The latest from TechCrunch
- Twitter Now Over 145 Million Users, Almost 300,000 Apps
- Um, Where's Twitter For Android On Twitter's Top 10 Apps?
- In The Coming HTML5 Browser Wars, The Markup Should Remain The Same
| Twitter Now Over 145 Million Users, Almost 300,000 Apps | Top |
| When I read Twitter CEO Evan Williams post tonight about the state of Twitter from a mobile perspective, the first thing that jumped out at me what that Twitter for Android, an app Twitter worked hard on, isn’t even in the top 10 most-used apps for the service. But Williams also used the post to whip out some impressive numbers. Chief among them: Twitter now has over 145 million registered users (though presumably less than 150 million, or he would have said that). And there are now nearly 300,000 registered apps in the Twitter ecosystem. The latter number above is technically the number of registered OAuth apps in the ecosystem (and includes multiple instances of some apps). Twitter made the switch over from basic authentication to OAuth a few days ago, leaving behind some apps, such as the old Tweetie (which was reborn as Twitter for iPhone). Williams says this number of registered apps has tripled since their Chirp conference — which was only this past April. Other big numbers thrown out there by Williams: Mobile users have jumped 62% since mid-April 16% of all new users to Twitter now start on mobile (it was 5% before Twitter started doing branded mobile clients) 46% of active users use some sort of mobile Twitter experience 78% of people who interact with Twitter still do so through twitter.com — though that number includes people who use more than one app m.twitter.com is the second most-used Twitter interface at 14% SMS and Twitter for iPhone are tied at 8% Lastly, he throws in that Twitter’s Promoted Products (read: their first big monetization pitch) has “exceeded our expectations.” No word on if that means Twitter has turned a profit, but that seems pretty unlikely. Still, revenues are undoubtedly growing. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Um, Where's Twitter For Android On Twitter's Top 10 Apps? | Top |
| This evening Twitter CEO Evan Williams put up an interesting post about Twitter mobile usage. By just about every measurable metric, it seems to be skyrocketing. He also included a graph of the top 10 ways people are now using Twitter. This includes both Twitter’s own apps and third-party clients, but notably, Twitter for Android is nowhere to be seen. I’ve confirmed with Twitter that this isn’t a mistake. It seems that Twitter for Android is in fact not in the top 10 ways people interact with the service. That’s incredible considering that Twitter for iPhone is number 4 and Twitter for Blackberry is number 5. Both of those were built by the Twitter team, just as the Android app was. Even crazier, it’s behind third party clients TwitPic, TweetDeck, Echofon, UberTwitter, and even Google Friend Connect! Obviously, Twitter downplays that in the post (and by downplays, I mean, doesn’t mention it), and instead only mentions Twitter for Android in the intro to say that it “launched a new version this week.” Remember, “new” is the best tactic to get people to try something. So why is next to no one using Twitter for Android? Twitter won’t say. But I suspect it may have to do with the awful experience of trying to find apps in Google’s Android Market. Twitter for Android is by far and away the best client for the platform — but you’ll note that none of the other popular Android Twitter clients made the cut either. So perhaps Android users just don’t like using Twitter? That’s probably not the case. Remember too that a lot of the newer Android phones come with custom skins that often include Twitter functionality without the need for a separate app. Still, for browsing tweets, Twitter for Android is much, much better. People should be using it, but they’re apparently not. Update : One other thing undoubtedly at play here: Twitter for Android only works on Android 2.1 and later. Again, that’s largely an Android issue as fragmentation is preventing people from upgrading. More : Twitter Now Over 145 Million Users, Almost 300,000 Apps CrunchBase Information Twitter Android Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| In The Coming HTML5 Browser Wars, The Markup Should Remain The Same | Top |
| On Monday, Google made a big splash with a customized Arcade Fire video page that showed off all the cool things HTML5 can do, from video, animations and 3D rendering to gorgeous fonts and choreographed windows. It’s all cutting edge stuff as far as what is possible with a Web browser goes, but there is one very big problem. It doesn’t work so great in all browsers, even browsers that supposedly support HTML5. If you go to the landing page that launches the video in Firefox or even the forthcoming IE9 (which isn’t out yet, but is very HTML5-friendly), it detects your browser and suggests you use Chrome instead. I received the following message on Firefox: This site was designed with Google Chrome in mind and is unable to render properly in your browser. For the best viewing experience, we recommend downloading Google Chrome and trying this site again. But wait, isn’t Firefox one of those “modern browsers” that supports HTML5 ? This isn’t the first time there have been issues with HTML5 compatibility. The problem is that HTML5 is so young that the standards have not been hammered out yet across all browsers. The markup language required to produce the same effect is different for different browsers. “The Arcade Fire thing . . . they are writing to the browser,” points out Dean Hachamovitch, the Microsoft general manager in charge of Internet Explorer. “They use proprietary Javascript.” HTML5 “done right,” he contends, would be using the same markup language across browsers. Seems reasonable. That is what the open Web is all about. It is why we have standards. But HTML5 is so new that we are getting flashbacks to the late 1990s with sites refusing to accept certain browsers. To illustrate this point, Microsoft has an browser test page to show the difference between different browsers. Under one set of tests titled HTML5 Demos, there is a “ Border Radius” test that changes the border around a block of text. Inside the block of text, it shows the markup code required to create different effects such as animating it or creating dots instead of a solid line. Here is what the code looks like in Chrome: And here is what it looks like in Firefox What’s wrong with these pictures? One takes 16 lines of code, the other takes four, and they are completely different. Even the dots that are created don’t match (Chrome’s dots are square). A different set of code is required for IE9. ”We want to make the same markup work everywhere,” says Hachamovitch. ”If you have to write that differently for every browser it is kind of missing the point.” Microsoft is working with the standards bodies, as are all the other browser makers, but what is really needed is better definitions and a thorough set of reference examples for every possible HTML5 feature. It’s a lot of work. Eventually, we will get there. But until then, expect to see grandstanding about which browser does HTML5 better. When you hear that, just ask yourself, which version of HTML5 are they talking about. CrunchBase Information Google Chrome Windows Internet Explorer Firefox Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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