Email Marketing Company Exact Target Acquires CoTweet

GigaOm.com reports that CoTweet, a Twitter management tool used by major companies like McDonald’s, Microsoft, Ford, Dell and Pepsi, has been purchased by email marketer Exact Target for an undisclosed sum. This move could create an interesting intersection of social media and traditional email-based marketing and might give some clues as to the future of monetizing social media.

Exact Target creates “permission based” Web campaigns for companies like Expedia, Home Depot, Gannett Co. and Wellpoint Inc. The majority of the company’s outreach for clients is done through email; its acquisition of a Twitter tool signals that it is interested in having a stronger social media presence.

The deal was important enough to warrant comment from Twitter COO Dick Costolo, who said “this acquisition is strong validation that valuable, sustainable businesses are emerging from the Twitter ecosystem. An ExactTarget and CoTweet combination should lead to even further digital marketing innovation through use of the Twitter platform.”

CoTweet offers a Twitter management tool that allows marketing executives from large companies to control Twitter feeds from a single page, making collaboration easier — particularly with larger projects.

White Sox Manager Guillen Joins Twitterverse

Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, whose reputation for speaking his mind has gotten him into trouble before, now has a new platform to share his thoughts with the world. The Chicago Tribune reports that Guillen has started to use Twitter, a move that has already drawn concern from team General Manager Kenny Williams, who spoke publicly about his concerns that it would take Guillen’s attention from baseball.

However, in typical fashion, Guillen told reporters after the team’s workout during spring training in Glendale, Ariz. that the situation was much ado about nothing.

“I guess I can’t have fun,” Guillen said. “I flunked in school five times, and I never had as much trouble as I’m having right now. Why do I have to explain to people why I’m doing this? Like I said, I talked to Kenny about it, it’s not anything that involves the ballclub. There are a lot of people in baseball that have Twitter. Why me? Why do I have to explain why I have Twitter? Obviously, I know I’m the manager of the team and the face of the ballclub, but there are a couple guys out there — I won’t say any names — that have Twitter.

“I guess they’re not famous, or people don’t care about it. The one thing I promise people — well I don’t have to promise — but (chairman) Jerry and Kenny. It’s nothing to do with the White Sox. I hope I don’t have to say I got in a fight with my wife last night.”

Yahoo! Announces Twitter Deal

Yahoo! today announced a partnership with Twitter to integrate the micro-blogging service’s real-time tweets in Yahoo!’s global network. The partnership will allow people to access their personal Twitter feeds across various Yahoo! properties including the homepage and Yahoo! Mail; update their Twitter status and share content from Yahoo! in their Twitter stream; and access Twitter updates across Yahoo! media properties such as News, Finance and Sports.

Co-founder of Twitter Biz Stone wrote in a blog post, “From our perspective, this partnership represents a big opportunity. Tweets may be short, but they have proven over and over again to contain valuable information. As the Twitter information network grows and expands, it becomes more valuable for everyone who participates.”

Yahoo! announced a similar partnership with Facebook in December. Both deals make it possible for anyone with a Yahoo! ID to update both social networking sites simultaneously. And Yahoo! isn’t the only one signing agreements. The Los Angeles Times reports that Twitter is making search deals right and left with nearly everyone including Microsoft, Google, AOL and MySpace, amounting to about $25 million in revenue.

50 Million Tweets Per Day

Twitter announced today that its micro-blogging service experiences 50 million tweets per day (TPD), an increase of 1,400 percent from 35 million TPD in 2009. In an effort to track the company’s growth over the past few years, the Twitter analytics team has posted a TPD report on the company blog, revealing that people were tweeting only 5,000 TPD back in 2007. According the blog post, the 50 million Tweets per day milestone does not include tweets from accounts identified as spam.

Twitter Benefits from Google Real-Time Search Integration

At first glance, there were few surprises in the most recently released comScore numbers, which showed that Google had solidified its dominance in the search engine market and stabilized in-roads made by competitors (specifically Microsoft Bing). However, a closer look reveals that one of the big winners from the past few months of activity has been social media site Twitter — and they might have Google to thank for it.

Twitter’s site traffic rose nine percent from December 2009 to January 2010 — which happens to be the period when Google integrated real-time search of sites like Twitter into their results. LeeAnn Prescott at Digital Beat doesn’t think this is a coincidence. She also thinks that the numbers bode well for Twitter on the heels of the recent launch of Google Buzz.

