Twitter Music Is Available… But Only For Celebrities

Bad news, folks. The Twitter Music iOS app is not launching today as originally expected, nor is it arriving this weekend — at least, not for the masses. If you’re famous, however, that’s another story entirely.

Yesterday AllThingsD pegged a Friday release, to line up with the opening of the Coachella music festival this weekend, but then recanted that in a new post today. Apparently only “influencers” are getting the music discovery app early. Whether you consider Ryan Seacrest an influencer is a matter of opinion, but that’s why the American Idol host and Dick Clark protégé was playing around with it yesterday.

Playing with @twitter‘s new music app (yes it’s real!)…there’s a serious dance party happening at idol right now

— Ryan Seacrest (@RyanSeacrest) April 11, 2013

What’s with Seacrest and mobile appdevelopers? They just can’t seem to stop pelting him with pre-release apps. (SeeZynga/DrawSomething 2.)

If Twitter Music’s any good, more tweets are likely to follow from other celebrities. Assuming no nasty or insulting tweets go out about the app, it’s kind of brilliant on the part of Twitter’s marketing team. Nothing like a little buzz to tempt the masses, and if there are any bugs, the stars are essentially beta testers who can help sniff them out ahead of a public release.

As for the rest of us, AllThingsD now says we’ll get our hands on it in a week. So hang tight, and try not to be jealous if you notice rock stars and personalities all atwitter over this. Think of it like they’re doing you a service.

As the name suggests, the app focuses on music discovery, recommending artists and songs based on a variety of factors, such as who the user follows. (Justin Bieber and Alicia Keys fans would get very different suggestions.) Clips play from right inside the app, courtesy of third-parties like iTunes and SoundCloud, and Vevo powers the integrated music video playback.

For now, it’s iOS only, but we’ll keep our eyes open for any announcements or leads regarding Twitter Music for other platforms.

Are you excited to get your hands on this new music app from Twitter? Think it could pull you away from Pandora, Spotify or another favorite? Weigh in.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Google Play Redesign Creeps Out Briefly on Google+

A redesign of the Google Play app appeared briefly on a Google+ account before the post was pulled.

YouTube’s Eileen Rivera posted a screenshot of a redesigned Google Play app to her Google+ page, but the link now comes back as broke, and perusing her main feed also yields nothing. It appears that perhaps this was not yet meant for public consumption.

As AndroidCentral points out, if you look in the top left hand corner of the screenshot you will see a dog bowl. This is likely a reference to this being a “dogfooding” – or internal company usage – version of the app. That could also mean that there will be some more tweaks before it is released.

Seeing as the image has been pulled, there is no real indication of when, if ever, this refresh could make its way to the public. With Google I/O right around the corner, though, it seems like that would be a likely timeframe for this to make its debut.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Amazon to Acquire Goodreads, A Social Network for Bookworms

Amazon announced on Thursday its intentions to acquire Goodreads, a popular socialnetwork in the literary world. Neither Amazon nor Goodreads disclosed the terms of the agreement, so it’s unclear what the selling price was, although Goodreads will keep its headquarters in San Francisco. The social network has upwards of 16 million users who have created more than 30,000 book clubs.

“Amazon and Goodreads share a passion for reinventing reading,” Amazon Vice President of Kindle Content Russ Grandinetti said. “Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world. In addition, both Amazon and Goodreads have helped thousands of authors reach a wider audience and make a better living at their craft. Together we intend to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike.”

We assume that last line means that Amazon will embed an easy way to interact with fellow Goodreads members into its Kindle software.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Facebook Announces Newly Designed News Feeds

Facebook announced new design elements to engage users more effectively on Facebook on Thursday.  The new design rolls out today, facebook.com/newsfeed, for some users, but the roll-out will be gradual. The most notable changes include: larger images, videos, more prominent check-ins, more detailed information from publications (like TechnoBuffalo), a greater display of possible friends without having to click on the profile. You could even view highly trending content.

