is one of the Twitter alternatives that some people are migrating to in the wake of Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company. The post Twitter alternative Mastodon reaches 1m monthly active users appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

In our Twitter report yesterday, we noted that new owner Elon Musk had tweeted a poll asking ‘Bring back Vine?’ – referring to Twitter’s long-shuttered short-video spin-off. It seems he may not have been joking. The post Elon Musk’s next stunt might just be a revival of Vine appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

“Who killed the social media ad boom?” asked the Financial Times on Friday, in a piece sparked by the estimates from research firm eMarketer. The post eMarketer predicts tenfold slowdown of social-media ad growth appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

You wouldn’t get a prize for predicting that Elon Musk’s first few days in charge of Twitter would be eventful, for better or worse. The post Elon Musk’s Twitter: paid verification, moderation council and more appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Its second annual ‘social media safety index’ analyses how well the various platforms score for LGBTQ safety, privacy and expression. The post GLAAD warns that social media services are failing LGBTQ users appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s financials week for many of the biggest technology companies, including Amazon and Twitter. The post Amazon and Twitter publish their Q1 2022 financial results appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Yesterday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (and his *sigh* bitcoin clock) made an appearance before a US House hearing about online extremism and misinformation. Copyright wasn’t the matter at hand, but a group of music industry bodies took the opportunity anyway to criticise Twitter for its attitude towards music licensing. The letter, sent by a group including the […]

‘Company X not buying Company Y’ may seem like a pointless news story: we may as well tell you that Music Ally isn’t buying Spotify, right? But news that Twitter was in talks about a potential acquisition of Indian tech company ShareChat *is* interesting, even if the deal appears to have run into the rocks. TechCrunch claimed […]

Twitter is the latest tech company to publish its financial results for the final quarter of 2020. It ended the year with 192 million ‘monetisable daily active users’ (mDAUs – its chosen metric) which was up 27% year-on-year. Twitter’s revenues also grew, by 28% to $1.29bn, helping it to an operating profit of $252m. In keeping with […]

Has it really taken this long for Twitter to copy the ‘stories’ format from, well, every other social app? It has. The company’s test of ‘fleets’, which was announced earlier this year, is now becoming a rolled-out feature. Fleets only last for 24 hours before auto-deleting, with profile bubbles at the top of the feed showing people […]

Generally, if we see a celebrity giving away money on Twitter, we assume they’ve been hacked and it’s a scam (and pro tip: if Elon Musk is giving away bitcoin, it’s NEVER the real Elon Musk…) But here’s the exception that proves the rule: Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion really have been giving away $1m […]

British artist Wiley had something of a meltdown on social media on Friday and Saturday, posting a series of antisemitic tweets and Instagram videos over a period of several hours. Eventually his account on Twitter was temporarily suspended and many of the tweets removed, although a number of his posts are still live on Instagram […]

The key Covid-19 trends for social media seem clear: spikes in users and engagement (because lots more people are at home doomscrolling through their feeds) but big challenges to ad revenues, with brands holding back their budgets. Twitter’s latest financial results are the latest evidence for both. The company averaged 186 ‘monetisable daily active users’ (mDAUs) in the […]

Joe Biden, Kim Kardashian West, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Wiz Khalifa and Apple’s official Twitter account all had a message for followers last night: to send them bitcoin, and because they were feeling generous, they’d send back double. Sit down and grab the smelling salts for this revelation: their accounts had been […]

We’ve broken the big positive story out as our lead today, but there are other good things to report on too. Variety has a report on how ticketed-livestreams platform StageIt is growing during the pandemic: it made $884k in the last two weeks alone, compared to $500k in the whole of 2019. That translates into revenues […]

One of the most inventive approaches to livestreaming so far this year came from British artist L Devine, who went on an online-only ‘URL Tour’ when a planned physical tour was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of towns or cities, the URL Tour was structured around platforms: Instagram Live on 16 March; Twitter on 20 […]

Earlier this year, Twitter provided analysts with its financial guidance for the first quarter of 2020, predicting revenue of between $825m and $885m, and operating income between $0m and $30m. Yesterday, though, Twitter withdrew that guidance, due to the coronavirus pandemic. “While the near-term financial impact of this pandemic is rapidly evolving and difficult to measure, based on […]

“Sharing your thoughts publicly can be intimidating!” tweeted Twitter’s product lead Kayvon Beykpour yesterday. No, this wasn’t a precursor to announcing new measures to crack down on the kind of users who can make Twitter such an angry, intimidating place. Instead, Twitter is launching its equivalent of Snapchat, Instagram and everyone else’s ‘stories’. Twitter’s version is called […]

We reported yesterday on what the coronavirus outbreak might mean for June’s Midem music industry conference: presently, it means sharing Cannes with 23,000 real-estate folk due to the postponement of that industry’s MIPIM conference to the same dates as Midem. But now SXSW in Austin, Texas is facing its own disruptions, just a week and […]

A symbolic moment for Twitter almost 14 years after its founding: for the first time, its quarterly revenues surpassed $1bn ($1.01bn, to be precise, an increase of 11% year-on-year). The company’s share price rose on the news, following fears that its advertising revenues were slowing down. Twitter uses its own metric of MDAUs (monetisable daily active users) […]

If you’ve read any of the long-form articles (or the book) about Twitter’s history, you might have formed the opinion that CEO Jack Dorsey is good at Big Ideas, but not always quite as good at the details. With that in mind, here’s a new Big Idea from Jack Dorsey! “Twitter is funding a small independent […]

Yesterday, Twitter announced that the most-retweeted tweet of 2019 was January’s ‘World Record Egg’ – an attempt to break the previous retweets record with a photo of an egg. According to Twitter, the egg beat a tweet by K-Pop stars BTS featuring band-member Jungkook dancing to Billie Eilish’s ‘Bad Guy’ into second place. We’ll let you guess what happened once […]

Early next week, there’ll be a new way for Twitter users to keep up with the subjects they’re interested in. It’s a new feature called ‘topics’ which launches on 13 July, and it involves following topics – more than 300 at launch covering entertainment, sports and gaming – rather than just following people/profiles. Following a […]

It’s clearly the month for better-than-expected financial results for social apps previously thought to be on the slide. First we had Snapchat’s impressive figures for the second quarter of 2019, revealing that it now has 203 million daily active users. Now it’s Twitter revealing that its ‘monetisable daily active users’ (mDAUs) grew by 14% year-on-year to 139 million […]

Two social networks that have faced challenges around their user-growth published their latest quarterly financial results yesterday. So how are Twitter and Snapchat doing? Twitter’s financial numbers were good: revenues up 18% year-on-year to $787m and a net profit of $191m for the quarter. However, its number of monthly active users (MAUs) was down by six […]

Twitter has launched a new analytics tool for people and companies posting video on its platform. It’s called Timing is Everything, and we think it could be quite useful for musicians. “Timing is Everything displays historical data showing when audiences are on Twitter watching and engaging with video,” explained Twitter in an announcement blogpost. That means whoever […]

Twitter is shouting proudly about the popularity of Korean pop music within its community: “With a new global record of 5.3 billion tweets last year” according to a blog post yesterday. Naturally, this is about K-Pop’s popularity outside South Korea continuing to grow, but Twitter is keen to stress the efforts it has been making […]

We’ve written a fair bit about the use of bots to automatically respond to fans on Facebook Messenger. But what about turning your tweets and (if you’re a company) LinkedIn posts over to a bot? That’s the gist of Swiss startup Twinybots. “Our service will post content on socials networks without your intervention. But you can […]