What Can Be Sold in 140 Characters? That’s Now the Challenge for Twitter

So get ready, Twitter users: you are going to see more ads in your message stream, especially if you live overseas.

You may also see Twitter become more like a flash-sale site, with offers to buy products appearing in your message stream along with a way to buy them with a quick click or tweet.

In documents filed on Thursday to inform investors ahead of its initial public offering of stock, Twitter noted that it has been greatly expanding its inventory of advertising slots, especially for promoted tweets, which are sponsored messages that use the same format as the 140-character postings, or tweets, that are the core of the service.

The company, based in San Francisco, said that across its base of 218 million users, the average person is checking the service more frequently — about 230 times a month, compared with 197 times a month a year ago. And users are also interacting with more ads.

But Twitter revealed that it has also significantly increased the number of ads it sells, and prices for those ads have fallen. The company said it believes cheaper, more targeted ads will draw in more advertising, more than making up for the price drop.

So far, the strategy seems to be working — the company said advertising revenue more than doubled in the first six months of this year, to $221 million, compared with the same period last year.

Joy Baer, executive vice president of Strata, which makes software that helps advertisers and ad agencies buy online ads, said that the 1,000 ad agencies that use Strata had been rapidly increasing their purchases of Twitter ads over the last two years. Although Facebook still dwarfs Twitter in overall revenue, she said that for every $100 in Facebook ads her customers buy, they are buying $33 of Twitter ads.

“There is a huge opportunity for them to get more of the dollars,” Ms. Baer said. “What they have to do is make it easier for a media buyer to click a button and buy Twitter.”

Right now, the company’s ad-buying process is less automated than for competitors like Facebook and Google.

Twitter declined to comment, citing regulations limiting what a company selling stock to investors could say beyond its official filings.

But analysts say that Twitter faces several growth challenges.

More than three-quarters of the company’s users are outside the United States, and it must find a way to make money from those global users. Right now, only 25 percent of its revenue comes from overseas. In the second quarter of the year, each American user represented about $2.17 in ad revenue to Twitter. Each one outside the United States brought in about 30 cents during the quarter.

Twitter’s big challenge is to convince a company outside of the United States why it should spend advertising money with Twitter, and not with other outlets, said Daniel Knapp, director of advertising research at the consultant IHS Screen Digest in London.

Twitter also has limitations as a medium, compared with more visually robust services like Facebook or Google, which can also count on revenue from video and display ads. And the competition isn’t standing still — Instagram, a fast-growing photo sharing service owned by Facebook, announced on Thursday that it would begin putting ads in the photo feeds of its users, something that advertisers have been eagerly awaiting.

Although Twitter has struck deals with television networks in the United States and some other countries to run video clips that are sponsored by advertisers, those are still a small proportion of revenue compared with its sponsored tweets.

The company’s robust presence on mobile devices — 75 percent of its users access the service that way, and two-thirds of revenue is from mobile ads — can also be a limitation where smartphones are not common.

In India, for example, Twitter is widely used by Bollywood stars like Amitabh Bachchan, who has 6.5 million followers on the service.

The service has also become one of the most important platforms for political debate there.

David Jolly and Mark Scott contributed reporting from London and Peter Eavis and Jenna Wortham from New York.

Pogue’s Posts Blog: Yes, There’s a New iPhone. But That’s Not the Big News.

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App Smart: Streaming for a Good Beat That’s Just to Your Taste

Since then, the music landscape has undergone a sea change. But discovering music in a similar way is still possible via the latest and fast-evolving trend in digital music: streaming.

Perhaps the best-known streaming music app is Spotify. This app lets you listen to any of your favorite tracks at will, and it is also a digital radio that streams new music. Its interface is simple, bordering on spartan: it has a main screen where you control the music you are hearing, and a menu screen that lets you access different sections of the app and adjust settings.

To listen to a track you simply choose “Search” and type the artist’s name or a word from the track’s title. Spotify then lists the results by artist, album and song title. A more interesting way to use the app, however, is to select the “Discover” option. This reveals a long graphics-heavy list containing all sorts of different music.

Some of this will be familiar (right now, my app is telling me “You’ve been listening to a lot of Daft Punk lately” and recommends one of their albums), some of it will be new. These tracks include new releases, and music that is popular or is being listened to by nearby Spotify users.

There’s also a “Radio” option that has “stations” that stream either a particular band’s music, or genres of your choice, from Alternative to Trance. The app has straightforward controls and will show you album art and even band biographies.

Spotify has changed how I listen to music. But while the app is free on iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8, using it may cost you. In the United States, you can listen to the app’s radio stations free, but to listen to specific tracks you’ll have to subscribe for $10 a month.