Facebook claims, this allows for “a richer, simpler, more beautiful feel” as well as more choices on what shows up on the news feed. You can determine what feed you want to view from choices such as photos, news content/likes, music and games.

Facebook’s new navigation menu is very mobile-inspired and allows a continuous look and feel across devices (desktop, tablet, phones).  The company claims you get the most out of “smaller screens” to gain a greater experience.  New notifications, that Facebook calls “new stories bubble,” show updates across your feeds, that float on the top of your screen.

While Facebook is excited about this new format, they are planning on rolling it out on a gradual basis to certain users and spreading the new format to a wider audience.  So far we’re excited to see what we can do with the new format of Facebook, from a visual design, it looks cleaner and thus far seems easier to navigate. Take a look for yourself at the video demo below.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Google+ (on the web) rolls out huge cover pics, new local reviews tab

Google+ today rolled out some interesting improvements to its web version. The biggest, obviously, is the gianormous new cover photos. What was once long and skinny is now long and not-so-skinny. (We know how it feels.) When fully expanded, the new cover photos have a 16x9 aspect ration and can be as large as 2,120px by 1,192px. That's big. So make sure your image doesn't suck.

Next is a new tab for your local reviews. If you've reviewed something in your hamlet, it'll show up here. You can use it to showcase specific reviews, or you can hide it altogether. Your call.

Editing your info also is easier now, with better separation of content in the About tab, with cards acting as category separators.

[Source: AndroidCentral]

Microsoft ViralSearch project visualizes content as it spreads across Twitter

It's not a new component of Bing (not yet, anyway), but Microsoft has taken the wraps off a new small-scale search project at its TechFest event this week -- one with a particular focus on so-called viral content. Appropriately dubbed ViralSearch, the effort from Microsoft Research currently uses Twitter as a source for all its data, and offers a variety of ways to track and visualize how a story, photo or video spreads from one outlet or individual to hundreds or thousands of others. That includes a profile view of sorts, which lets you see how influential a particular person was in spreading an item, and how prolific they are in general. Unfortunately, it is still just a research project so you can't try it out yourself just yet, and there's no word on any plans for it to become a commercial product.

[Source: Engadget]

App.net goes gratis, announces invitation-only free accounts

Since its inception, App.net has been working hard to improve its growing platform, giving all of its paid users a 10GB bucket of cloud storage and opening up its File API so devs could use the data stored there. Today, folks wanting in on the fledgling social platform can do so without paying the $36 annual fee -- provided you can score an invite from a paying member. And, there's something in it for paid accounts who refer folks. Both the inviter and invitee get an extra 100 MB of storage (up to 2GB) if the invitee subsequently follows 5 people and authorizes a third-party app.

Should you be lucky enough to score an invite, you won't have the same level of access as your paid brethren, however. Free accounts can only follow up to 40 users -- paid accounts have no such restriction -- and get a 500MB cloud locker. Also, while paid accounts can upload 100MB files, gratis accounts are limited to 10MB uploads.

We got to speak with Dalton Caldwell, CEO of App.net about the shift to a freemium model and he told us that the move has been in the works for some time. The reason it took awhile to do so is that App.net wanted to ensure that it had a market for its paid services and that it had enough of an app ecosystem to make App.net appealing to free users as well. Caldwell also informed us that in order to keep the number of free accounts manageable, paid members will get a limited number of invites to start -- with more invites appearing as the company finds it prudent to do so.

[Source: Engadget]

Twitter ratchets up phishing protection by adopting DMARC standard

Phishing emails often pose as being sent by major league sites rather than princes from far-flung countries, but Twitter's implemented a new measure to stamp out phonies that borrow its name. Costolo and Co. announced that, earlier this month, they began leveraging a tech called DMARC that establishes a way for email providers to authenticate senders and reject messages penned by impostors. While the DMARC specification does need support from e-mail services, outfits including AOL (which happens to be our parent company), Gmail, Hotmail / Outlook and Yahoo already make use of it. According to Twitter, it's now "extremely unlikely" that the majority of their users will receive emails masquerading as being sent from a Twitter.com address. We're sorry to disappoint, but it looks like you'll have to get your fix of foreign lottery notices from somewhere else.

