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Twitter Japan launches, with ads

Twitter Japan launched Tuesday evening California time, and unlike the English-language version of the popular microblogging site, it will feature ads from the get-go.

In a conversation Tuesday evening, Joi Ito of Digital Garage, the Japanese company Twitter tasked with some of the Japanese localization, told me that Twitter decided to launch in Japan with ads from day one.

Digital Garage invested in Twitter as part of the localization arrangement.

"Ads are important," Ito said. "It's always harder to add ads later. So we're launching with them in Japan."

According to Ito, Twitter Japan … Read more

Quickie: Trackthis tracks packages on Twitter

While I try to get Web 2.0 Expo darling du jour Fireball working (still no luck), I thought it'd be worth covering another location service for Twitter: Trackthis. You tell it a package tracking number from FedEx, UPS, USPS, or DHL, and it will Twitter you back whenever there's an update from the shipper.

Yes, there are other ways to get this data, but there are advantages to using Trackthis: First, you can attach a descriptor to your query (like "lamp shade"). Second, you can use Twitter to easily change your message delivery options: you … Read more

Rocketboom creator vows never to sell Twitter account

First it was for sale. Then it wasn't. Then it would be for sale soon. And now, finally--maybe--it will "not ever" be for sale.

This, of course, is Rocketboom creator Andrew Baron's Twitter account. When it was originally for sale last week on eBay, bidding for it had climbed to more than $1,500 before he pulled the plug on the auction.

In an interview last week, he told me that while he had decided to yank the original auction after discovering, he said, that the bidders for his Twitter account were spam marketers, he expected … Read more

Yet another Twhirl update coming tomorrow

Shortly after Loic Le Meur's Seesmic acquired the excellent Twitter client Twhirl, the new geek hotness FriendFeed got its first AIR application, Alert Thingy (review), which also handles Twitter feeds. Le Meur charged his new employee with putting FriendFeed features into Twhirl to maintain parity.

FriendFeed support in the current version of Twhirl is pretty sparse. If you find it frustrating, however, sit tight for a few more hours because yet another update to Twhirl is on the way, Le Meur told me tonight.

This new version will let you post images to your FriendFeed account just by dragging … Read more

Can't live without Twitter? Don't believe the hype

In the mid-1990s, America Online was enjoying exponential growth when it almost came a cropper. AOL's infrastructure wasn't able to support the increasing crush of new customers, and the online company soon developed an annoying habit of being offline too often.

I remember a senior company exec at the time describing how the top brass was caught off guard by the seemingly sudden avalanche of complaints and negative coverage in the press. It was as if someone flipped a switch, and AOL went from darlings to dolts. Steve Case and his management team ultimately threw a ton of … Read more

Webware 100 winner: Twitter

Twitter is an online service that lets you broadcast short messages to your friends or "followers." It also lets you specify which Twitter users you want to follow so you can read their messages in one place.

Twitter is designed to work on a mobile phone as well as on a computer. All Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, so each message can be sent as a single SMS alert. You can't say much in 140 characters. That is part of Twitter's charm.

In 2007 Twitter didn't come out with as many new features … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 707: Space is cancelled

The Russians have canceled their space tourism program, because space is too serious to monetize. Also, Skype offers unlimited long-distance on...phones. VoIP is so dead. You heard it here first. In other news, Microsoft bonanza: Windows predictions, welcoming ethical hackers, and burning down your house. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 707

Skype offers unlimited long-distance plan http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN2141013920080421

Google tops Microsoft, Apple in brand power http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9924273-7.html

Britannica makes content free with widgets, publisher registration http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9923867-7.html

Hackers cancel attack on CNN http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144850/hackers_cancel_attack_on_cnn.html… Read more

You wanna talk about train wrecks? Well then, let's get real

"I can't remember a debate in which the only memorable moment was the audience's heckling of a moderator."

That's the opening line of Frank Rich's eminently entertaining essay in Sunday's New York Times on the recent Clinton-Obama debate.

Rich obviously missed the ruckus over Sarah Lacy's ill-fated interview of Mark Zuckerberg last month at the South by Southwest conference. That episode was well-chronicled elsewhere. Suffice it to say that Lacy wasn't at her best that evening and a crowd of nerds jumped ugly when their patience ran out. What followed was … Read more

Twitter hiccups through a semi-outage

The Twitter community may not be paying much heed to your posts this weekend, but it's not your fault.

The company behind the messaging service and Web 2.0 darling acknowledged late Saturday that some back-end changes had been failing to show tweets from a number of people. A post on the Twitter site from a person identified as "goldtoe, Official Rep," had this to say:

This is a result of some of the caching changes we made during last night's maintenance window. While those changes have made the service more stable over all, there have … Read more