Twitterers Aren't Sticking With It

(NEWSER) - Still learning the ropes of microblogging, Oprah Winfrey posted her first tweet this morning, the Chicago Tribune reports. In her first tweet—“HI TWITTERS . THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY”—she committed the Twitter faux pas of writing in all caps and using the wrong term for Twitter adherents, or "Tweeple.” Nonetheless, her feed already has 103,000 followers—and the number is climbing by the second. More»

You can't have 'meaningful interaction' in 140 characters

(NEWSER) - Call him a rebel, but Farhad Manjoo wants Twitter to double the number of characters allowed in a tweet. To many users, that’s sacrilege. But on Twitter’s fifth anniversary, “the 140-character limit feels less like a feature than a big, obvious bug,” Manjoo writes on Slate . “Forcing people to shrink their updates to 140 characters prevents meaningful interaction between users, short-circuits conversations, and turns otherwise straightforward thoughts into a bewildering jumble of txtese.” More»

Dick Costolo will head day-to-day operations

(NEWSER) - Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams is relinquishing leadership of the microblogging site to COO Dick Costolo, reports the Wall Street Journal . "Building things is my passion," Williams offers as explanation for the move, adding that he asked Colstolo to take over. Adds Costolo, recently "it became clear to everybody that Ev's got to be able to focus on product strategy." The move also comes as Twitter looks to reap some sort of profitability out of its explosive growth. More»

Turns out it's only un-hip adults who use it

(NEWSER) - Sure, you keep hearing about the 140-character miracle that is Twitter, but that’s because old people are writing about it, not because all the cool kids are doing it. When old person Patrick Goldstein asked some teenagers about the microblogging site, he found out how the next generation feels: “It's something for adults who feel like it makes them hip or something,” says one 17-year-old. More»

Total posts up from 1B a year ago, 5B just 4 months ago

(NEWSER) - Twitter isn’t growing as explosively as it used to, but the volume of traffic on the microblogging site is still expanding fast enough that it should hit 10 billion total tweets in the coming days. That’s up from a billion about a year ago, and 5 billion just 4 months ago. Gauging the progress is quite simple, Mashable reports; just look at the number tag at the end of a tweet’s URL. A recent one read 9917803012, and the site produces about 50 million a day. More»