[Source: Engadget]

It Looks Like Twitter Wants People to Start Sharing Videos

Video-sharing startup, Vine, offers interesting service. Twitter buys Vine because it likes interesting service. And now Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is showing the service off, and how easy it is to share short video clips with your tweets. Is this the future of video on Twitter? It looks that way.

In October 2012, Twitter picked Vine up before it could launch its own standalone iOS app. Vine still is going to launch a standalone app, independent of Twitter, but it looks like the service is easily integrated so the two play nice. It doesn’t seem like integration goes any deeper than that, AllThingsD said. For now, the startup is going solo under Twitter’s watchful eye, allowing users to share clips up to six seconds.

No Vine launch date has been shared, but with Costolo teasing the functionality, it seems likely we’ll see an announcement sometime soon.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

MySpace Is Back: Redesigned Reboot Publicly Opens

Facebook was once the hip new upstart amid a nascent social media landscape dominated by offerings like MySpace and Friendster. (Show of hands — who remembers Friendster?) But it wasn’t long before the Zuckerprise overshadowed its competitors and emerged as the dominant platform for Mafia Wars, Farmville and that Broadway soundtrack that your auntie listens to, seemingly ad nauseum.

But like any medium, service or company that becomes “the establishment,” the social network — which has hundreds of millions, or possibly a billion+, users — has competitors vying to knock it off its pedestal — most notably Google+. So far, it has successfully managed to keep Mountain View at bay, but how would it do against a returning champion? MySpace is itching to find out.

MySpace? Seriously? I know, I know — seems ludicrous. That place became the singer-songwriter’s landing spot, DJ-turned-club promoter’s wasteland and the butt of jokes across all of social media. It has been that way for ages now. And that’s the interesting part. It never really went away. And like a phoenix rising from the ashes, it has been hard at work to resurrect and re-imagine itself.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo - Click here to read the full story]

Facebook Reveals “Graph Search” For Narrowing Down Friends By Interest, Finding Places

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage on Tuesday during a Facebook press event and unveiled, among other things, a new beta feature called “Graph Search.” Basically, it allows users to search the website using queries. You can, for example, find friends in New York who are interested in Wine, or cheese or even politics. That way, if you want to throw a small get together, you can make sure you’re only inviting people with similar interests (if that’s the kind of person you are). As Engadget notes, you can also filter by a friend’s name, where they attended school and more. It seems like you can dive super deep into the filters.

Graph Search also allows you to search for points of interest. As Zuckerberg demoed during his presentation, you can look for a restaurant in a specific city or region and see ratings for the restaurant, among other information. We’ll update this post as we learn more, such as when the feature will go live, but it’s clear Facebook has interest in combining search with people and points of interest… which almost sounds like it wants to move into Maps. Maybe I’m crazy.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Facebook Looks Prepped to Launch Messenger for iPad

Facebook is hosting a special event on Tuesday, Jan. 15 during which the company is expected to make several announcements. One of those announcements may just be Facebook Messenger for tablets.

TechCrunch got a hold of the above image recently, which is clearly a screen shot of Facebook Messenger running on an iPad. The site said we can expect all of the Messenger features that are already available for mobile devices, just in a bigger format, plus a new option that allows users to record messages using their voice. That seems relatively minor, since most pundits are expecting a long event that spans a few hours.

TechCrunch also believe Apple will unveil some sort of product that’s being dubbed a “big deal.” Maybe it’s a Facebook phone? Unless the company has kept the hardware under tight wraps, we’re guessing it’s going to be something entirely different. Maybe we’ll finally seeInstagram for iPad.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]