Social media junkies know there’s nothing better than humble-bragging about food.

And this Twitter-themed cake from YouTube channel How To Cook That is sure to grab your followers by the taste buds.

Ann Reardon, the baker behind How To Cook That, created a thorough video detailing how to create this impressive cake. While the recipe is admittedly complicated, the end results are a dessert fit for even your verified pals.

This isn’t Reardon’s first social-themed cake. Earlier this year, she wowed the Internet with an Instagram cake and a Facebook cheesecake.

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Twitter jumped 8.4% to $69.96 at the close in New York after rising 7.5% yesterday. The stock has surged 169% since going public at $26 on Nov. 6, giving Twitter a market value of almost $40 billion — larger than Time Warner Cable Inc., media company Viacom Inc. and retailer Target Corp.

Investors are betting San Francisco-based Twitter can attract more ad dollars, as companies seek to market their wares through wireless devices and tie-ins with television programming. As the unprofitable company’s sales growth outpaces that of competitors such as Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., the stock has “graduated to cult status,” according to Blake Harper, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities Inc. in Baltimore.

“While the company is growing revenues faster than its fastest-growing peers and we do recognize the potential for the company to capture larger portions of the mobile and TV advertising market, it appears valuation metrics are irrelevant and that investors are betting aggressively on Twitter being the next great media-technology platform,” Harper, who recommends selling the stock, wrote in a note Tuesday.

“We don’t believe the current valuation justifies the risk,” wrote Harper, whose price target for Twitter is $34. “Especially with the company having yet to report a quarter as a public company.”

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

Source : Mashable 

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Facebook and Instagram each captured the hearts of 23% of survey respondents. Clearly, Instagram’s rising popularity among teens took a toll on both Twitter and Facebook’s popularity; Facebook saw a 10% decrease in the survey since six months ago and Twitter saw a 4% decrease.

“The data point is likely unsurprising as the trend in our survey has been moving toward Twitter over the past couple of years,” said analysts Gene Munster and Douglas Clinton in a note to clients.

Statista’s chart, which uses data from Piper Jaffray, shows the changes in teens’ favorite social networks for shopping among fall 2012, spring 2013 and fall 2013.

Image: Image: Sean MacEntee

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Twitter, which announced the move on its blog on Thursday, illustrated the upgrade with this Aug. 11 tweet from astronaut Chris Hadfield:

Good morning! Perspective – Sunday is a fine day to go for a walk with a friend. pic.twitter.com/P3uDfjYsEU

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) August 11, 2013

“As you can see from @CMDR_Hatfield’s Tweet embedded above, we’ve put the photo front and center, with a bigger and bold visual focus on the media,” Brian Ellin, Twitter’s project manager, platform, wrote in the blog post. “Both landscape and portrait photos now have more room to show their pixels when the Tweets are embedded online.”

Reemerging into society after backpacking ~35 miles through Yosemite’s Grand Canyon of Tuolumne River. My legs hurt. pic.twitter.com/TkjNgKn6b8

— Bill Couch (@couch) July 7, 2013

Improving the photo experience make them more viable for inclusion in articles now that there’s competition from Facebook. Facebook’s embeds came as the company was revving up its real-time marketing opportunities (shortly before, the company introduced hashtags). Instagram, a unit of Facebook, launched embedded posts in July, shortly before Facebook did the same. Instagram’s embeds include video as well as photos. Twitter’s Vine videos are also embeddable.

For a short period, Facebook had not only caught up with Twitter, but also surpassed it by letting news organizations run richer embeds in their stories. Now, the two appear to be on equal footing.

Image: Mary Turner/Getty Images

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What’s notable is that these spammers weren’t sending tweets or direct messages. Instead, they made use of Twitter’s list function, adding people to various lists and indirectly pointing thousands of users toward spam sites.

Lists are typically used to organize Twitter users into more distinct groups. You might have separate lists for celebrities, colleagues and friends, which allows you to monitor several different streams at the same time through tools like TweetDeck. A few months back, Twitter increased the number of lists each user can have from 20 to 1,000 and the maximum number of accounts in each list from 500 to 5,000.

While not entirely new, as noted by BuzzFeed’s Charlie Warzel, it’s a capability that is now being abused by spammers, who are adding users to lists populated with links en masse. Each time you’re added to a list, you get a notification on Twitter and perhaps via email. Naturally, you’ll be keen to find out why you were added to the list and, spammers hope, click their links.

One of the biggest offenders in the current wave was an account called Celeb Phone Numbers. Before Twitter suspended it, the account automatically added tens of thousands of users to lists. It promised to reveal the phone numbers of stars like One Direction singer Tomlinson and Lady Gaga through an associated website.

Warzel reported the person behind the Celeb Phone Numbers account used a Twitter keyword marketing tool to find people who had tweeted about those stars and added them to its lists. That person shared their finding on marketing forums, spurring other spammers to try the tactic. The spammers make money if you complete surveys or view ads on their sites.

The Celeb Phone Numbers account was immediately reported as spam by many users Sunday night:

you cant spam add me to your list now can u pic.twitter.com/sStoEvemkE

— katie (@seasidenouis) September 15, 2013

Twitter is fighting a war against spammers. A study published last month showed how vendors created thousands of phony accounts and sold them to spammers wholesale. Twitter is adding the researchers’ methods for finding such accounts into its abuse-detection systems. Tracking down and killing spam accounts is a high priority as the company prepares to hold an initial public stock offering.

