It’s been a little less than three months since Mark Luckie left The Washington Post to become manager of journalism and news at Twitter, and now he’s got some advice for journalists using the microblogging network.

Working in conjunction with Twitter’s Platforms and Analytics team, Luckie combed through thousands of tweets sent by journalists and news brands towards the end of 2011 to find out what behaviors generated spikes in retweets, replies and follower growth. Most of his findings were predictable, but a few — like the fact that sharing others’ tweets in full using the automatic Retweet button rather than quoting their tweets generated triple the engagement — were surprising.

via Twitter Offers Advice for Journalists.

There were more people posting the article to LinkedIn than there were people tweeting about it.And that’s when the sledgehammer hit me. Twitter has a huge new competitor with the potential to swamp them, particularly in one critical area. And, it is all of their own making.Back in July Twitter announced that it was no longer going to allow users to post tweets automatically to LinkedIn. Twitter gave us the usual gumpf about wanting to “provide the core Twitter user experience through a consistent set of products and tools”. What Twitter really meant to say was, “We don’t want anyone reading tweets where we can’t put ads”.

via The rise of LinkedIn’s news feed And how Twitter made a big dumb mistake | VentureBeat.

Although it has only been a mainstream social network for a few short years, Twitter has formed a surprisingly tight and symbiotic relationship with the media, both because it is a kind of real-time newswire for information about events like the Arab Spring and the upcoming U.S. election, and also because it gives journalists an easy way to extend their personal brands into the social web. The company’s moves to lock down its network and control more of the content have raised some hackles in the journalism community, however, even as Twitter expands on its partnerships with select media entities such as NBC and MTV — and those stress points are only going to increase as the company’s ambitions and desire for revenue continue to grow.

via Twitter’s relationship with the media: It’s complicated — Tech News and Analysis.

Although most of the API changes were previously announced, the overview of the final API highlighted some that were previously unknown. The one sure to cause the most immediate frustration: Twitter is ending support for RSS, XML and Atom.

While it was easy to see the loss of XML coming — Twitter has slowly dropped support for XML in favor of JSON over the last year and a half — dropping support for RSS and Atom is a major shift.

via New Twitter API Drops Support for RSS, Puts Limits on Third-Party Clients.

The changes in Twitter API V 1.1 are all designed to foster “a consistent Twitter experience” and include universal endpoint authentication, per-endpoint rate-limiting and a number of crucial changes to the “Developer Rules of the Road.” It may be the latter changes that prove most troubling to the remaining collection of third-party, consumer-focused Twitter clients.

via Twitter’s API Update Cuts Off Oxygen to Third-Party Clients.

The main goal of StatusPeople’s web app is to find out “how many fake followers you and your friends have.” The company, which creates social-media management software, released the tool as a side project in July to shed light on a user’s follower quality. While the makers emphasize on their site that their metrics aren’t perfect (for example, they only analyze a sample of your followers and, moreover, it’s possible for anyone to purchase Twitter followers for another user), there is no doubt that the results have the potential to humiliate anyone who pays money for subscribers–a dodgy practice that takes just a few minutes.

via Buying Twitter Followers? Beware StatusPeople, The Service That Exposes Social Media’s Black Market | Fast Company.

The main goal of StatusPeople’s web app is to find out “how many fake followers you and your friends have.” The company, which creates social-media management software, released the tool as a side project in July to shed light on a user’s follower quality. While the makers emphasize on their site that their metrics aren’t perfect for example, they only analyze a sample of your followers and, moreover, it’s possible for anyone to purchase Twitter followers for another user, there is no doubt that the results have the potential to humiliate anyone who pays money for subscribers–a dodgy practice that takes just a few minutes.

via Buying Twitter Followers? Beware StatusPeople, The Service That Exposes Social Media’s Black Market | Fast Company.

Social media has been often touted for the role it played in the popular uprisings that have spread across the Arab world since December 2010. Despite the buzz, you may be surprised that only 0.26% of the Egyptian population, 0.1% of the Tunisian population and 0.04% of the Syrian population are active on Twitter.

Of all the countries in North Africa and the Middle East, Twitter is most popular in Kuwait, where 8.6% of the population is active users, defined as those who tweet at least once per month. Facebook’s more popular throughout the region. In its most popular country, the U.A.E., some 36.18% of the population is on Facebook.

Khaled ElAhmad (who goes by the Internet alias Shusmo) created these two infographics, exploring Facebook and Twitter trends in the Arab world, using Visual.ly. His data comes from a Dubai School of Government report on Arab Social Media.

via How the Arab World Uses Facebook and Twitter [INFOGRAPHICS].

Most marketers are tweeting too much on the wrong days, not using hashtags enough and almost never do the one thing that will dramatically boost their retweets — ask for them — according to a new study looking at how marketers use Twitter from Buddy Media.

via Sorry, Marketers, You’re Doing Twitter Wrong [REPORT].

Most Americans don’t use Twitter. But about half who do use it every day.

Of 2,253 U.S. online adults surveyed in a recent Pew study, 15% said they use Twitter. Among the same population, 8% said they use the service on a typical day day.

via 8% of Online Adults Use Twitter Every Day [STUDY].