• #ThankYouSirAlex

    Wednesday, May 8, 2013

    When big events happen in the world, they happen on Twitter. So when news of Sir Alex Ferguson’s resignation was broken with a single Tweet from Manchester United (@ManUtd_PO) at 9.18am this morning, it started a global conversation on the platform.

    In the hour following the announcement, there were more than 1.4 million mentions of the story on Twitter, and the original announcement Tweet had more than 18,000 retweets and favourites.
    Within that same hour, Man Utd had tweeted eight times with a total of 25,000 retweets.

    The official club hashtag for the announcement, #ThankYouSirAlex, was used in all of Man Utd's tweets and on the official press release. The hashtag had more than 100,000 mentions on Twitter in the hour after the announcement was made.

    The story dominated Twitter's trends, taking eight of the 10 UK trending topic spots, and four of the 10 worldwide trends. #ThankYouSirAlex was Twitter’s number one global trend within eight minutes of the club’s first tweet.

    Breaking news on Twitter is an established way to grow your account, and a hashtag is a way to group together a global conversation. That hashtag gave United’s fans a way to come together and discuss the news.

    Sport, and football in particular, is one of Twitter’s most-talked about subjects. Seven out of 10 of the most talked-about moments of 2012 on Twitter were sport-related, and today’s story was no different.

    As well as sharing the news with fellow enthusiasts, football fans use Twitter to see what their heroes and other high profile people have to say about a subject.

    In the hour after Man Utd confirmed the news about Sir Alex, high-profile football stars started to react to the story. Vincent Kompany (@vincentkompany), captain of United’s fierce rivals Manchester City (@MCFC), had this to say:
    Even Prime Minister @David_Cameron got involved in the conversation, using the hashtag of his favourite team Aston Villa (#AVFC):
    But it is important to use @names correctly on Twitter - mentions of Black Eyed Peas singer @Fergie, who shares a nickname with Sir Alex, went through the roof in connection to the story, with TV and radio presenter @ColinMurray joining in with this joke:

    Attention now turns to who the new manager of Manchester United will be. And football fans know that when Man Utd are ready to make that announcement, Twitter will be the place to join the global conversation.

    @LewisWiltshire, Head of Sport, @TwitterUK

    Posted by @ at 2:46 AM

  • Getting creative with #Vine

    Wednesday, May 1, 2013

    In January we launched Vine, a mobile service that lets you create and share beautiful, short looping videos. Posts on Vine are about abbreviation — the shortened form of something larger. They're little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life. They're quirky, and we think that's part of what makes them so special.

    And now we’re introducing an update to Vine that we think you’ll love. Over the last few months, we’ve asked for your feedback on a lot of things, from reporting bugs to suggesting new features. We’ve been listening, and here are a few new additions to Vine:

    Selfies 
    You can now shoot with the front-facing camera. When creating a post, tap the button in the bottom left corner to try the front-facing camera. You can switch back and forth between the regular and front-facing camera as many times as you want.

    Mentions 
    Vine now supports mentions, so you can tag people in your post. Users who are mentioned will receive a notification in Activity. To mention a user, type their @username and select the name among the suggestions you see. See the screenshot below for an example — when I type @chris, I see suggestions for Chris Fry, Chris Hardwick and Christofer Drew. When I select Chris Hardwick, his Vine profile will automatically link in my post’s caption.



    Search
    Finally, this update also includes search improvements, it’s now easier for people to find users and posts that are of interest to them.

    Creativity
    Since it launched, Vine has been used in all manner of innovative ways across the worlds of fashion, film, music and sport, as well as by Twitter users across the world, such as @_jacsun_, who created this Harry Potter-inspired video:
    And this kitchen scene from @origiful:

    Vine users were treated to exclusive behind the scenes snippets from Victoria Beckham, who shared exclusive video of models wearing her latest collection at New York Fashion Week:



    Designer Matthew Williamson (@mwworld) used Vine to bring fashion fans closer than the front row at London Fashion Week show:

    Vine has also allowed unrivalled access to stars of the music world such as Example (@Example) who posted this video of himself working on new tracks from his studio:
    And in the world of classical music, @ClassicFM attempted to capture their Classic FM Live event in a series of vines, including this tour of the Royal Albert Hall: 

    Vine is also being recognised in the film industry with the Tribeca Film Festival recently announcing the winners of #6SECFILMS competition. Matt Swinsky (@MattSwinsky) won the ‘Genre’ category for his short film 'Lazer And Donald Close Shave', shot entirely using Vine.

    Chelsea fans who couldn’t make it to the clubs game against FC Basel could soak up the pre-match atmosphere pitch side with a Vine of Petr Cech coming onto to start his warm up.
    UEFA chose Vine as a way show off the Champions League Final trophy, including ribbons featuring the official hashtag #UCLFinal:

    You can download this version of Vine for free from the App Store now.

    -- Helen Prowse, @HLP, Twitter Communications 

    Posted by @ at 2:21 AM