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Twitter: Over 20M tweets sent about Hurricane Sandy

More than 20 million tweets were sent about Hurricane Sandy between Saturday and yesterday, according to Twitter, and the site says that's probably a conservative estimate as it only tracked certain keywords.

The site, which followed the terms and hash tags for "Sandy" and "hurricane," also said it saw a peak at about 9 p.m. Monday in the number of times users in New York accessed their home timeline from a mobile device. That coincides with the approximate time much of the city lost power.

Also Monday, search queries related to Sandy peaked at … Read more

Pew: Social media as a political tool on the rise

Check out your Facebook news feed and see opinion, links to news articles, and dialogue all concerning the presidential election and campaign. Twitter? There's more than enough there to to keep you occupied.

And it seems like it may be a phenomenon that is here to stay.

A recent research report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that "the use of social media is becoming a feature of political and civic engagement for many Americans." Sixty percent 2,253 U.S. adults surveyed use social-networking sites including Facebook and Twitter, and of these users, … Read more

Twitter launches tool to gauge interest in political tweets

Twitter today unveiled a Political Engagement Map, a tool that lets anyone see where people are tweeting most about specific political issues.

"We've built a visualization that illustrates people's reaction to and engagement by state to tweets from @MittRomney and @BarackObama," Miguel Rios of Twitter's analytics team wrote in a blog post. "While the Twitter Political Index analyzes Tweets about the candidates, [we've] also been studying how citizens interact with tweets from the candidates. We... want to see what insights you can glean from Twitter data, so this visualization is fully interactive." … Read more

What Lady Gaga is seeing on Twitter, right now

It's always been easy on Twitter to see someone else's @-replies, simply by doing a search for say, "@LadyGaga."

But what if you wanted to see more than that? What if you wanted to pretend you were the global pop superstar and fashion icon and peek into her Twitter feed to see what all the people she follows were saying?

Until now, there's been no easy way to do that directly through any of Twitter's official apps -- although it's a simple thing to do in a client like TweetDeck. But with the … Read more

The smug tweeter posting Hurricane Sandy misinformation

"Why do people do these things?" is a question that we at Technically Incorrect try to answer every day.

Sometimes, it is in vain. But we never lose heart, as heart is all we have left.

So please join me in considering the mindset of the fine gentleman behind the Twitter account @ComfortablySmug.

Last night, as cranes were dangling, winds howling, and waters flowing in New York, Smuggins thought it witty to emit what looked like news-filled tweets that were, indeed, not so full of news.

Indeed, they were full of false information (not unlike the many hoax #Sandy photos flooding social media.)… Read more

Twitter finally embraces Windows 8, promises an app soon

In recent months, Twitter has been making a push to create a consistent experience across as many platforms as possible, be it the Web, iOS, Android, OS X, Blackberry, or even Windows Phone 7. But one platform has been conspicuously missing: Windows on the PC.

Now, however, Twitter says that it is is planning to release an official Windows 8 app, meaning that for more than four million people who have already adopted the latest version of the operating system, they will no longer have to rely on third-party or Web apps.

This is also an important move for Microsoft, … Read more

Newark mayor takes to Twitter to help amid Sandy

Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J., took to the streets and the tweets over the last couple of days to help the city make it through Superstorm Sandy.

Booker spent much of yesterday and last night driving around in an SUV loaded with diapers, water, and other supplies for citizens in distress, personally enforcing curfew on some roaming teenagers, and coordinating crews to move the homeless to shelter. Along the way, Booker was communicating with citizens via tweets and direct messages:

When one man tweeted at Booker that a tree had fallen on his aunt's house, the mayor apparently sped to the scene:… Read more

FDNY to NYC: Please don't tweet for help

PLEASE NOTE: *Do not* tweet emergency calls. Please call 911. If it is not an emergency, please call 311. #NYC #Sandy

-- FDNY (@FDNY) October 30, 2012

With New York City inundated by Hurricane Sandy-driven storm surge, heavy winds, and emergencies throughout town, the FDNY is pleading with people not to use Twitter to call for help.

"PLEASE NOTE: *Do not* tweet emergency calls. Please call 911. If it is not an emergency, please call 311," the FDNY tweeted at 9:32 p.m. ET as the massive storm roared through the city.

It's not that … Read more

Sandy knocks snark out of Twitter -- for a day

That awkward moment when your Twitter feed shifts from hurricane booze sarcasm to genuine fear. #sandy

— Ben Rossen (@benrossen) October 29, 2012

As someone writing on the West Coast, it's easy to feel at once a bit detached about Hurricane Sandy and deeply concerned for friends and family -- and everyone else -- stuck in the path of that once-in-a-generation natural disaster bearing down on the East Coast.

But for those hunkering down in places like New York City, Sandy represents real personal consequences -- and it would be natural to assume that those who've spent days nervously waiting to see if the hurricane is for real aren't laughing about it now that they're in the thick of it.

Yet, a quick look at Twitter today reveals that at least as many people have been tweeting quips about the storm as have been expressing real worry. The real question, though, seemed to be: How might the mood change once Sandy hit land and anticipation was replaced by the reality of being in the middle of a major natural disaster that's actively wreaking havoc? … Read more