“However, this new data is encouraging for Twitter — it is maintaining its US share while growing internationally and growing the use of its service on third-party applications through its APIs,” she wrote. “With a completely open social network where users can have as much control as they want over the amount of personal information they share, Twitter has got a lot going for it over Google Buzz.”

Fat Flight Fiasco Leaves “Clerks” Director Kevin Smith Fuming on Twitter

The Los Angeles Times reports that director Kevin Smith, known for his shocking comedies like “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy,” received a shock of his own earlier this week when he was kicked off of a Southwest Airlines flight for “being too fat.” Now Smith has taken to his Twitter account to tell his side of the story and rail against Southwest’s policies.

Smith was on a flight from Oakland to Burbank on February 13 after Southwest officials determined that he was a “safety risk” because he could not put down the armrest on his seat. Southwest offered Smith an apology and a $100 flight voucher (which he refused). His treatment left Smith fuming on his popular Twitter page:

“I know I’m fat, but was (the pilot) really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?” he tweeted. “I broke no regulation, offered no ’safety risk’ (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?). I saw someone bigger than me on THAT flight! But I wasn’t about to throw a fellow Fatty under the plane as I’m being profiled. But he & I made eye contact, & he was like ‘Please don’t tell…’”

Facebook and Twitter Growth Reach Triple Digits in 2009

Marketing Charts reports that Facebook and Twitter both experienced triple-digit growth in 2009, according to the comScore’s Digital Year in Review.

For the first time in May 2009, Facebook rose to the top spot among social networks and maintained the position throughout the year, ending with 112 million visitors in December of 2009. The impressive figures represent a 105 percent increase from 2008. According to the report, Facebook grew in nearly every performance metric in 2009, including unique visitors, page views and total time spent.

Twitter ended the year with nearly 20 million visitors to its website, accounting for a whopping 900 percent increase from only 2 million visitors in 2008.

The report also found that nearly 80 percent of U.S. Internet users visited a social networking site in 2009. In total, social networking accounted for 11 percent of all time spent online in the U.S., “making it one of the most popular online activities.”

Twitter Announces Developer Conference

Twitter announced its first ever developer conference, Chirp, to be held in San Francisco on April 14 and 15.

The two-day event will start off with a full day of guest speakers at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco and will cover various topics including streaming, geolocation, business strategies and mobile integration. Day two of Chirp, a 24-hour Hack Day, will be held at the Herbst Pavilion, giving developers the opportunity to “hack away alongside the top developers of Twitter.” Attendees will have the chance to participate in several workshops and share ideas from the best in the industry. The 24-hour Hack Day will end with a contest for the best apps.

Keynote speakers throughout the event will include Ev Williams (CEO and co-founder of Twitter), Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter), Ryan Sarver (Director of Platform at Twitter) and Dick Costolo (COO of Twitter). Twitter promises many other guest speakers and surprises to be announced, including a sneak peek at its un-released API features.

Twitter is releasing about 800 tickets at $469 a pop. The tickets will be released in waves on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information visit chirp.twitter.com.

Bill Gates Joins Twitterverse

Despite being a computer mogul, Bill Gates has been reluctant to join the social media universe. The Microsoft founder stopped using Facebook recently after too many users tried to connect to him, but the Wall Street Journal reports that he’s giving Twitter a try as he’s signed up for the microblogging site and started posting under the user name @billgates.

Along with beginning to post on Twitter, Gates also launched a Web site called “The Gates Notes” to share his personal views with the world. The site is broken down into sections such as “What I’ve Learned” and “My Travels” will include posts on a variety of subjects.

His first Twitter post on Tuesday was far less deep: “Hello World. Hard at work on my foundation letter - publishing on 1/25.” Still, it was enough to convince more than 230,000 people to start following him within the first 24 hours.

Twitter Ready to Launch Answer to Facebook Connect

TechCrunch reports that Twitter is set to launch its answer to Facebook Connect, which lets third parties integrate Facebook features into their Web sites and services. Through Facebook Connect, users can instantly post links from outside sites to their Facebook page. TechCrunch reports that 80,000 websites have integrated Facebook Connect with 60 million Facebook users.

According to influential TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, Twitter’s answer to Facebook Connect would “allow sites to authenticate users, pull data and then publish back to Twitter.” The current Twitter API includes the framework to do all of these functions, but Twitter has yet to package them into one program or series of widgets.

The Twitter Connect feature would go a long way to helping the company plug a leak in its business model. A report by widget provider Gigya said that people who have a choice of logging into a widget using Facebook, Twitter or Myspace will choose Facebook 65 percent of the time.

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