How I lost my $50,000 Twitter username

Naoki Hiroshima is the creator of Cocoyon and a developer for Echofon. This post originally appeared on Naoki’s Medium blog and has been republished with permission.

---

Update: PayPal has denied that its customer service representative divulged credit card information over the phone. Go Daddy has admitted partial responsibility for the incidents. Finally, the @N account itself is actually in someone else’s hands, after Twitter made it available after initially deactivating it.

I had a rare Twitter username, @N. Yep, just one letter. I've been offered as much as $50,000 for it. People have tried to steal it. Password reset instructions are a regular sight in my email inbox.

As of today, I no longer control @N. I was extorted into giving it up.

While eating lunch on January 20, 2014, I received a text message from PayPal for one-time validation code. Somebody was trying to steal my PayPal account. I ignored it and continued eating.

Later in the day, I checked my email which uses my personal domain name (registered with Go Daddy) through Google Apps. I found the last message I had received was from Go Daddy with the subject “Account Settings Change Confirmation.” There was a good reason why that was the last one.

From: Go Daddy
To: <*****@*****.***> Naoki Hiroshima
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 12:50:02 -0800
Subject: Account Settings Change Confirmation

Dear naoki hiroshima,

You are receiving this email because the Account Settings were modified for the following Customer Account:

XXXXXXXX

There will be a brief period before this request takes effect.

If these modifications were made without your consent, please log in to your account and update your security settings.

If you are unable to log in to your account or if unauthorized changes have been made to domain names associated with the account, please contact our customer support team for assistance: support@go daddy.com or (480) 505-8877.

Please note that Accounts are subject to our Universal Terms of Service.

Sincerely,
Go Daddy

I tried to log in to my Go Daddy account, but it didn't work. I called Go Daddy and explained the situation. The representative asked me the last 6 digits of my credit card number as a method of verification.

This didn't work because the credit card information had already been changed by an attacker. In fact, all of my information had been changed. I had no way to prove I was the real owner of the domain name.

The Go Daddy representative suggested that I fill out a case report on Go Daddy’s website using my government identification. I did that and was told a response could take up to 48 hours. I expected that this would be sufficient to prove my identity and ownership of the account.

Let The Extortion Begin

Most websites use email as a method of verification. If your email account is compromised, an attacker can easily reset your password on many other websites. By taking control of my domain name at Go Daddy, my attacker was able to control my email.

I soon realized, based on my previous experiences being attacked, that my coveted Twitter username was the target. Strangely, someone I don’t know sent me a Facebook message encouraging me to change my Twitter email address.

I assumed this was sent from the attacker but I changed it regardless. The Twitter account email address was now one which the attacker could not access.

The attacker tried to reset my Twitter password several times and found he couldn't receive any of the reset emails because it took time for the change of my domain’s MX record, which controls the email domain server. The attacker opened issue #16134409 at Twitter’s Zendesk support page.

N, Jan 20 01:43 PM:

Twitter username: @n
Your email: *****@*****.***
Last sign in: December
Mobile number (optional): n/a
Anything else? (optional): I’m not receiving the password reset to my email, do you think you could manually send me one?

Twitter required the attacker to provide more information to proceed and the attacker gave up on this route.

I later learned that the attacker had compromised my Facebook account in order to bargain with me. I was horrified to learn what had happened when friends began asking me about strange behavior on my Facebook account.

I received an email from my attacker at last. The attacker attempted to extort me with the following message.

From: SOCIAL MEDIA KING
To: <*****@*****.***> Naoki Hiroshima
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 15:55:43 -0800
Subject: Hello.

I've seen you spoke with an accomplice of mine, I would just like to inform you that you were correct, @N was the target. it appears extremely inactive, I would also like to inform you that your Go Daddy domains are in my possession, one fake purchase and they can be repossessed by go daddy and never seen again D:

I see you run quite a few nice websites so I have left those alone for now, all data on the sites has remained intact. Would you be willing to compromise? access to @N for about 5 minutes while I swap the handle in exchange for your go daddy, and help securing your data?

Shortly thereafter, I received a response from Go Daddy.

