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Facebook adds clickable hashtag support to your News Feed
Facebook wants to help you make your conversations just a little more discoverable (if you so desire), and it's decided to finally include a long-missing feature -- clickable hashtags -- to the News Feed. If you've ever enjoyed hashtag searches on Twitter, Instagram or other social networks (some of our friends enjoy them a little too much, if you ask us), you'll now have the same feeling of exhilaration on Zuckerberg's service as you are now able to click on each one. Up until today, any hashtags from imported tweets or Instagram posts just showed up as regular text, with no backlink to accompany them. When it comes to the visibility of your own hashtags, Facebook won't allow any unintended audiences to see your private updates, so you remain in control of your desired privacy. The company also plans to roll out trending hashtags and other related features in the coming months, but this is a good start for now. The company's official blog post can be found below.
American Express cardholders can now buy goods by tweeting special hashtags
If driving to a store and waving your phone by a terminal puts too much sweat on your brow, American Express has launched a new way to part with your money in exchange for physical goods that's even more effortless. Since last year, Amex Sync has let American Express cardholders earn discounts in return for posting tweets including hashtags about certain products, and now it's letting them buy things just by tweeting similar codes. After signing up for the service (and linking their Twitter handle), users can send out a tweet with #BuyAmexGiftCard25, reply to the @AmexSync account to confirm their purchase and wait for the package to arrive via free 2-day shipping. As of now, the outfit is offering a $25 American Express gift card for $15, but will being offering up new products, ranging from a Kindle Fire HD to an Xbox 360, with sweetened prices starting February 13 at noon EST. Not a Twitter user? According to AllThingsD, Leslie Berland, Amex's SVP of digital partnerships and development, says the solution will head to the likes of Facebook and other platforms at some point as well.
#Ridiculous, or why the French have renamed the hashtag: a play in no parts
FADE IN: INT. L'Académie Française -- DUSK A group of forty immortels, dressed head-to-toe in YSL Rive Gauche robes en velour, are seated upon several dozen Maurizio Galante Mother-in-Law sofas. Saint Etienne's Good Humor can be heard playing in the background as the soundtrack to their wordless debate. Forceful exhalations and heavy sighs punctuate the lounge-like ambiance. Suddenly, the eldest of the group stands, silences his Mobiado Grand Touch Executive and speaks. IMMORTEL No. 1 Let's have a kiki. I wanna have a kiki. IMMORTEL No. 31 Lock the doors, tight! IMMORTEL No. 1 A kiki is party for deciding on new words. We're drinking Chablis and dishing des bons mots to be absurd. And though the sun will soon be rising, no one may get up to leave. So tweet that ish and we'll all bid adieu to le hashtag. Kiki! Hashtag?! Oui Oui ou Non? ALL IMMORTELS (in unison) NON, NON! IMMORTEL No. 1 Let's call it a 'mot-diese.' IMMORTEL No. 40 This kiki is marvelous! IMMORTEL No. 31 Dive, turn, work! IMMORTEL No. 1 And so, it is done. Fin.
DCM Dealer software platform mines social media for stock sentiment, Wall Street licks its chops
In this episode of "What could possibly go wrong?!", allow us to introduce you to DCM Dealer. Billed as an "online trading platform," this here project was whipped up by the same London-based investment outfit (DCM Capital) that went belly-up after losing some $40 million in assets in just one month during the summer of 2011. Granted, that was a pretty tough time in the market, and it did manage to squeeze out a 1.9 percent gain in the period it was open, but it's still worth keeping in mind. Now, the firm is hoping to catch a second wind with a tool that mines Twitter, Facebook, and the whole of social media in order to pick up clues about the public's view on a stock. Reportedly, it'll spit out real-time ratings from 0 (negative) to 100 (positive), giving investors yet another "leading indicator" on what to invest in flip for a quick buck. Founder Paul Hawtin confesses: "This is not some kind of holy grail of buy-sell signals that's guaranteed to make you money. This is an additional layer of market information...markets are driven by greed and fear, so if you can understand fear and quantify it in real-time, you could use that to protect yourself." We'll leave it to the 99 percent to comment on the idea below.
Twitter airs first TV spot during NASCAR, implores racing fans to discover the magic of hashtags
Given #thescope with which Twitter has #invadedpopularculture, it may come as a shock to realize that the company hasn't really ventured too far into the world of television advertising -- but then, it seems that it's been doing a pretty good job getting enough #freeadvertising as is. Clearly the folks at Twitter saw an untapped resource in the form of the #NASCAR audience, using the weekend's race to launch its first TV #adcampaign, revolving around fittingly pithy spots capped off with the TWITTER.COM/#NASCAR URL, which redirects to a landing page for the weekend's festivities. Relive the #thrilloftherace with a slew of Twitter ads #afterthebreak.
Be thankful you don't have to play these Rejected Darkmoon Faire Minigames
As you might know from our video tour, the new Darkmoon Faire island coming in patch 4.3 is loaded up with carnival-style minigames you can play with purchasable tickets. Faire-goers can look forward to playing games like Tonk Battle, Whack-a-Gnoll, and Ring Toss, but you have to figure ... what games did Blizzard consider before adding the ones we get in 4.3? We started guessing on Twitter, then let the WoW Twitter community take over with the #RejectedDarkmoonFaireMinigames hashtag. Unsurprisingly, you guys killed it. Here are a few of our favorites from the hundreds of entries we got.
Win prizes in Blizzard's Twitter contests
If you are following Blizzard's Diablo, StarCraft and Warcraft Twitter accounts, then you already know that Blizzard has announced three new Twitter contests.For all three of them, you must be following the appropriate account. Here is a summary of each contest: Starcraft: Tweet how you are the biggest StarCraft 2 fan using the #SC2fan hashtag for a chance to win one of 500 Starcraft 2 beta keys. Diablo: Tweet an item name using the #D3unique hashtag to win one of many Diablo 3 prizes. Warcraft: Using the #Battlecry hashtag, tweet "For the Horde" when the background of the @warcraft twitter page shows a Horde flag and "For the Alliance" when the background is Alliance. Horde or Alliance prize packages are up for grabs in this sweepstakes. These contests end August 24, 2009. Good luck everyone!
