Twitter has recently announced that they will soon be rolling out tests to allow posts of up to 280 character Tweets on certain Twitter accounts. The social media site has had a strictly enforced limit of 140 characters since it debuted in 2006, so it comes as no surprise that this latest announcement has generated excitement among avid Tweeters.

The character-expansion test will be open ended and the accounts participating in the test have already been granted the 280 character limit. The test accounts will encompass virtually all languages except for Chinese, Japanese and Korean (since a single character conveys more information in those languages.)

One of Twitter's Project Managers, Aliza Rosen, acknowledged in a statement that the 140-character limit was a source of frustration for Twitter users, and that expanding this limit would likely lead to people Tweeting even more.

Vine is closing down, so remember to get your videos exported today.

As announced initially in October, Twitter will shortly close its' looping video application down, and its' social media network Vine. At first, the firm suggested that it would remove the Vine application from app stores, however subsequently, it decided to change this to a newer, easy to maintain application known as Vine Camera. In advance of this, Vine's application and website were upgraded to enable the exportation of Vines, if you don't want them to be deleted.

It is possible to export Vines until later today. This can be done from the Vine website, or from Android or iOS applications. At the moment, the Vine website states that Vines can be downloaded up until the 17th January 2017, at which point the applications will convert to the Vine Camera. However, the banner for the mobile application states that the application will be upgraded tomorrow.

Twitter recently signed a deal with the National Football League that might help social networks finally take on major broadcasters.

The mainstream media has long been concerned with the idea that major technology firms would take on TV companies in order to acquire the rights to premium content rather than relying on original material.

Software companies have so far strayed away from these plans, saying that they're platform companies that don't create original content.

Now, however, it's become clear that statements about not acquiring major content were just smoke and mirrors to hide the true motives of these companies.

Twitter has been active trying to get rid of trolls or limiting their reach so when they attack, their tweets are not read. The company just updated its abuse policy to target those that attack others through the platform. The company also has a new tool to find abuse automatically by comparing patterns to previous patterns that were found to be abusive. The company also plans to be more responsive to reports of abuse.

This is a change from prior activity by the company which favored growth over limiting the actions of certain members. Investors are looking for growth in subscribers and the company has seen a decline in engagement recently. They now feel that by limiting the abusive accounts, they can increase engagement and hopefully membership.

Image via CrunchBase

Job Posting May Hint Twitter Heading For IPO

Twitter has posted a job opening this week that may mean it is preparing for an IPO in coming months. The Internet company has been among the most rumored companies threatening to go public in recent months. If they are indeed looking toward a stock market launch, it could come as soon as early 2014.

Image via CrunchBase

Vine Video Sharing App Now Available On Android

Vine, a video sharing app that has already won 13 million users on the Apple's App store is now available on Android. Sara Haider, an Android engineer for the company published a post on Vine's blog saying, "We've been looking forward to this day, and we're excited to get the app into your hands." Android users with version 4.0 and higher and 18 MBs of free space will be able to use the app.

Twitter (Photo credits: www.mysecuritysign.com)

Twitter Updates Vine With Two New Exciting Features

Vine has taken the social media world by storm, allowing you to bring more than just an image to friends, family or the internet. Now, through the Vine app you can create short six second videos that can be continuous footage or clips, with an easy to use system that allows you to touch and hold the screen while capturing videos.

Anonymous (Photo credit: Schuilr)

How Twitter Hacks Cause Big Problems

On Tuesday, April 23, 2013, the Twitter account for the Associated Press was hacked; whether the hack was the result of malicious intent or a practical joke gone sour, the impact was widespread and potentially dangerous. With the AP's Twitter hacked, someone got instant access to an audience of over 880,000 people. In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, the hackers chose to spread more terror.

The hackers tweeted about a fictional White House bombing and claimed that the President had been hurt. The Internet responded with an uproar as news organizations and homegrown Twitter journalists re-tweeted or investigated the claim. Although it was a single sentence in a myriad of Internet data, the tweet was enough to cause panic and reduce the stock market by over a hundred points.

English: Jack Dorsey at the 2010 Time 100. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Twitter Inventors Gain Patent Protection

Jack Dorsey (current CEO of Square and chairman at Twitter) and Biz Stone (aka Christopher Isaac Stone) have been granted a patent for Twitter, a patent petition that they filed some 6 years ago. The patent is for a device independent messaging system, a pretty accurate description of the social site long before it gained world-wide popularity. The company has the ability to file lawsuits against companies that offer similar services, although non have reached the popularity of Twitter and Twitter is not planning to sue anyone at this time.

Tweetdeck no iPod Touch (Photo credit: ManoelNetto)

Twitter Ends TweetDeck Apps for Mobile

TweetDeck will no longer be available on three mobile platforms including iOS, Android and Adobe Air. Twitter, which now owns TweetDeck, made a blog post that three apps would be removed from popular app stores and existing apps installed on thousands of phones would stop working in May. This is a new strategy for Twitter which wants more users to use the site directly instead of accessing data through its API. Third party apps like TweetDeck rely on the API to pull and post tweets to the popular social network.