For a different experience, you might try Rhapsody (which in some places overseas goes under the Napster brand). As in Spotify, you can search for music you want to hear, or discover new music through a few different routes. For example, the Browse section breaks music into genres; inside each genre’s page you can choose from new releases or popular tracks.

Alternatively, you can find new music through Rhapsody’s home page, which offers access to featured music, new releases and popular tracks. There are also Playlists, which are a little like Spotify’s stations. These lists have a regularly updated selection of music that will stream to you. There are extras like album reviews, so you can learn more about the artist you’re listening to.

Rhapsody’s interface is graphically richer and feels easier to navigate than Spotify’s, thanks to features like its ever-present icon bar. Bu you may find that Rhapsody’s graphics and many settings get in the way of your listening experience. It’s free to download on iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8, but you’ll have to pay $10 a month for unlimited music streaming.

Last.fm was one of the first players that streamed music over the Internet, and now it’s available as an app. Instead of concentrating on giving you access to new music, a bit like traditional radio, Last.fm tries to recommend new music based on the tracks you already listen to. In fact, it monitors music that you play through your mobile device, and keeps a list of it in your profile — a trick it calls “scrobbling.”

The scrobbled list can be shared online and is used to recommend lists of music similar to the kind you already like. The data comes from other Last.fm users’ lists. Last.fm is powerful and entertaining, but its interface is more basic than its peers’ and it doesn’t quite have the same range of music discovery options. And, though the app is free on iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8, to listen to the recommended lists you have to pay $3 a month.

Finally, there’s SoundCloud, a free app for iOS and Android that offers a different kind of streaming music. Where Spotify is like having radio on your phone, SoundCloud is more about hearing new music shared by indie artists via a social network. It has a wonderfully simple interface and it’s fun to use — you can upload your own music and share that too. Just don’t expect to find mainstream rock bands on this app.

Hopefully, you’ll find tons of new music to listen to via these apps, but remember there are other options. The Pandora app is well known and definitely worth trying. Apple is also poised to introduce iTunes Radio — a free service with advertisements. Streaming music is a fast-changing scene, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for special offers.

Quick Call

Telenav Scout, a successful GPS navigation app that’s done well on Android and iOS, has finally hit Windows Phone 8 devices. The core app is free, but advanced features like red light alerts will cost you $25 a year.

Corner Office: That’s a Good Idea. But First, Can You Put It in Writing?

A. No. When I graduated from the university, I went to work for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and was just sort of plopped into one of the most outrageous engineering projects. I worked on the laser fusion machine, and it was one of those rare situations where you’re an engineer with no budget constraints.

And so in that process of infinite budgets and the early days of computers, I think I got a sense of just the raw creativity when you have a clean slate and lots of flexibility. So I didn’t start out as an entrepreneur, but I think in those early working days, I was lucky to have that kind of freedom to work with brilliant physicists and big budgets and to kind of push the boundaries. Then I decided after working for two years as an engineer that I didn’t want to spend my life being bossed around by a physicist, and that kind of pushed me more into a traditional business career.

Q. And when you were younger, were you in leadership roles?

A. Early in my life, and really to a degree even today, I was a total introvert. I was more of a quiet kid, and I was one of the math geeks, and I was often more doing my own thing. But I also had a bit of a creative streak. It was clear early on that I could write.

Q. So you had the potent combination of having both math and English skills.

A. I did. In fact, I always tell people that I think I advanced in the earliest days of my airline career because I could use a calculator and talk. I kept being mentored and moved up and I had no idea why it was happening. To this day sometimes I wonder. I think it’s because they needed this quantitative skill set to help understand an industry that was deregulating. The work was more about creating direction than being given instructions. It’s also my nature. When I was a youngster, I wanted to go into the military because I wanted to fly fast airplanes, but I quickly decided that would probably be a bad idea because I’m not good at taking direction.

In fact, I remember the day when one of my favorite bosses told me I’d been promoted to vice president of American Airlines, and I said to him, “I really enjoyed working for you.” And he said, “You know that you were never working for me for one day.” I had to laugh because I was just doing what I thought was right, and sometimes that was a good thing. Sometimes I got pounded on the head. But I did what I think is right, and I still do.

Q. Tell me about your approach to leadership today.

A. To me, it’s all about having a thoughtful strategy and recruiting talent, and if you have those two things, you can really make a lot happen as a leader or as a team. You can make almost anything happen. I don’t think it’s a guarantee, but without them, it’s very hard to thrive and be successful, and frankly to enjoy yourself.

