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.

200 million Tweets per day

Users on Twitter are now sending 200 million Tweets per day. For context on the speed of Twitter’s growth, in January of 2009, users sent two million Tweets a day, and one year ago they posted 65 million a day.

For perspective, every day, the world writes the equivalent of a 10 million-page book in Tweets or 8,163 copies of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Reading this much text would take more than 31 years and stacking this many copies of War and Peace would reach the height of about 1,470 feet, nearly the ground-to-roof height of Taiwan’s Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world.

A billion Tweets are sent every five days. What’s in them? Everything about every topic imaginable – whether it’s a unique bird’s-eye view of the Shuttle launch as seen from an airplane window or cheers of support for soccer teams in this year’s Champions League tournament. Using Twitter helped a homeless man reunite with his daughter, sent two Cincinnati Reds fans to spring training on a player’s dime, and even helped residents of a small city in Korea find fresh water after its supply was cut off.

And, here are the top Trending Topics for the first half of 2011, divided into the two most popular categories:

World events/News

1. AH1N1 - Swine Flu
2. Mubarak - former Egyptian President
3. Easter - Christian holiday
4. Cairo - capital of Egypt
5. #prayforjapan - sentiment following the March earthquake and tsunami
6. Chernobyl - site of nuclear disaster in 1986
7. Libia/Libya - site of an ongoing civil war
8. Fukushima - Japanese nuclear power plant
9. William & Kate - Newly-named Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
10. Gadafi - Libyan political leader

Pop culture

1. Rebecca Black - pop singer
2. Femme Fatale - newly-released Britney Spears album
3. Charlie Sheen - actor
4. #tigerblood - hashtag popularized by Charlie Sheen
5. Nate Dogg - rapper
6. Anderson Silva - Brazilian mixed martial artist
7. Tom & Jerry - famous cartoon
8. Mumford & Sons - British rock band
9. Bieber alert - referring to artist Justin Bieber
10. Queen Gaga - referring to artist Lady Gaga