From: change@go daddy.com
To: <*****@*****.***> Naoki Hiroshima
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 17:49:41 -0800
Subject: Update [Incident ID: 21773161] — XXXXX.XXX

Unfortunately, Domain Services will not be able to assist you with your change request as you are not the current registrant of the domain name. As the registrar we can only make this type of change after verifying the consent of the registrant. You may wish to pursue one or more of the following options should you decide
to pursue this matter further:

1. Visit http://who.godaddy.com/ to locate the Whois record for the domain name and resolve the issue with the registrant directly.

2. Go to http://www.icann.org/dndr/udrp/approved-providers.htm to find an ICANN approved arbitration provider.

3. Provide the following link to your legal counsel for information on submitting legal documents to GoDaddy: http://www.godaddy.com/agreements/showdoc.aspx?pageid=CIVIL_SUBPOENA Go Daddy now considers this matter closed.

My claim was refused because I am not the “current registrant.” Go Daddy asked the attacker if it was OK to change account information, while they didn't bother asking me if it was OK when the attacker did it. I was infuriated that Go Daddy had put the burden on the true owner.

A coworker of mine was able to connect me to a Go Daddy executive. The executive attempted to get the security team involved, but nothing has happened. Perhaps because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Then I received this follow-up from the attacker.

From: SOCIAL MEDIA KING
To: <*****@*****.***> Naoki Hiroshima
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 18:50:16 -0800
Subject: …hello

Are you going to swap the handle? the go daddy account is ready to go. Password changed and a neutral email is linked to it.

I asked a friend of mine at Twitter what the chances of recovering the Twitter account were if the attacker took ownership. I remembered what had happened to @mat and concluded that giving up the account right away would be the only way to avoid an irreversible disaster. So I told the attacker:

From: <*****@*****.***> Naoki Hiroshima
To: SOCIAL MEDIA KING
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 19:41:17 -0800
Subject: Re: …hello

I released @N. Take it right away.

I changed my username @N to @N_is_stolen for the first time since I registered it in early 2007. Goodbye to my problematic username, for now.

I received this response.

From: SOCIAL MEDIA KING
To: <*****@*****.***> Naoki Hiroshima
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 19:44:02 -0800
Subject: RE: …hello

Thank you very much, your go daddy password is: V;Mz,3{;!’g&

if you’d like I can go into detail about how I was able to gain access to your go daddy, and how you can secure yourself

The attacker quickly took control of the username and I regained access to my Go Daddy account.

PayPal and Go Daddy Facilitated The Attack

I asked the attacker how my Go Daddy account was compromised and received this response:

From: SOCIAL MEDIA KING
To: <*****@*****.***> Naoki Hiroshima
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 19:53:52 -0800
Subject: RE: …hello

- I called Paypal and used some very simple engineering tactics to obtain the last four of your card (avoid this by calling Paypal and asking the agent to add a note to your account to not release any details via phone)

- I called go daddy and told them I had lost the card but I remembered the last four, the agent then allowed me to try a range of numbers (00-09 in your case) I have not found a way to heighten go daddy account security, however if you’d like me to
recommend a more secure registrar i recommend: Name Cheap or eNom (not network solutions but enom.com)

It’s hard to decide what’s more shocking, the fact that PayPal gave the attacker the last four digits of my credit card number over the phone, or that Go Daddy accepted it as verification. When asked about this, the attacker responded with this message:

From: SOCIAL MEDIA KING
To: <*****@*****.***> Naoki Hiroshima
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 20:00:31 -0800
Subject: RE: …hello

Yes Paypal told me them over the phone (I was acting as an employee) and go daddy let me “guess” for the first two digits of the card

But guessing 2 digits correctly isn’t that easy, right?

From: SOCIAL MEDIA KING
To: <*****@*****.***> Naoki Hiroshima
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 20:09:21 -0800
Subject: RE: …hello

I got it in the first call, most agents will just keep trying until they get it

He was lucky that he only had to guess two numbers and was able to do it in a single call. The thing is, Go Daddy allowed him to keep trying until he nailed it. Insane. Sounds like I was dealing with a wannabe Kevin Mitnick—it’s as though companies have yet to learn from his Mitnick’s exploits circa 1995.

Avoid Custom Domains for Your Login Email Address

With my Go Daddy account restored, I was able to regain access to my email as well. I changed the email address I use at several web services to an @gmail.com address. Using my Google Apps email address with a custom domain feels nice but it has a chance of being stolen if the domain server is compromised. If I were using an @gmail.com email address for my Facebook login, the attacker would not have been able to access my Facebook account.

