Tag: twitter

The popular online social networking service is no longer developing its Glass app.

Last week, 9to5Google reported that Twitter has stopped the development of its Google Glass application and the app has disappeared from the Glass market, which means new users or users who never installed the app on their wearable device when it was available, will not have this option now and those who previously had the app but removed it will not be able to reinstall it.

The app from Twitter is also gone from MyGlass.

The app, which first became available to the Glass market back in May of last year, is also absent from Google Glass’s management and app center, MyGlass. While it used to carry a message that stated if a user has Glass and wanted to use Twitter, they simply needed to turn on Twitter by heading to google.com/myglass, this message is now gone and once the app is deleted by a user, it cannot be reinstalled.

A Reddit user known as pete716, who was among the first to have received early access to the device, posted about the sudden removal of the app and said that “According to Glass support Twitter is no longer developing their Glass app. This was one of my favorite and most used apps on Glass. If you remove Twitter from your Glass it disappears from Glassware and there is no option to reinstall it.”

Google Glass users may need to wait for a third-party app developer to fill the void.

It is not clear why Twitter dropped its support for its Glass app, especially since it seemed well liked by users and the two products are well suited to one another. However, what this means is that users of the wearable won’t be able to enjoy the tweeting experience until a third-party app developer comes along and provides a solution.

One Redditor commented that the withdrawn support from Twitter is “bad news” because of what has been implied, which is that big names like Twitter appear to be losing interest in Google Glass even before the device has hit the market for consumers. Whether or not major players are losing interest in the smart glasses has yet to be seen, but this sudden move by the popular social network has certainly raised some eyebrows.

CardSpring is purchased by the massively popular social networking service.

Twitter has announced that it has bought CardSpring – an application platform with a simple API that enables developers to connect digital apps to debit or credit cards – and the social networking giant believes that the payments company will help it provide card-linked offers to consumers, which could help boost its social commerce.

CardSpring is well known for its easy-to-use application programming interface (API).

Commenting on the recent acquisition, CardSpring stated in a blog post that “At Twitter, we will continue to grow the adoption of our platform and work with our publisher, financial, and retail partners to create new, innovative commerce experiences for consumers.”

Twitter has previously provided its users with the ability to obtain discounts and deals. According to Twitter, users can already “surprise someone with a coffee, or even add items to their online shopping cart – all directly from a Tweet.” The company stated that as they work on its commerce future, they are confident that CardSpring and the technology it has developed will be a “great fit”.

There are different ways that Twitter could use CardSpring. As an example, it could use it to allow card-linked offers. For instance, a user could receive a tweet from a merchant containing a discount, which would ask the user to enter their credit card number. Later, when the user makes a purchase from this merchant either in-store or online, CardSpring would recognize the credit card number and automatically apply the discount.

At the same time, it would provide the merchant with performance analytics of their offer. Thus, these types of promotions could increase Twitter’s relevancy to local businesses interested in boosting their in-store sales and not just their follows and retweets.

The recent acquisition could lead to a brighter social commerce future for Twitter over Facebook.

Prior to Twitter’s announcement, Facebook revealed it had begun testing its Buy button, which allows online shoppers to buy goods and services directly from their News Feed. However, the one major social commerce advantage that Twitter may have over its competitor is its retweet feature. On Facebook, users can click “Like” on a post and they can also “Share” it, but a retweet immediately shares a message to all of that user’s followers. In other words, it gives merchants a much greater chance of growing their customer base because retweets are likely to reach more users and re-sharing is a huge part of the Twitter culture.