As usual, we have compiled all Twitter related stories that can help businesses, brands and digital agencies to stay on top of Twitter developments and leverage this platform for product developments, lead generation and sales generation. With Twitter popularity growing far faster than any other social network, and the company also gearing up for an IPO, there are lots of products, advertising and statistical updates coming from within and outside of the organisation.

We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.

— Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013

Twitter has open up Twitter Cards for all businesses

Following a beta test in May, Twitter announced that all businesses will have access to their Lead Generation Cards. The Twitter card is a new expandable tweet format, which allows businesses to add a lot more information including text, images and video into a tweet. In addition, the businesses can access user’s Twitter handles, email address and names to fill up any information needed when the user navigates via Twitter card to their website.
Overall, As Twitter continues to rise, and continues to splinter into many services, they are enabling businesses to add more and more content, to trigger marketing activities to inevitably follow up.

Takeaway for business:
The Twitter card goes a step further than Google and Facebook display ads, which have text, image and a link to website support. The more sophisticated Twitter card enables brands to not only display content in rich media but also to extract users’ personal info, such as email, name and location, to pre-fill landing page info when a user navigates via Twitter card to their website or application. (See following Twitter card example from our client Putney Social.)

@danieldoherty Lost & Co Check out the full review below http://t.co/VO31eu2zaD

— Putney Social (@PutneySocial) September 17, 2013

Bing News now Features Trending Topics from Twitter

Bing News now displays (USA only) the latest buzz from Facebook and Twitter along with Bing headlines. Collecting information from across the Web, Bing’s real-time views of the most relevant breaking trends and social conversations are available all in one place. From now on, if a user searches for a celebrity or politician or a review of a popular product that’s making headlines, the recent news topics from Twitter about that person and product will also be displayed on the right side of the search result page based on popular “tweets.”

To ensure that only news content from Twitter shows up in Bing News, Bing displays links from Twitter only for sites that are also listed in Bing News.

Takeaway for businesses:
With some smart content creation and distribution, businesses can be featured on Bing news search page for relevant topics. They need to think out how to become part of Bing news and do relevant Twitter updates so that a combination of both can be displayed on the Bing news page.

Twitter’s Bulk Follow Clampdown

As per the tweet from Dick Costolo (CEO Twitter), the company has come down very strongly on auto and bulk following/(un)Following via API and has disengaged this service.

Bulk/auto following/unfollowing are prohibited. They inevitably result in polluted timelines, spam via DM, and inappropriate account ties.

— dick costolo (@dickc) September 5, 2013

Takeaway for Businesses:
This can be good news for businesses, who won’t receive many bogus followers, people who follow a Twitter account in order to beef up their own following i.e. in the absence phony followers, the businesses now can realistically estimate their reach on Twitter.

But The flip side of the argument against automation is that those businesses and brands that want to communicate, market or provide support to their customers cannot auto-follow their real followers straight away. Instead, they now have to rely on human resources to follow them manually, which can slow the process. And due to Twitter’s rule of not allowing a DM to be sent to non-followers, users might be forced to send public messages, rather than direct messages, including complaints that could dent company reputation.