If you are using your Google Apps email address to log into various websites, I strongly suggest you stop doing so. Use an @gmail.com for logins. You can use the nicer custom domain email for messaging purposes, I still do.

In addition, I also strongly suggest you to use a longer TTL for the MX record, just in case. It was 1 hour TTL in my case and that’s why I didn’t have enough time to keep receiving emails to the compromised domain after losing the DNS control. If it was a week-long TTL for example, I would have had a greater chance to recover the stolen accounts.

Using two-factor authentication is a must. It’s probably what prevented the attacker from logging into my PayPal account. Though this situation illustrates that even two-factor authentication doesn’t help for everything.

Conclusion

Stupid companies may give out your personal information (like part of your credit card number) to the wrong person. Some of those companies are still employing the unacceptable practice of verifying you with the last some digits of your credit card.

To avoid their imprudence from destroying your digital life, don’t let companies such as PayPal and GoDaddy store your credit card information. I just removed mine. I’ll also be leaving GoDaddy and PayPal as soon as possible.

Editor’s Note: The Next Web has reached out to GoDaddy, PayPal, and Twitter for comment.

– PayPal says it did not release any credit card, personal or financial information for the account in question.

– A Twitter spokesperson tells us: “While we don’t comment on individual accounts, we are investigating the report.”

– GoDaddy Chief Information Security Officer Todd Redfoot provided the following statement:

Our review of the situation reveals that the hacker was already in possession of a large portion of the customer information needed to access the account at the time he contacted GoDaddy. The hacker then socially engineered an employee to provide the remaining information needed to access the customer account. The customer has since regained full access to his GoDaddy account, and we are working with industry partners to help restore services from other providers. We are making necessary changes to employee training to ensure we continue to provide industry-leading security to our customers and stay ahead of evolving hacker techniques.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014 Share:

You can now crop and rotate your photos right within the Twitter app, starting with Android

Twitter is putting more focus on visual images as it’s making it easier for you to take photos, then crop them by selecting an aspect such as square or wide, or even rotate it — all within its mobile app.

The new features are available today on Twitter for Android, and will be “coming soon” to Twitter for iPhone.

Twitter is also prompting you to interact with your friends through the uploading of photos. Now when you upload a photo with people in it, you will see a reminder to @ mention your friends.

The latest update for Twitter’s Android app also makes it easier for you to discover events and trends that people are talking about on Twitter. This means if you refresh your home timeline and there are no new tweets to load, you may see recommended tweets, trending topics and suggested new accounts that you can follow. In the US, you will also see TV, sports and news updates.

Twitter has been steadily moving away from a stream full of condensed text and toward a richer multimedia format, making the user experience a lot more visually interesting as it competes with services like Instagram. As part of this significant shift, Twitter made a move last year to introduce inline images – and this latest update to its app is no doubt an additional useful feature for more convenience in uploading photos directly to Twitter.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014 Share:

Tweeting pro tips: 5 types of tweets to keep your followers engaged

Buffer’s CEO Joel recently changed the way he thinks about sharing on Twitter, and I really like his new approach. And if you just take a brief glance at his Twitter account, you’ll see what an engaged following Joel was able to build.

Fortunately, I could just go ahead and ask him about the changes he made and the system he uses, which I thought of sharing with all of you today here.

And just a glance at the stats below, that we pulled in through the Buffer for Business analytic tool, show that it’s working out alright for him, as he garners regularly more than 1,000 clicks/day and dozens of re tweets for his account, so there must be something to learn here:

His Tweets regularly even outperform the ones posted on the @buffer Twitter account, which, at around 162,000 have roughly 6-7 times the following of Joel’s at 25,000 followers.

When I took a quick glance over his analytics, it’s incredibly interesting to see which system Joel applies to keep his Buffer full and post a steady stream of content:

Ok, enough of the introductions, let’s dig in and see how Joel’s approaching his Twitter account and what we could learn from it

The 5 types of Tweets Joel posts

One of the biggest changes Joel made is simply in the way he thinks about the individual Tweets he posts. He identified five main types of Tweets that we all post:

1. Links
2. Images
3. Quotes
4. Retweets
5. Questions or comments of your own

Here’s an example of each one. Now, let’s pay special attention to the formatting Joel uses here, as he’s very specific about each of them:

Link Tweets – Format for consistency

Joel always puts his links at the end of each Tweet, to add consistency. He sometimes uses the headline of the article, but often chooses a particular quote from inside the article instead, like this one below:

“When your own employees don’t use or support your product, the problem is with the product, not the employees.” http://t.co/TUzUEaFOb7

— Joel Gascoigne (@joelgascoigne) January 6, 2014

Image Tweets – Show value without having to click through

Glancing at Joel’s image Tweets, the first lesson we can learn is that he tries to use images that offer value to his followers without needing to click-through. With Twitter’s new inline image previews, that can drive up to 150% more retweets, this seems to be a great way to encouragement engagement since your followers don’t need to leave their timeline to see your pictures.