I’ve even had examples when I didn’t follow my own advice. I started my own little company, called Travel Game, and tried to make a go of it for 18 months before I shut it down. I had no team. It was all contractors, and really there was no strategy. I just thought, “Let’s throw it out there and see what happens.” And of course it flopped. I thought: “Wow. What if I had followed my own advice?”

Q. Orbitz was your first time running a start-up. Did you have specific thoughts on what you wanted the culture to be?

A. My first thought was that we may not be here in a week or a month or three months. So we’re going to be really candid and we’re going to be really about excellence, and doing what we say. So my rules began to be about transparency and honesty and integrity. I would tell people: “Look, you can make any mistake, and I guarantee you it won’t be a fraction of the mistakes I’ve already made, and you won’t be chastised for failure. But if you tell a lie, you’re fired.” And it was that black-and-white for everybody who was new to the organization.

The culture was really about candor, too. I wrote them an e-mail every Friday. It was called, “Good Morning, Orbitz.” It went to all the employees, and it just talked about what I thought was going on, what I was personally doing, and there were kudos here and there. There were slaps here and there. I wouldn’t name the person, but I’d say this certain thing didn’t go so well. I still do it at Wize Commerce.

Q. How do you hire?

A. First of all, I will acknowledge that I have made a ton of mistakes, so I wish I had a better formula. Mostly I take a lot of time. Track record is important because it’s a demonstration of something that they were involved in that worked. Or maybe it failed, but it was failure in an area where learning is very relevant.

And I look for problem-solving skills. The people I interview usually are in roles where their impact is important. So I like to be around problem-solvers, and I think the more problem-solvers you have, the better. So I usually discuss big problems with people — the kind of problems where I don’t know that there’s a right answer, but I can understand better how their brain’s machinery works, and maybe how it works with my machinery, to see whether we can work collaboratively to come up with solutions. I’ll also say: “Look, would you think about this problem and get back to me? How would you launch this product as a marketer? How would you tackle this problem?”

Q. So you ask them to do a writing exercise.

A. When you ask people to write, they have more time to think carefully about something, so I’ll see what careful thought creates. If there’s an inability to string thoughts together, that’s good to know. Or maybe they’ve done their research, and their passion and interests are also reflected a little bit more. It’s just a way to dig in slightly deeper.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Gadgetwise Blog: A Gaming Laptop That's Quick and Costly

The word “extreme” may be overused in describing male-dominated activities like the X Games or the cinnamon challenge, but it fits the bill when it comes to the Razer Blade gaming laptop.

It is extremely fast, extremely thin and extremely expensive.

I don’t play computer games so I turned the Razer Blade over to two lifelong gamers, Evan and Morgan Dilks. Evan, as the owner of the Firehouse Coffee Company in Baltimore, has spent plenty of caffeinated play time on game consoles, like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 he currently owns.

The pair tried out Battlefield 3, which came preinstalled for demonstration on the machine. “One of the pros was how fast it was,” said Evan. “The processor is just crazy.” That crazy processor is an Intel Core i7, a quad-core chip found in some high end Macs.

That speed is paired with a 17.3-inch high-definition screen impressive enough that the brothers spent some time watching videos on it. Although the laptop is almost 11-by-17-inches to accommodate the screen, it is less than an inch thick and weighs 6.6 pounds, relatively light for a laptop this size. Part of the way Razer kept it thin was by omitting an optical drive.

What really sets it apart from other laptops is the Switchblade user interface. That is an LCD trackpad that shows game information, like who in your player group is inflicting the most damage on foes. Evan said his brother Morgan adjusted more easily to the controls than he did, but he caught on eventually.

There are also 10 buttons above the trackpad that change their assigned functions depending on the game. They can represent different weapons, and automate actions that would normally take several steps, like drawing and loading a firearm. Or you can create your own custom actions, even for non-gaming software, like if you wanted to use the laptop for Photoshop.

What the brothers did not like about the Razer Blade was the price: $2,500. “That is a huge investment,” said Evan. “Add in accessories like a sound system, headset, game and gaming subscription, and special controllers you might need, and the price keeps rising.”

Wayne Newton — Sorry, That’s NOT My Wallaby

Wayne Newton
Sorry Officer ...
That's NOT My Wallaby
Fact: Wayne Newton owns wallabies ... several of them.

Fact: Wallabies are indigenous to Australia and are rarely found in the U.S.

Fact: Cops were called to the area near Wayne's Las Vegas mansion Tuesday morning after getting reports of a wild wallaby running loose in the neighborhood.

Fact: The wallaby was apprehended and returned to its owner. 

Fact: Clark County Animal Control SWEARS the owner of the wallaby is NOT Wayne Newton.

