Recently in Twitter Category

Verizon is now offering a free Twitter App for feature phones, called Tweet-Tweet.  To get the Tweet-Tweet app, text “Tweet” to APPS (2-7-7-7.)

Tweet-Tweet lets you see “friends,” “replies” and “favorites” and other categories - just like online.

The app allows you to tweet, re-tweet, direct message, follow - and un-follow from your phone. You can get started with Mavens, a new feature that lets new users easily set up accounts and immediately follow popular tweeters.

Okay, Tweeters, now you never have to leave Twitter to get 411 info about movies, local haunts, tweeple, reverse # lookup and directions via a tweetable service from Superpages. After you tweet @sp411, you get 5 answers via Twitter.

Superpages can now be searched through Twitter @sp411. The new sp411 Twitter Bot was introduced earlier this month and allows "Tweeple" to search Superpages.com through Twitter by drect message.

How it works:

1. Follow sp411on Twitter.

2. Tweet your search as a direct message: something like... "d sp411 Italian San Francisco" or "d sp411 pizza 75261"

3. Up to five results are being sent back to you as direct messages.

The direct messages provide the business name, address, phone number, and a link for more information that takes you to the business' SuperPage business profile on Superpages.com. On the business' SuperPage consumers can view ratings and reviews, pictures and videos, specialties, menus and list of services, hours of operation, and much more.

Twitter couldn't tweet that it was under attack today. Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack. Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users.  Twitter is defending against this attack now and will continue to do so.

Twitter did manager to recover and get the service working.  At 9:46 am, they noted that "as we recover, users will experience some longer load times and slowness. This includes timeouts to API clients. "

The NPD Group likes to know what's going.  They have tracked Twitter awareness. They found that awareness of Twitter more than doubled in the first quarter of 2009 reaching a 52 percent awareness level among the U.S. Internet-using population, which increased from 22 percent awareness in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Among music buyers, awareness of Twitter reached 67 percent in the first quarter. In addition 12 percent of music buyers claimed to have used Twitter in the past three months, versus 8 percent of Web users overall.

"NPD's latest music-acquisition study shows that there are segments of consumers who are more actively integrating Twitter as a key tool for communicating and networking," said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD. "Based on their music-purchasing history, active Twitter users are simply worth more to record labels and music retailers than those who are not using Twitter."

Twitter is so popular it is not only a way for predators to phish your banking information it is also a way for annoying marketers to befriend you and clutter your Tweets.

Case in point, we recently started posting all the news from Wireless and Mobile News on Twitter and in a short period of time garnered many followers. One follower was not in fact a live person, cell phone company or industry insider, she was a mocked up photo of a model, set up to sell cell phones.

Here's how it worked, we received a message that we had a new follower. On that followers page, there all these postings about cheap cell phones, that click into eBay cell phone selling pages. The name of the Twitterer is one of those names that sound like a porn star.  The base URL is not a cell phone seller but a way to get "16,000 Twitter followers in 90 days that is completely automated."

"At any given time, I post a message I can get 400 people to read the message," says the marketer.

As the Twttersphere evolves so do do uses for Twitter.  The latest is the use of TwitPic for showing quickly who's in the Denton, Texas jail, according to the Dallas Observer.

The TwitPic page shows posts for everyone booked at the Denton  jail, the feed comes complete with a person's mug shot, age and what they were booked for.  The Denton Police had no idea that the service existed.

The service is not from the Denton Police Department but from a savvy programmer/art photography student at the University of North Texas, Brian Baugh who is shinning in his own self-promotion light. 

The TwitPic page now is called an "unofficial" Denton Police site, previously it was missing the "unofficial" word.  It is described as "programmed by a UNT art photography student, drawing attention to how much public info we put online." It has a handy link to Baugh's own website.

"If we get onto Twitter, this isn't the way we want to be using it," Denton Police spokesman Ryan Grelle told the Dallas Obserer and suggested the TwitPic page is probably being pulled from their online Jail Custody Report -- a page that includes names and the bond amount.

Baugh just made it look a lot prettier and more interesting and well Twitter is a great way to get information out.

It could also be a great tool for bail bond companies s and a way to check up on the black sheep in the family in Denton.

Wireless and Mobile News has been officially Tweeting on Twitter as of March 30.  When we first placed the link in the columns we could not find a Twitter icon that fit with our design and that looked Twittery.

We would like to thank Josiah Josh at Siah Design who offers 30 Free Vector Twitter Buttons. One of his designs was adapted for the The Wireless and Mobile News Twitter button.  His rendition of the Twitter bird looks better than most because it is a simple vector graphics.  The fonts he chose capture the essence of Twitter.

You can download the Twitter buttons yourself at Siah Design.

Moore Twitter Stories from Wireless and Mobile News:

Alien Hoaxer Punks Twitterati.
What would Jesus Tweet?  Twitter Version of the Passions of Christ.
Wireless and Mobile News Officially on Twitter.
Twitter Feats of Korean Taco Truck.
BlackBerry Storm TwitterBerry.

Twitter can be used as way of seeing the pulse of trends, it is also a great way to spread rumors and a hacking hoax.  It is even better to begin the hoax on a holiday weekend when business sources can't be contacted to verify if something is true or not.

Case in point, there were a lot Tweets speculating why sales rankings disappeared for two high-profile gay-themed books then mysteriously hundreds of gay and lesbian books. Some Tweeted accusations of bigotry and bias. There was even a petition started to stop the censoring, while gay and lesbian groups protested to Amazon.

Then someone claimed to be hacker who accomplished the deed and explained how he did it on his free LiveJournal blog titled "Brutally Honest".  He posted some bogus code that seemed to fool many except real honest developers. He has no real name just a screen name of ytseno laturb  with picture of what looks like an alien.

It was the most Tweeted story on Sunday.