Joel also tries to add a caption related to the image every time, rather than just adding a standard article headline, especially when sharing a blog post.

Wow, the @buffer team is growing fast. @sqwiggle keeps getting more and more fun (and useful!) :-) pic.twitter.com/CIpw7bcKYM

— Joel Gascoigne (@joelgascoigne) January 2, 2014

Quote Tweets – Quotation marks matter

When sharing quotes, Joel always uses quotation marks to make it clear he’s quoting someone else. He also adds attribution after each quote, and when possible, uses the author’s Twitter handle, like this:

“Forget the competition, and just go be awesome in your own way (even if it’s weird)” – @benchestnut

— Joel Gascoigne (@joelgascoigne) January 6, 2014

Retweets – Pick people that match your style

Joel’s Retweets normally come from his carefully curated Twitter lists of people who focus on similar topics to himself, such as startup founders, Buffer team members and Buffer investors or advisors. Scheduling your retweets is also a particularly good technique as it allows you to engage with more people, without flooding your followers.

Joel’s found this to be a good way to build or strengthen relationships with others and to show appreciation for their content.

Question Tweets – Lowest frequency, with great results

Keeping questions or conversation-starters simple is important for Twitter. Your followers need to be able to answer within 140 characters.

For Facebook, asking questions has often proven to increase engagement dramatically. Joel tries to be quite specific with his questions to make them easier to answer, such as this one below:

Question for any @buffer users :) If you select text from a page to share a quote, do you want quotes around it, or do you prefer without?

— Joel Gascoigne (@joelgascoigne) November 25, 2013

Now when Joel adds new Tweets to his Buffer queue, he thinks about the type of each one, and how we wants to use those types to add variety to his Twitter account. Joel’s found a good balance between these by working with a sharing ratio.

The system behind Joel’s Tweets: How to find your own sharing ratio

Currently, Joel works with a 4:1 sharing ratio. His “staple” type of Tweet is a link, like this one:

“What percentage of entrepreneurs who exit at $100MM+ found another startup vs. doing VC or retiring?” http://t.co/X9cR2t1NVh by @jasonlk

— Joel Gascoigne (@joelgascoigne) January 6, 2014

For every four of these (roughly), Joel adds something different: an image, a Retweet, a quote.

Now, Joel posts 8 times in total per day, with the following schedule that has worked the best for him (these times are in PST):

Here’s how to find your own sharing ratio:

1. Choose your “staple” Tweet

Depending on how you use your Twitter account and your personal preferences, your staple Tweet could be any of the five types. You might like to share pictures most of the time, or your own questions and comments to encourage discussion.

Choose whatever works for you to be your staple Tweet type.

2. Set up your Buffer account for consistency

You can post your Tweets manually, of course, but Buffer’s pre-set queue makes it really easy. Joel’s queue is set to post once every three hours, so he tweets eight times per day. This means he’s consistently active on Twitter, without overwhelming his followers.

3. Add variety

Again, your ratio may vary from Joel’s, but 4:1 is a good place to start. So for every four staple Tweets you send, add a different type. You can use Buffer’s shuffle updates feature or hit “send to top” to reorganise your queue.

Joel’s 3 best tips for finding great content to share

Here are some tips from to finding and sharing great content consistently.

1. Find great people to follow

Joel finds most of the blogs and Twitter accounts he follows from reading Hacker News and catching up on Twitter.

Something he’s been doing more of lately is going to the source of each great post he reads and reading through the latest 3-4 posts on that blog. This helps him to discover new blogs and people to follow.

2. Keep RSS to a minimum

Joel manages his RSS feeds really carefully. He splits his feeds into just two categories: startups and life. Each blog that he subscribes to has to meet two criteria: consistently high-quality content, and a low frequency of publishing.