So, in conclusion ... Animal Control wants us to believe that someone else other than Wayne Newton owns a frickin' WALLABY ... in the middle of the Nevada desert.

Smells like walla-B.S. to us.

 

News Analysis: That’s Not My Phone, It’s My Tracker

Most doubts about the principal function of these devices were erased when it was recently disclosed that cellphone carriers responded 1.3 million times last year to law enforcement requests for call data. That’s not even a complete count, because T-Mobile, one of the largest carriers, refused to reveal its numbers. It appears that millions of cellphone users have been swept up in government surveillance of their calls and where they made them from. Many police agencies don’t obtain search warrants when requesting location data from carriers.

Thanks to the explosion of GPS technology and smartphone apps, these devices are also taking note of what we buy, where and when we buy it, how much money we have in the bank, whom we text and e-mail, what Web sites we visit, how and where we travel, what time we go to sleep and wake up — and more. Much of that data is shared with companies that use it to offer us services they think we want.

We have all heard about the wonders of frictionless sharing, whereby social networks automatically let our friends know what we are reading or listening to, but what we hear less about is frictionless surveillance. Though we invite some tracking — think of our mapping requests as we try to find a restaurant in a strange part of town — much of it is done without our awareness.

“Every year, private companies spend millions of dollars developing new services that track, store and share the words, movements and even the thoughts of their customers,” writes Paul Ohm, a law professor at the University of Colorado. “These invasive services have proved irresistible to consumers, and millions now own sophisticated tracking devices (smartphones) studded with sensors and always connected to the Internet.”

Mr. Ohm labels them tracking devices. So does Jacob Appelbaum, a developer and spokesman for the Tor project, which allows users to browse the Web anonymously. Scholars have called them minicomputers and robots. Everyone is struggling to find the right tag, because “cellphone” and “smartphone” are inadequate. This is not a semantic game. Names matter, quite a bit. In politics and advertising, framing is regarded as essential because what you call something influences what you think about it. That’s why there are battles over the tags “Obamacare” and “death panels.”

In just the past few years, cellphone companies have honed their geographic technology, which has become almost pinpoint. The surveillance and privacy implications are quite simple. If someone knows exactly where you are, they probably know what you are doing. Cellular systems constantly check and record the location of all phones on their networks — and this data is particularly treasured by police departments and online advertisers. Cell companies typically retain your geographic information for a year or longer, according to data gathered by the Justice Department.

What’s the harm? The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, ruling about the use of tracking devices by the police, noted that GPS data can reveal whether a person “is a weekly church goer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.” Even the most gregarious of sharers might not reveal all that on Facebook.

There is an even more fascinating and diabolical element to what can be done with location information. New research suggests that by cross-referencing your geographical data with that of your friends, it’s possible to predict your future whereabouts with a much higher degree of accuracy.

This is what’s known as predictive modeling, and it requires nothing more than your cellphone data.

If we are naïve to think of them as phones, what should we call them? Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University, argues that they are robots for which we — the proud owners — are merely the hands and feet. “They see everything, they’re aware of our position, our relationship to other human beings and other robots, they mediate an information stream around us,” he has said. Over time, we’ve used these devices less for their original purpose. A recent survey by O2, a British cell carrier, showed that making calls is the fifth-most-popular activity for smartphones; more popular uses are Web browsing, checking social networks, playing games and listening to music. Smartphones are taking over the functions that laptops, cameras, credit cards and watches once performed for us.

If you want to avoid some surveillance, the best option is to use cash for prepaid cellphones that do not require identification. The phones transmit location information to the cell carrier and keep track of the numbers you call, but they are not connected to you by name. Destroy the phone or just drop it into a trash bin, and its data cannot be tied to you. These cellphones, known as burners, are the threads that connect privacy activists, Burmese dissidents and coke dealers.

Prepaids are a hassle, though. What can the rest of us do? Leaving your smartphone at home will help, but then what’s the point of having it? Turning it off when you’re not using it will also help, because it will cease pinging your location to the cell company, but are you really going to do that? Shutting it down does not even guarantee it’s off — malware can keep it on without your realizing it. The only way to be sure is to take out the battery. Guess what? If you have an iPhone, you will need a tiny screwdriver to remove the back cover. Doing that will void your warranty.

Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, has written extensively about these issues and believes we are confronted with two choices: “Don’t have a cellphone or just accept that you’re living in the Panopticon.”

There is another option. People could call them trackers. It’s a neutral term, because it covers positive activities — monitoring appointments, bank balances, friends — and problematic ones, like the government and advertisers watching us.

We can love or hate these devices — or love and hate them — but it would make sense to call them what they are so we can fully understand what they do.

