Itamar Kestenbaum

Twitter has been making changes to keep up with the very lingo that has been created around the microblogging service. The word “tweet” was already introduced into the user interface by the tweet-count changing from Updates to Tweets.

In their announcement of their SXSW plans, Hootsuite announced their integration of location-based juggernaut Foursquare, as well as faux-social-network-turned-music-self-promotion-clusterf*** Myspace!

This, no doubt, is not a coincidental timing considering the huge amount of checkins expected at SXSW this year. The location-based service also gives special badges for specific events.

According to Network Solutions and the University of Maryland Smith School of Business, social media adoption by small businesses has doubled from 12 percent to 24 percent in the last year. The results were shown in the Small Business Success Index™ (SBSI) third wave of results.

Dear Google,

Recently, YouTube have made it much easier for users to find friends through Facebook, Yahoo!, and Gmail (which has been possible for a while.) Now, they’re taking on Twitter with a new hashtag attempt. The hashtag is #SubSaturday, short for Subscription Saturday, and it will encourage people to recommend others for subscription the same way #FollowFriday recommends friends for following on Fridays.

Bit.ly have released Bit.ly Pro to the public last night. The addition to the already-free bit.ly will be a tool to allow individuals and enterprises to use their URL shortening technology to create their own custom URL shorteners. A few days ago, Bit.ly sent an email out to their waiting lists requesting that they make initial preparations. First, users must get their short URL, and second – they need to set up the CNAME to point to the right address.

These sorts of news are kind of “whatever”, but have to be mentioned:

Apparently, there’s a glitch going on on Twitter where everyone’s tweet count has gone up ridiculously! I just recently tweeted that I had tweeted my eight-thousandth tweet, and my tweet count is now 24,117:

Over the next short while, Twitter will be rolling out a new feature called HoverCards. It’s going to simply be an in-stream profile preview.

We all waited for it for so long! Here it is!

This pic is from Engadget:

Here are some of the specs thanks to @electricpig liveblogging:

Twitter Local Trends was in the talks for a while, but was recently discovered live by @lisabarone and covered by Mashable the other day. It allows for trends to be narrowed down to specific cities instead of just general twitter-wide trends.