Twitter wants users to update their personal info

27Feb/101

Twitter wants users to update their personal info

Twitter is prodding its users to update their personal settings to create more ways for people to connect on its communications service.

The request will pop up when Twitter users log into their accounts. Among other things, Twitter is encouraging people to allow their e-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers to be included in the service's search index.

To address privacy concerns, Twitter says it won't publicly display e-mail addresses and mobile numbers even if the service gets permission to use the information as search tools.

Some accountholders have already seen the information boxes, labeled "Be found on Twitter."

A Twitter spokeswoman said Friday that the box is coming soon to all accountholders. More than 73 million people worldwide used Twitter in January, up from 6 million at the same time last year, according to the Internet research firm comScore Inc.

The growth is making it more challenging to find and track friends, family and people with similar interests on the service.

Twitter, based in San Francisco, broadcasts people's messages in bursts of 140 characters or less. Users can choose to have all the posts of specific people delivered to their Twitter pages or sent to a mobile phone. But Twitter users must be found before their messages can be automatically followed.

Related information:

Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Since late 2009, users can follow lists of authors instead of following individual authors.^[3]^[4] All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service itself costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as "SMS of the Internet."^[5] The use of Twitter's application programming interface for sending and receiving text messages by other applications often eclipses direct use of Twitter.

What we have to do is deliver to people the best and freshest most relevant information possible. We think of Twitter as it's not a social network, but it's an information network. It tells people what they care about as it is happening in the world.