Peter Maass and Megha Rajagopalan are reporters on digital privacy for ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative newsroom.

News Analysis: That’s Not My Phone, It’s My Tracker

Most doubts about the principal function of these devices were erased when it was recently disclosed that cellphone carriers responded 1.3 million times last year to law enforcement requests for call data. That’s not even a complete count, because T-Mobile, one of the largest carriers, refused to reveal its numbers. It appears that millions of cellphone users have been swept up in government surveillance of their calls and where they made them from. Many police agencies don’t obtain search warrants when requesting location data from carriers.

Thanks to the explosion of GPS technology and smartphone apps, these devices are also taking note of what we buy, where and when we buy it, how much money we have in the bank, whom we text and e-mail, what Web sites we visit, how and where we travel, what time we go to sleep and wake up — and more. Much of that data is shared with companies that use it to offer us services they think we want.

We have all heard about the wonders of frictionless sharing, whereby social networks automatically let our friends know what we are reading or listening to, but what we hear less about is frictionless surveillance. Though we invite some tracking — think of our mapping requests as we try to find a restaurant in a strange part of town — much of it is done without our awareness.

“Every year, private companies spend millions of dollars developing new services that track, store and share the words, movements and even the thoughts of their customers,” writes Paul Ohm, a law professor at the University of Colorado. “These invasive services have proved irresistible to consumers, and millions now own sophisticated tracking devices (smartphones) studded with sensors and always connected to the Internet.”

Mr. Ohm labels them tracking devices. So does Jacob Appelbaum, a developer and spokesman for the Tor project, which allows users to browse the Web anonymously. Scholars have called them minicomputers and robots. Everyone is struggling to find the right tag, because “cellphone” and “smartphone” are inadequate. This is not a semantic game. Names matter, quite a bit. In politics and advertising, framing is regarded as essential because what you call something influences what you think about it. That’s why there are battles over the tags “Obamacare” and “death panels.”

In just the past few years, cellphone companies have honed their geographic technology, which has become almost pinpoint. The surveillance and privacy implications are quite simple. If someone knows exactly where you are, they probably know what you are doing. Cellular systems constantly check and record the location of all phones on their networks — and this data is particularly treasured by police departments and online advertisers. Cell companies typically retain your geographic information for a year or longer, according to data gathered by the Justice Department.

What’s the harm? The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, ruling about the use of tracking devices by the police, noted that GPS data can reveal whether a person “is a weekly church goer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.” Even the most gregarious of sharers might not reveal all that on Facebook.

There is an even more fascinating and diabolical element to what can be done with location information. New research suggests that by cross-referencing your geographical data with that of your friends, it’s possible to predict your future whereabouts with a much higher degree of accuracy.

This is what’s known as predictive modeling, and it requires nothing more than your cellphone data.

If we are naïve to think of them as phones, what should we call them? Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University, argues that they are robots for which we — the proud owners — are merely the hands and feet. “They see everything, they’re aware of our position, our relationship to other human beings and other robots, they mediate an information stream around us,” he has said. Over time, we’ve used these devices less for their original purpose. A recent survey by O2, a British cell carrier, showed that making calls is the fifth-most-popular activity for smartphones; more popular uses are Web browsing, checking social networks, playing games and listening to music. Smartphones are taking over the functions that laptops, cameras, credit cards and watches once performed for us.

If you want to avoid some surveillance, the best option is to use cash for prepaid cellphones that do not require identification. The phones transmit location information to the cell carrier and keep track of the numbers you call, but they are not connected to you by name. Destroy the phone or just drop it into a trash bin, and its data cannot be tied to you. These cellphones, known as burners, are the threads that connect privacy activists, Burmese dissidents and coke dealers.

Prepaids are a hassle, though. What can the rest of us do? Leaving your smartphone at home will help, but then what’s the point of having it? Turning it off when you’re not using it will also help, because it will cease pinging your location to the cell company, but are you really going to do that? Shutting it down does not even guarantee it’s off — malware can keep it on without your realizing it. The only way to be sure is to take out the battery. Guess what? If you have an iPhone, you will need a tiny screwdriver to remove the back cover. Doing that will void your warranty.

Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, has written extensively about these issues and believes we are confronted with two choices: “Don’t have a cellphone or just accept that you’re living in the Panopticon.”

There is another option. People could call them trackers. It’s a neutral term, because it covers positive activities — monitoring appointments, bank balances, friends — and problematic ones, like the government and advertisers watching us.

We can love or hate these devices — or love and hate them — but it would make sense to call them what they are so we can fully understand what they do.

Reporters on digital privacy for ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative newsroom.