Twitter Now Lets Anyone Check How Many People Saw Their Tweets

In June, Twitter began experimenting with opening its analytics dashboard to users outside of its advertisers.

Then, last month, Twitter rolled out an updated analytic dashboard to marketers, verified users and Twitter Card publishers.

The dashboard lets users see how many impressions each tweet has received (how many times users saw the tweet on Twitter), the number of favorites their tweet has received, how many times others have clicked on their profiles, and the number of retweets and replies on a certain tweet. It also shows how many times users engaged with a tweet and what that engagement was.

Now, all users can get access to these types of statistics by visiting analytics.twitter.com.

To view these analytics, your account must be at least 14 days old, and it cannot be deleted, restricted, protected or suspended. You also must primarily tweet in English, French, Japanese or Spanish.

It's not certain what Twitter is hoping users extract from these new statistics. The numbers are certainly useful for brands and individuals who want to better reach a larger audience, the "average" Twitter user simply may not care.

In the past, non-advertisers have had to rely on third party apps for all Twitter metrics. Creating a front-facing product for users is an interesting move for the company. The next thing we're waiting on is when analytics will be integrated into the mobile apps.

Kicked Off Twitter, Islamic State Flocks to Diaspora

As Twitter shuts down access to various Islamic State fighters, members of the group are shifting their social media focus to the decentralized social network, Diaspora.

On Wednesday, Twitter started actively suspending accounts from accounts actively sharing video and graphic imagery related to the brutal beheading of American journalist James Foley. Many of those accounts were related to the Islamic State, the radical Islamist group in Iraq claiming responsibility for Foley's murder.

As Mashable's Colin Daileda and Lorenz Franceschi-Bicchierai reported last month, these radical Islamists in Iraq are using social media to spread fear and propaganda in a way no terrorist group has done before.

With Twitter cracking down on the posts and the accounts, the next step is to move to more anonymized networks.

That's where Diaspora comes in. Originally created in 2010 as a response to Facebook's privacy policies, the service differs from traditional social networks in that it's completely decentralized.

As a result, as reported by the BBC and The Telegraph, IS fighters are moving to Diaspora.

For its part, the Diaspora Foundation — the group which runs the non-profit social network — posted a blog post explaining how its service works and the challenges involved with shutting down postings from IS fighters.

diaspora* is a completely decentralized network, which, by its nature, consists of many small servers exchanging posts and messages. There is no central server, and there is therefore no way for the project's core team to manipulate or remove contents from a particular node in the network (which we call a "pod"). This may be one of the reasons which attracted IS activists to our network.
The diaspora* project team is, however, concerned about the activities of these members inside our network, because of the potential legal difficulties that hosting such material may cause individual pod administrators ("podmins")

"So far," the Diaspora project writes, "all of the larger pods have removed the IS-related accounts and posts. This includes a high-volume account on JoinDiaspora.com which was apparently used as a main distribution channel."

The decentralized nature of Diaspora is part of what makes the project work; the idea is that anyone can create their own pod (social network, in essence) and that's what ensures the network can protect the privacy of users. At the same time, however, those policies are what makes it difficult to act when inappropriate or violent material floods a pod or the general network.

Diaspora says that "each pod administrator has final say over the content hosted on their pod, and we, and our entire community of members, work to help our podmins to keep the network healthy and growing."

Losing the network effect

If there is any silver lining in the way the IS is using decentralized networks such as Diaspora, it is that these networks tend to be very small and lack the network effect that makes services such as Twitter and Instagram effective propaganda tools.

If Diaspora is able to successfully ban content from its most popular pods, the potential impact of that content on smaller pods will be even more minimal.

That said, systems such as Diaspora could serve as new places to build new social networks dedicated to pro-IS postings and propaganda.

It also shows that the IS is not afraid to move to new types of networks and technologies.

Living With Lumia Google+ Hangout: Can an iPhone User Switch?

Want to find out what switching from the iPhone to Windows Phone 8 is really like? Join our Google+ Hangout at 3:00 p.m. EST today and ask away!

When I started the Living With Lumia challenge earlier this week, I wanted to answer a fundamental question, "Can an iPhone user switch to Windows Phone 8?" I'm only three days into the experiment and the truth is, I don't know. There are aspects of Windows Phone 8 that I really like and there are other aspects that are driving me up the wall.

The most interesting part of this process for me, as a reporter, is the feedback from the community. There are lots of smartphone users on other platforms (not just iOS) that are interested in trying Windows Phone 8. The hold-up: knowing if their apps will work and if they can fit the system around their lives.

That's part of why we wanted to have a Google+ hangout so that we can have a discussion about the pros and cons of switching, I can get suggestions on the best apps to try and so I can answer your questions about the Lumia 920 and Windows Phone 8.

Facebook Will Pay Up If You Find Bugs in the Oculus Rift

For years, Facebook has maintained a bug bounty program to reward those who find problems with its platform. Now, it's expanding that program to Oculus Rift, which it acquired as part of Oculus VR for $2 billion in March.

The company is offering money for identifying issues in any major part of Oculus Rift’s code, from the development software to the website — with a minimum payout of $500 for bugs and software vulnerabilities. There's no upper limit, so the more critical or inventive the find, the more it could be worth.

Facebook isn’t reserved in its crowdsourced approach. The program, which covers a wide range of Facebook’s software properties, has paid out more than $2 million since its inception in 2011.

Facebook security engineer Neal Poole told The Verge that it’s focusing first on developer communication tools in the software, but Facebook won’t rule out bug rewards for the headset itself.

"A lot of the issues that come up with Oculus are not necessarily in the hardware yet," he said. "Potentially in the future, if people were to go explore and find issues in the SDK or the hardware, that is definitely of interest to us."

That hardware, meanwhile, is currently in its second generation of development, but Facebook has remained mum about when we can expect the Rift to hit the open market.