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Rhapsody lets you stream over 30 million songs on Twitter
In an effort to better compete with a juggernaut like Spotify, Rhapsody is using one of the world's most popular social networks to showcase and promote its music-streaming service. Today, at SXSW 2015, Rhapsody announced that it's bringing more than 30 million songs to Twitter, allowing users of the microblogging platform to streams songs directly from it -- for free. The audio-subscription service is using Twitter Cards to let people stream and share their favorite tunes, regardless of whether or not they have a paid Rhapsody account. So, what's the catch? It's simple: Rhapsody's hoping that those who see these audio-embedded tweets, on iOS or Android, will want to hear more and end up on a landing page that's set to offer a free trial.
Twitter's Lead Generation Card gives brands your info with just the click of a button
Twitter Cards are meant to enhance a user's -- er, advertiser's -- tweets with relevant links and photo previews. Three such cards currently exist, but today the social network introduced a new one: the Lead Generation Card (marketing speak, much?), which essentially lets users accept discounts and provide the required personal information directly from a business' tweet. The feature is located within a brand's expanded tweet: you simply click a button, and your email address and handle are passed along. Essentially, it's autofill for Twitter, which you'll either love or hate. For its part, the site says this feature simplifies the user experience, and it promises your personal info is sent directly and securely to the company you've specified. Currently, a few brands are beta-testing the card, and Twitter says a global launch is soon to follow.
Twitter Cards for apps, products and photo galleries unveiled
Twitter just wrapped up a developer shindig at its San Francisco HQ and trotted out three new content preview cards. When a user links to a page with Twitter-specific markup, a tweet will feature an application's name, icon, description, rating and price within the freshly unveiled App Card and link to its Google Play or App Store page, to boot. Product Cards on the other hand, highlight merchandise with an image, price and even ratings. When tweets link to a photo gallery on the web, the social network will use a Gallery Card to display a collection of four photos, indicating that it points to an image set, and not just a lone picture. The firm rounded off the updates with "mobile app deep-linking," which means that tweets can sport a download link for the app which was used to publish them. Flickr, Foursquare, Path, Vine and others will make use of the new features when they launch, which should be tomorrow according to word from the coder get-together.
Instagram pulls Cards support from Twitter, favors its own web experience
Something's amiss with Instagram links on Twitter and it's not just the overabundance of unnecessarily filtered photos. Users have noticed that, upon clicking those links, images are displaying incorrectly and, in some cases, showing up as cropped. There's no need to drag out the fail whale though (apart from amusing lead image purposes), as both companies have acknowledged that the issue lies in the Cards - specifically, Instagram's disabling of them. What that means for end users is that preview thumbnail images will no longer show up from within feeds, reverting the integration to a "pre-cards experience." Speaking at LeWeb conference in Paris today, Instagram's CEO Kevin Systrom insists the change has nothing to do with the outfit's acquisition by Facebook and, instead, is framed as a way of promoting its own web service. As for those "lomo-fi" shots you're all so fond of snapping, have no fear, you'll still be able to tweet those out with same ferocity.
