Share a photo via text message

Sending a text message (or SMS message) has always been one of the easiest ways to share information and keep up with your favorite accounts on Twitter. SMS is currently available in about 80 countries and nine languages and usage continues to grow. Nearly four billion SMS messages are sent and received on Twitter every month.

Starting today, you can share photos on Twitter by including a photo in your text message. It’s simple: just enter the text of your Tweet as you normally would, attach a photo to the message and send to Twitter. This feature is currently available with the following carriers*: AT&T, Verizon Wireless and C Spire Wireless in the US; Vodafone, O2 and Orange in the UK; Vodafone Italy; Rogers Communications in Canada; VIVA Bahrain; and, TIM Brazil. We’ll continue to work with more carriers to enable their customers to share photos via text message.

Here are a few other text messaging updates and tips to check out:

• Fast Follow: Last year we announced that anyone in the U.S. can instantly receive Tweets on their phone, even if they don’t have a Twitter account, by simply sending a text message. This feature is now available globally with any carrier that offers Twitter SMS. Read more about how Fast Follow works here.
• SMS Commands: There are a few useful one-word commands that you can send to Twitter to get information.
  • "Suggest": lets you get suggestions for accounts to follow
  • "Stats": sends you your basic profile info, including your bio info, number of followers and the number of accounts you follow
  • "Help" or "Tips": to get handy Twitter SMS tips

Send “follow @twittermobile” to Twitter to keep up with the latest mobile Twitter news.

Show me more

Today, we’re rolling out two new features on Twitter.com that help you discover more on Twitter. You can now see when someone favorites or retweets one of your Tweets. You can also learn which Tweets are most interesting and inspiring to the people you follow.

The first new feature offers a simple way to see what's happening on Twitter in relation to you. Just click on the new tab with your @username, and you’ll be able to see which of your Tweets are Favorites, plus the latest Retweets (of your Tweets), Tweets directed to you, and your new Followers.

The other new feature is the Activity tab. It provides a rich new source of discovery by highlighting the latest Favorites, Retweets, and Follows from the people you follow on Twitter – all in one place. It’s easier than ever to explore Twitter, connect with people, and discover what’s happening around the world.

Discover: #longreads

Twitter connects people to all forms of media that provide more in-depth context and content than 140 characters can ever provide. A great example of this is found by searching the hashtag #longreads.

Once you do, you'll find tweeted suggestions of long articles and short stories by serious fans of great journalism and writing.

If you're using an official Twitter app, you'll also find that the Top Tweets feature surfaces the most popular content (as determined by community engagement with those Tweets) to the top of the search – it's like a @nytimesbooks bestseller list but in real-time!

The hashtag took off in 2009 and inspired readers to continue their admiration of long-form journalism as emphasis toward short-form began growing. If you want to learn more about the hashtag’s history, The New York Times covered it last November.

Here are some related accounts to consider following if #longreads strikes your fancy:

• @longreads: Run by the creator of the hashtag, this account shares the most popular articles and credits whoever surfaced it.
• @somethingtoread: Shares select essays and articles that have been saved on @instapaper
• @ifyouonly: If you only have time to read one thing...
• @longformorg: Shares long-form reads from the past and present.
• @sportsfeat: A companion to the account above but devised specifically for sports features.

Twitter Town Hall

The White House will hold its first Twitter Town Hall, and United States President Barack Obama will answer Twitter users’ questions about the American economy — live at askobama.twitter.com.
On Twitter you can find real-time conversations and information about every subject imaginable from across the world, including robust debate about the economy. In fact, a study announced today by Salesforce.com's Radian6 found that financial security is one of the most frequent topics of political conversation on Twitter. Tomorrow’s Town Hall is an invitation from the White House for anyone on Twitter to participate in an open exchange about the national and global economic issues facing the United States.

Questions addressed during the Town Hall will be selected both in advance and in real-time during the event. To narrow down the list of popular, relevant questions to ask on behalf of Twitter users, we’re doing the following:

• We’ve partnered with Mass Relevance to curate, visualize and integrate conversations for the event.
• Algorithms behind Twitter search will identify the Tweets that are most engaged with via Retweets, Favorites and Replies.
• A team of seasoned Twitter users with experience discussing the economy will help flag questions from their communities through retweets.
To have your voice heard, tweet your questions on the economy and be sure to include the hashtag #AskObama.  You can track the conversation in three great ways: Watch the event live at http//askobama.twitter.com,  follow live Tweets from @townhall, or search the hashtag #AskObama.

Twitter

Twitter is a website, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which offers a social networking and microblogging service, enabling its users to send and read messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user's profile page.
The website is based in San Francisco. Twitter also has servers and offices in San Antonio and Boston. Twitter, Inc. was originally incorporated in California, but as of 2011 is incorporated in Delaware.
Twitter was produced in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched in July. Since then Twitter has gained popularity worldwide and has had 200 million users, generating 350 million tweets a day and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day.It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet".

Features

Twitter has been compared to a web-based Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client. Tweets are publicly visible by default; however, senders can restrict message delivery to just their followers. Users can tweet via the Twitter website, compatible external applications (such as for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries.While the service is free, accessing it through SMS ma y incur phone service provider fees.
Users may subscribe to other users' tweets – this is known as following and subscribers are known as followers or tweeps (Twitter + peeps).
Twitter allows users the ability to update their profile by using their mobile phone either by text messaging or by apps released for certain smartphones / tablets.

Messages

Users can group posts together by topic or type by use of hashtags – words or phrases prefixed with a "#" sign. Similarly, the "@" sign followed by a username is used for mentioning or replying to other users. To repost a message from another Twitter user, and share it with one's own followers, the retweet function is symbolized by "RT" in the message.
In late 2009, the "Twitter Lists" feature was added, making it possible for users to follow (as well as mention and reply to) lists of authors instead of individual authors.

Twitter for Android App Gets Major Boost

Twitter recently released an updated version of its app for Android this July. The newest addition to its features are push notifications and multiple accounts support.
The inclusion of push notifications in this update might be an improvement or a mere redundancy for Android users. It can be a good sign as it levels the field for both Android and iPhone, with the latter already enjoying the feature since last fall. It might also be a little redundant for some, as Android also allows users to be updated of their Twitter whereabouts through the notification bar. This feature however will be appreciated by those who need to check their mentions every now and then.

As for the support for multiple accounts, this update has been long-awaited. Now, Android mobile users can switch and tweet from one account to another, without having to log in and sign out all the time. This feature is much help to businesses, with earlier experience on multiple account support only provided by third-party clients. However, this feature remains to be isolated to Twitter for mobile. Like the push notifications, iPhone users were the firsts to enjoy this feature, back when Twitter for mobile was still a third-party app called Tweetie.
Other updates to version 2.1.1 include an updated home screen widget and bug fixes for HTC users being asked to sign in repeatedly and for cleared notifications once user logs out.