This means that Joel can share almost everything he reads in Feedly, because it’s all high quality and interesting.

3. Use Twitter lists

Joel’s using Tweetbot which has a neat feature that lets you use a Twitter list as your timeline. This means he can have a carefully curated list of less than 100 people who all post interesting, high-quality content on Twitter as his timeline.

He also has specific Twitter lists based on his interests, like a Buffer team list and a list of startup founders.

It’s incredibly interesting to see how Joel’s system of Tweeting works and I’ll be sure to try an adaption for my own account. What about you? Do you have a certain way of posting Tweets regularly?

Wednesday, July 16, 2014 Share:

Twitter is increasing its focus on Asia

Twitter is increasing its focus on Asia after making a spate of new hires in the region.

On a hunt for more global engagement and in turn an increase in international revenue, Twitter is upping its focus on Asia. It has gone on a hiring spree that has seen it staff five key marketing and communications positions over the past two months.

The company previously focused the bulk of its energy and attention in the region on Japan — a country where it is well established but still struggling to monetize – and its new Australia office, but now it appears to be increasing its efforts in India, Southeast Asia and the rest of the region.

Marketing Interactive reports that the newly listed firm has hired three new recruits for its Singapore office this month – Freddie Covington left Microsoft to become international marketing director, Dickson Seow exited Google to head up communications in Asia, while ex-Samsung staffer Christel Quek is now regional content lead for Asia, Middle East and Africa. Twitter also hired an Asia brand strategy and advocacy lead and a managing director of sales in November 2013.

Why all the new faces? Twitter has a lot of potential to grow in Asia, since its scaling there to date has largely been organic.

The company has nearly 220 million users who are based outside of the US, yet it made just $53 million (or 17 recent of its total revenue) last year from overseas activity.

There are few indicators of Twitter’s global reach, but the fact that Japanese (16 percent ), Malay (8 percent) and Thai (1 percent) are among Twitter’s most used languages, indicates that Asia accounts for a sizable chunk of users, while the near-universal adoption of Facebook (which counts Asia as its largest region) shows the potential for social networks.

As Asia is culturally and geographically fragmented, it calls for a greater level of planning than a single market like the US, and an adoption of a country-by-country policy.

We are unlikely to see consumer campaigns but, by working with large brands and advertisers, Twitter can allow established companies to do the leg work — both in terms of earning them advertising money and helping increase user numbers through campaigns.

Twitter already has a sales and marketing team in Singapore, helmed by former Googler Aliza Knox. We haven’t seen the same level of engagement with brands, celebrities and visible players in Asia as has happened in the US and Europe, so we can expect Twitter to double down on efforts with ‘influencers’.

Twitter is currently hiring for more than 20 positions in Asia — across both Japan and the wider continent. Notable roles include a TV partnerships vacancy in India, and a campaign manager for Southeast Asia, MENA & India. Interestingly, it looks to have filled the “Head of Media Partnerships – Greater China” role that was advertised late last year.

Monday, April 07, 2014 Share:

What to expect from Twitter in 2014

Now it’s time to look forward to this year. What can we expect from everyone’s favorite 140-character messaging service in 2014?

The answer is really much of the same. Twitter is not a company that makes drastic changes, especially now that it is a listed entity, which will mean more of the same incremental pushes to emphasis multimedia within its service, develop its advertising business (and revenues), and develop its user experience.

More like Facebook than ever before

We’re not there yet and the mock up of the future (below left) is an extreme example, but increasingly we see more in-tweet content appearing in our Timelines (mine is to the right below), particularly if you live in a country where Promoted Tweets are well used (I don’t.)

Essentially, we can expect Twitter to make our streams more ‘interactive’, with more content flashing up by default.

For example, most images or link previews require you to click ‘expand’ to see them, that could be something that becomes default, in the same way that images and videos hosted by Twitter and Vine have popped up automatically since October. For now though, that is unlikely, since that exclusivity gives more emphasis to Promoted Tweets, many of which use Twitter-hosted images.

For many long-term Twitter users, the gradual move to Facebookize the service is unwelcome. Twitter is unrivaled as a platform for gathering and broadcasting information, and photos of cute polar bears — while being very cute — deflect attention from breaking news and other bulletins.

However, this is business and Twitter needs to broaden its appeal beyond power users. It needs to get those who are less engaged to be more active: both in terms of how often they visit to consume information and how regularly they tweet.