Image: Andy Melton

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Trendrr has two products: One, Trendrr.TV, provides TV networks, publishers and media agencies with tools to track TV engagement across social networks, including Twitter. A second, Curatorr, allows those same parties to sort through social streams to visualize data and to help them identify high-quality tweets — tweets that might, say, get retweeted by a TV show’s Twitter account, or show up on air during The Bachelor.

It’s this latter product, a Twitter spokesperson says, that Twitter intends to take advantage of. Twitter already provides ad and analytics products for TV advertisers, including the ability for national advertisers to retarget their TV ads to Twitter users. The acquisition will allow Twitter to offer additional services to networks, publishers and other organizations, the spokesperson says.

The move follows several others Twitter has made in the TV space this year. Most recently, Twitter announced its first head of entertainment sales: Jennifer Prince, formerly the head of media and entertainment sales at Google. The company is also planning to roll out a TV ratings system with Nielsen in the fall, which will provide TV networks with ratings based on Twitter buzz.

Trendrr CEO Mark Ghuneim says the company will continue to work with its current partners following the acquisition, but will not add any new ones:

Curatorr, our Twitter certified product, will work with media companies, marketers, and display ecosystem partners to create compelling user experiences – continuing to pursue our initial charter of focusing on the real-time aspects of TV and media.

We intend to honor existing partner contracts for Trendrr.TV but we do not plan to establish new ones going forward.

Trendrr was founded in mid-2007 and is based in New York.

Note: This story was updated with comments from a Twitter spokesperson, above.

Image: Mashable composite; iStockphoto, belterz

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The Times tested a feature it developed that allows users to click on a highlighted sentence from a story, and tweet it out directly, instead of just tweeting the headline. Readers who see the tweet and click on the accompanying link are brought to the highlighted part of the story, rather than to the beginning of the article.

The idea behind the feature was that while a headline doesn’t always grab you, an enthralling sentence from the middle of a story may do the trick. Times reporter Dave Itzkoff explained to Poynter his method for determining which sentences to highlight: “Just a bit of educated guesswork trying to imagine what readers would be drawn to and what would make the best traveling billboards for the overall story.”

The story that the Times chose — a feature on what it’s like to audition for Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels — was tweeted 11 times more frequently than “the average of the top 500 shared Times articles from the last month,” wrote Twitter data editor Simon Rogers in a blog post.

While the experiment lacks a sufficient sample size, the idea is that in providing users with a way to tweet content outside of a story’s headline, more sharing will result.

Previously, users could always read a story, then copy and paste an interesting sentence into a tweet. Now, the new feature allows publications to identify interesting or quote-worthy material for readers. Now, the new feature allows publications to identify interesting or quote-worthy material for readers. Twitter referred to the new tweet suggestions as “editorialized tweets.”

The Times told Poynter that the use of editorialized tweets will not carry over to all of its stories, but rather serve as an experiment, as the newspaper prepares for a site redesign next year.

The microblogging site has been actively releasing new features that make it easier to share articles. Last week, Twitter announced a Related Headlines update that automatically lists relevant stories alongside tweets. The feature is meant to provide context to tweets by showing users where they can get more information, if interested.

Image: Mashable

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In 2013, 63% of brands have multiple Twitter accounts, according to a report by Brandwatch. This trend represents an 800% increase from two years ago, when just 7% of brands had multiple Twitter accounts.

Statista’s chart, below, breaks down the number of brands with multiple, single and zero Twitter accounts, measured over the past three years.

Do you think multiple Twitter accounts are a must for brands? Let us know in the comments.

Image: mhkmarketing

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Hashtags have become synonymous with Twitter, serving to filter what can otherwise be a wide array of difficult-to-categorize information.

Users can join any conversation on the platform by adding the appropriate hashtag to their tweet. The problem is knowing which one to include.

Twitter is trying to solve that. The company unveiled an infographic Wednesday complete with a blog post highlighting tips on choosing the best hashtag for your tweet.

The highlights: Make your hashtag memorable, integrate it with other marketing activity like ads or campaigns, and don’t be afraid to piggyback on a popular term or phrase.

“If people are already using a hashtag, and having conversations, part of your work is already done,” wrote Twitter’s UK editorial manager, Gordon MacMillan, in the blog post.

“All your brand needs to do is ensure that when it joins that conversation it is adding value.”

Image: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

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In addition to the panel, many of TweetDeck’s new features are centered around drafting tweets, not just managing your columns. Most of the new features are already available on Twitter’s mobile applications. TweetDeck’s new features include:

• You can now reply to multiple users mentioned in a single tweet by simply clicking the “reply” button. Previously, users could only respond to the tweet sender by clicking “reply” in TweetDeck, and had to copy and paste usernames into a new tweet when responding to multiple users.
• You can preview your image before tweeting it and remove it by simply clicking the small ‘x’ in the image’s upper right-hand corner. This feature is already available on mobile iOS devices.
• When sharing a link, the URL will appear at full length while you draft your tweet, but the site will automatically register its length at 22 characters. This way, you can ensure that you’re sending out the right link without calculating how much room is left to type.
• TweetDeck will auto-generate usernames and hashtags as you type. Recently-searched users or ones you follow will appear at the top of the search, but TweetDeck’s suggestions won’t be limited by those characteristics.

The new features will be rolled out gradually, according to Twitter’s blog post, beginning with web and Chrome versions. The features will be available for Windows and Mac apps beginning “soon,” it stated.

Do you still use TweetDeck? Will these changes keep you on the platform? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Image: Mashable composite, Twitter

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