Twitter Tuesday is a weekly wrap-up of significant and interesting news relating to Twitter.
No more finding friends on Tumblr
Shortly after pulling its follow graph data from Instagram, Twitter has done the same to Tumblr. Just like you can no longer find Instagram users you already followed on Twitter, the “Find Friends” feature on Tumblr was cut off by Twitter last week.
Seeing as how they have also recently cut a few ties with LinkedIn and tightened their API restrictions, users are beginning to worry that the Twitter ecosystem is in danger, despite Twitter saying its what they are trying to preserve.
Twitter and Tumblr have always been tightly integrated, so Tumblr expressed their deep disappointment over the disconnection to The Next Web:
“Given our history of embracing their platform, this is especially upsetting. Our syndication feature is responsible for hundreds of millions of tweets, and we eagerly enabled Twitter Cards across 70 million blogs and 30 billion posts as one of Twitter’s first partners.”
Twitter stops showing how tweets are posted
In another interesting move by Twitter, they have removed the “via” stamp on tweets that notified viewers of which app the Twitter account was using when that tweet was posted, such as Twitterific or Hootsuite. This stamp was removed from the Twitter for iPhone app back in July, followed by the Twitter website yesterday.
This is just one more way Twitter is clamping down and discouraging the use of third-party Twitter clients. Some say that this is a good thing for privacy, since users will not see that you’re tweeting from a mobile app and probably not at your home. However, others are saying this is another way for Twitter to pretend that those apps don’t exist.
It’s definitely bad news for the apps themselves, as if they didn’t have enough to worry about with the new API “guidelines.” Those stamps at the bottom of tweets was like free advertising. If an influential user was using a certain app, his or her followers would probably check it out and see if they liked it.
Twitter teams up with HootSuite to sell ads
While Twitter is trying to phase out the use of traditional Twitter clients, it seems to be okay with emphasizing enterprise clients such as HootSuite. In the blog post announcing the API changes, HootSuite even got a shout-out. Now Twitter is teaming up with HootSuite to sell advertising on Twitter.
The promotion has been offered to 30,000 HootSuite Pro premium clients in the U.S. and is aimed at small and medium sized businesses who have never advertised on Twitter before. Redeemable through the HootSuite dashboard, the offer is for $100 in Twitter advertising credits that can be used on the Promoted Tweets or Promoted Accounts products.
This is only the latest of many efforts to bring more small and medium businesses into advertising on Twitter. In December, Twitter announced their self-serve advertising platform. When it rolled out in February, Twitter teamed up with American Express to offer a $100 to the first 10,000 businesses to register that either accepted American Express cards or was a cardholder.
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Tags: promoted products, social advertising, social media, tumblr, Twitter, Twitter apps, Twitter Tuesday
