Universal sets screenwriters loose on Twitter – helped Ted to gross near $200 million

The teddy bear’s first tweet, from an account called @WhatTedSaid set up by the Universal Pictures marketing department, was “Hello, Twitter. Kindly go f— yourself.” The author of the greeting was Alec Sulkin, co-screenwriter of the R-rated comedy “Ted,” who together with his collaborator Wellesley Wild was paid extra by the studio to build buzz …

Twitter will soon release a way to retrieve your old tweets

Trying to remember that pithy, brilliantly composed tweet about the latest Wes Anderson movie that you fired off a few months ago? You’re out of luck: Twitter gives users access only to the last few thousand posts made to the site. But Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive, promises that this will eventually change. “We’re working …

Foursquare launches promoted updates – now all social networks have ads in your news feed

It’s official, all the social networking sites have started adding “promoted” tweets/posts/places to your news feed. It’s no surprise considering that Twitter, with its “promoted tweets,” recently said it has a “truckload of money in the bank”.   Today Foursquare is launching its version of search ads, Promoted Updates. Promoted Updates operate like Google’s promoted listings or Twitter’s …

New Yorker to release famous author’s short story as serialized tweets

I do like the idea of serialized stories, similar to Charles Dickens in the 19th century. Starting Thursday night, the New Yorker’s Twitter fiction handle, @NYerFiction, will post a new tweet of text from Jennifer Egan’s 8,500 word story, “Black Box”, every minute between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. The tweets will continue for 10 …