Push to become an attractive advertising platform

That segues nicely into priority number two for Twitter: revenue.

This year, more than ever since it is a listed company, Twitter needs to grow its income.

Unlike other services, Twitter has experienced little trouble adapting to the rise in mobile apps and smartphones. Its product is inherently suited to mobile, the only question mark hangs over its business model: can it provide a compelling platform for advertisers to reach consumers without disrupting the experience?

Twitter has earmarked TV and content as a particularly sweet spot for its business — a ‘global town hall’ — thus we can expect more broadcast-related deals. It’s also likely to continue to introduce new products — which now includes targeting via email addresses — and expand its existing suite of ad tools to more markets, particularly in Asia where, beyond Japan and Korea, it has little business presence, and Latin America.

We are also likely to see greater synergy with MoPub, the mobile ad exchange Twitter bought last year. Late last year, MoPub began offering ‘native’ ads in apps, which is essentially advertising that is branded as content within an app. So, in chat app Tango for example, ads can be bundled up to look like regular messages, helping them generate greater engagement than ‘spammy’ ads.

For now, the MoPub service is not integrated with Twitter’s own ad products, but it stands to reason that it will be at some point soon. Linking the two ad platforms could allow Promoted Tweets advertisers to tap into MoPub’s native ad product and expand their footprint into other apps too.

Distribution partnerships

Facebook has thrived in Asia and other emerging markets where, for many people, it is the Internet. Twitter has done well in the West but it is still to crack the global market, and recent partnerships to boost its presence in the emerging world — deals with Truecaller in India, and SMS-companies Myriad Group and U2opia Mobile — are likely to be be the first of many to build visibility.

Twitter is also increasingly looking to work with carriers — it recently signed a deal with Deutsche Telecom — as a way to widen its user base and increase engagement.

Messaging

It seems likely that we can expect Twitter to bring more updates to its Direct Messaging service. Up until recently, the feature was pretty much buried in most Twitter clients, but it has since returned to the front page of the Web service and is more accessible within Twitter’s mobile apps.

Twitter has also added support for images and, having tested allowing DMs from anyone and temporarily disabled the sharing of links, there is evidence that further plans are in the pipeline.

Given how messaging apps have eaten into SMS, Twitter might look to introduce support for group messaging, reinstate the sharing of links, and perhaps even launch a standalone Direct Messaging app.

New business models emerging in Asia — such as chat app Line, which makes money connecting brands with fans who opt-in to follow them — the Snapchat ‘phenomenon’, and the growth of Kik's username-based service, which tripled to 100 million users in a year, are all signs of what Direct Messaging could (or, indeed, should) be.

More experiments

As we said in the 2013 round-up post, experiments were a very big part of Twitter’s development last year and that will continue into 2014 too.

Thus far, the pilots have also centered upon aiding content discovery and engagement, and future experiments may look something like @magicpixx (an unofficial test from a Twitter staffer) which pulls in multimedia related to tweets.

Also possible…

It’s challenging to look at what companies will do for the future, thinking of the Twitter user experience, there are a few areas where it could innovative and develop.

Audio: I’m a big fan of audio recording apps and services — such as Asia-based Bubbly and push-to-talk features within messaging apps — and, personally speaking, the introduction of a native audio recording platform would be an interesting new channel to complement video and images.

Tighter integration with Vine: Twitter bought Vine a year ago, and since launching the product it has pushed regular updates — the most recent of which was the introduction of Web profiles. It figures that Twitter will look to leverage Vine into its main app, perhaps with a direct link to open the app, or some form of video recording native to Twitter’s main apps, in the same way that you can snap a photo from inside the apps.

Vine Pro: Vine has developed a niche following around its service. While it has no plans to introduce ads, like rival Instagram, some kind of paid-for ‘Pro’ service might be on the cards, offering new features and functions to more serious users.

Tools for power users: Twitter has become a critical part of the breaking news scene. We’ve seen it experiment with new services, but analytics, distribution and other features for power users could increase engagement and revenue too.

A new approach to #music: Twitter #Music has largely disappointed — to the point that Twitter is considering canning the app — but a number of services — such as Tracksby and Twitmusic – have shown the potential benefits of social media distribution for artists. Twitter could refocus #Music to address this, which could boost its ad business to boot.

How do you see this year panning out for Twitter — what new features would you like to see?

Monday, April 07, 2014 Share: