Follow photos from the festival by searching #cannes and #cannes2012.

The Cannes Film Festival began yesterday and runs through 27 May. Instagrammers are already sharing photos from the picturesque city in the French Riviera, and we’ve rounded up a few of our favorites!

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Hi, we've changed Putt Putt Penguin to Putt My Penguin. For now, leaderboards and the link to the game will stay the same - but they may need to... Read More

Communities are stitched together by numerous kinds of ties. In person there’s the smile, handshake, a shared laugh. From afar there’s the letter, email, a phone call. Twitter has a noteworthy power to bring you closer to a community instantaneously, and this week’s collection of #OnlyOnTwitter moments illustrates how this can be done with photographs.

Whether it’s Broadway actors sharing an intermission break despite being in different shows, or photos from far away that pierce the mystique to show real, human people. Or (my favorite), if on your band’s tour you suddenly stumble upon the Most Awesome Story to Tell Your Friends — with Twitter, you tell it in real time.

Saturday Intermission Pictures
The Broadway community is a tight-knit crew. But on Saturday afternoons, when they're all scattered across different theaters, how do they stay close? Intermission pictures!

Okay showfolk, if you're in a show today, at intermission take a picture of yourself and tag it #SIP (Saturday Intermission Pic)

— Andrew Keenan-Bolger (@KeenanBlogger) May 12, 2012

My first #sip!On to the fourth act of the day! @YFTOUR twitter.com/ajholmesmusic/…

— A.J. Holmes (@ajholmesmusic) May 13, 2012

Hobbit/Ugandan realness. @scottbarnhardt @FashionistaMJS #SIP twitter.com/asmeretyemane/…

— AsmeretGhebremichael (@asmeretyemane) May 12, 2012

What Finch eats at intermission. #SIP #fatnewsie twitter.com/aaronjalbano/s…

— Aaron J. Albano (@aaronjalbano) May 13, 2012

Journalist Jacob Weisberg takes you to China
On a trip to China, journalist Jacob Weisberg has been tweeting out photos and observations. This is a great format for feature reporters. Tweeting on the ground doesn't just have to be limited to breaking news. Jacob’s Tweets also offer an immediate and fascinating picture at life behind the Great Firewall.

Ai Weiwei taking a picture of me taking a picture of him. Or vice-versa. twitter.com/jacobwe/status…

— Jacob Weisberg (@jacobwe) May 15, 2012

Young Mao. Or possibly Beethoven. twitter.com/jacobwe/status…

— Jacob Weisberg (@jacobwe) May 17, 2012

Indie Band Picks up a Hitchhiking John Waters
John Waters was making his way across Ohio with his thumb and indie band Here We Go Magic picked him up. He rode in their van, and they reported the details of the incident on Twitter. (via DCist)

We found John Waters hitchhiking on the side of the 70 fwy, he bought us lunch. What a guy! @herewegomagic @turnerjen twitter.com/avtark/status/…

— Avtar K (@avtark) May 16, 2012

Posted by Andrew Fitzgerald, Manager, Editorial Programming (@magicandrew) Read More

Every day, hundreds of thousands of people sign up for Twitter to get closer to the things they care about — friends, businesses, celebrities, news and information from all over. If you’ve used Twitter for awhile, you know it can take some effort to find and follow the accounts that really reflect your interests. If you’re signing up for Twitter for the first time, we want that process to be easy and fast.

Currently, when new users come to Twitter, we show them all almost the same suggestions for what or who to follow. That isn’t ideal. Since you have individual interests, you should get individual suggestions. After all, even though millions of people love Justin Bieber, FC Barcelona or Kim Kardashian, not everyone using Twitter may want to follow them. A football fan in Italy who loves to travel may want to follow @chiellini, @walksofItaly and @nytimestravel. An aspiring chef who loves to laugh can follow @epicurious, @seriousrecipes and @SteveCarell. And a mom whose son is traveling in Australia can feel connected to him and keep up with the latest news where he is by following @smh.

To make it easier and faster for everyone to get started on Twitter, we’re beginning some experiments with tailored suggestions in a number of countries around the world. The first experiment will show new users a list of accounts that we recommend you follow, alongside a timeline filled with Tweets from those accounts. If you’re part of the experiment, you’ll see a Twitter experience that’s relevant to you right when you sign up. (Of course, you can always choose to not follow the suggested accounts that don’t interest you.)

New users may see a list of tailored suggestions (left) and a timeline with Tweets from those accounts (right) as they sign up for an account.

New users may see a list of tailored suggestions (left) and a timeline with Tweets from those accounts (right) as they sign up for an account.

If you’re a current user, you may see tailored suggestions in Who to follow so you can constantly find interesting and relevant accounts that are new to you. In both cases, we hope it’s effortless for the Italian football-and-travel fan to follow @chiellini, @walksofItaly and @nytimestravel. To see which accounts we’d recommend for you, visit our preview page.

Current users may see tailored suggestions in “Who to follow”.

These tailored suggestions are based on accounts followed by other Twitter users and visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem. We receive visit information when sites have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets, similar to what many other web companies — including LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube — do when they’re integrated into websites. By recognizing which accounts are frequently followed by people who visit popular sites, we can recommend those accounts to others who have visited those sites within the last ten days.

As always, we are committed to providing you with simple and meaningful choices about the information we collect to improve your Twitter experience. For those who don’t want to tailor Twitter, we offer ways to turn off this collection. As the Federal Trade Commission’s CTO, Ed Felten, mentioned earlier today, we support Do Not Track (DNT), which is reflected in our privacy policy as one of the ways you can indicate your preference. If you have DNT enabled in your browser settings, we will not collect the information that enables this feature, so you won’t see any tailored suggestions. We hope that our support of DNT highlights its importance as a privacy tool for consumers and creates even more interest and wider adoption across the web.

Additionally, new users will see an option to “Tailor Twitter based on my recent website visits” along with a link to “Learn more” when they create an account on Twitter.com. Current users will see a new “Personalization” section in account settings, with the same option to tailor Twitter. Of course, you can disable these options at any time, which will stop the collection of information for the feature and remove any tailored suggestions we have for you. You can even choose to turn off tailored suggestions from the preview page (which shows some suggestions we’d make for you).

Every day, experienced Twitter users are brought closer to the things they care about in unique, profound ways. Today’s experiment in providing tailored suggestions lets novice users go from zero to pro faster and more easily than ever before. So even if you’re not a football-loving Italian who wants to travel the world, we hope this experiment immediately makes Twitter yours, and you can start getting closer to the things you care about with just a few clicks or taps.

- Othman Laraki, Director, Growth and International (@othman) Read More

Charity:water (@charitywater)

Kiva Microloans (@kiva_microloans)

IDEO.org (@ideoorg)

Know of anyone else improving the world, and sharing the process through Instagram? Send us a note through Tumblr.

Each day, the Instagram community continues to expand and thrive in all corners of the globe. Today we are highlighting non-profits that also have a global reach, and are using Instagram to bring the world—and their work—to their followers.

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Automated testing and deployment is exquisitely supported by cloud infrastructures that have fast provisioning and de-provisioning capabilities.  Our friends at Strider (Brilliant Continuous Delivery) are working on some great tools to do enforce the discipline for just that.   Stephen and Niall regularly assemble wisdom for Node.js and Python Test Driver Development (TDD) at their Beyond Fog blog. [...] Read More

Every two weeks for the last year and a half, I’ve hired my favorite TaskRabbit to pick up two loads of laundry from my house, wash, dry, and fold them at her place, then return them to mine. It cost $25 per Task, and I never had to think about laundry.  It was awesome. Regina [...] Read More

37 Signals is one of the heroes of team collaboration on the web, and their team chat client Campfire is no exception. It allows teammates (even remote ones) to stay connected. But what about your customers? They’re just as important as your coworkers, and we think their voices belong in Campfire too.

That’s why today we’re excited to announce the release of the Campfire web hook, which pushes UserVoice ideas, comments, support tickets, kudos, and status updates directly into Campfire.

The Campfire service hook is available on all plans, even the free ones. You can activate this feature by following the steps in this knowledge base article.

How might you put this feature into use? Here’s three ways:

• Pipe Helpdesk Kudos into general chat rooms. The worst part of doing customer service is that you don’t get recognized for good work, only bad. Highlight the awesome work your customer service team is doing by posting every time a customer thanks a team member.
• Pipe Feedback ideas from customers into your Product Management room. There’s nothing like seeing real feedback directly from customers to get you inspired and focused on making a better product.
• Pipe Helpdesk tickets into their own room, so any of your employees can see what’s up in customer-land. (We found that piping them into a pre-existing chat room was a little too much noise, but to each his own.)

Like this integration? Build your own!

Check out UserVoice service hooks, an easy, powerful way for you to build connections between UserVoice data and your own app.

Enjoy, and as always, we welcome your feedback!

-Evan Hamilton
Community Manager, UserVoice

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Meet the Cabazon Dinosaurs, roadside attractions that make for a great photo-stop on a drive through the California desert!

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Parties in the city can be tough to coordinate, particularly if your shindig takes place in (or on) a larger building. Do you spend all night glued to the buzzer, or do you prop the door open and hope no strangers wander in? If you’re hip to the magic of TaskRabbit like Courtney M., you [...] Read More

Wow, our volunteer translators have been hard at work! Today we're very pleased to announce these languages are now available:

• French (Canada) for our Admin Console interface
• German (Austria) for our Admin Console and End-User interfaces
• German (Switzerland) for our Admin Console and End-User interfaces
• Portuguese for our End-User interface
• Serbian (Latin) for our Admin Console interface

Instructions for changing these are available on our knowledge base:

• How to change site-wide End-User language
• How to change languagues on specific forums
• How to change language in the Admin Console

IMMENSE thanks to our fantastic volunteer translators. This wouldn't be possible without you!

As always, if you want to improve any part of our translations or add a new one, you can do so at translate.uservoice.com.

And finally: jouir, genießen, & уживати!

-Evan Hamilton
Community Manager, UserVoice

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Weekend Hashtag Project is a series featuring designated themes & hashtags chosen by Instagram’s Community Team. For a chance to be featured on the Instagram blog, follow @instagram and look for a photo announcing the weekend’s project every Friday.

This weekend’s theme was #streetartistry, which asked participants to capture photographs of street art. Every Monday we feature some of our favorite submissions from the project, but be sure to check out the rest here.

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Starting today, you can discover the best of Twitter in a weekly email digest delivered to your inbox. This summary features the most relevant Tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter.

Stories feature a design similar to the recently updated Discover tab, emphasizing who shared each story beneath summaries to help you decide which ones matter most to you. Click any headline to finish reading the story, add your take by tweeting directly from the email, and see related Tweets from the people you follow.


This new email digest also features the most engaging Tweets seen by the people you follow, even if you don’t follow those who wrote them. You can see who from your network retweeted or favorited these Tweets and click “View details” to retweet, favorite, reply or view the conversation around them.

We’re rolling out this new email out to everyone over the next few weeks, so keep checking your inbox for new messages from Twitter. Like other Twitter email notifications, you can manage your preferences for this new digest in your Notification Settings.

-Othman Laraki, Director, Growth and International (@othman) Read More

News

• Happy Mother’s Day!
• Update: What’s New in Android Version 1.1.0 (Tilt-Shift!)
• Bon Appetit’s 15 Best Instagram Accounts for Food-Lovers
• NY Daily News: Jimmy Choo launches street style blog to illustrate personal styles

Get Involved

• Weekend Hashtag Project: #streetartistry. View photos from the last project, #buggingout.

Around the Community

• Photo Feature: Tilt-shift for Android
• Follow Friday: Travel
• Spotlight: Israel
• The Making Of: Fine, Fashionable Footwear
• How I Shoot: Dodging and Burning, by Finn Beales

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Winners from the contest ending May 2 have been announced. Click here

Photo credits: Gina Marie and Jonathan Ashley

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Officially, Mother’s Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of May in the U.S. Of course, all year long, Twitter is filled with love and appreciation (and, of course, a little humor) for our moms. Here are some of our favorite moments of mom shared on Twitter the other 364 days of the year.

Even though her comedy is often inspired by her family life, Mindy Kaling shared a sincere perspective on her relationship with her mom:

The best time in my life started when I realized my mom could also my best friend.

— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) April 26, 2011

Justin Bieber tweeted about the gift he’ll be giving his mom, and when his fans can get it too:

like i said on @mtv im gonna release the song i wrote for my mom #TurnToYou end of this week for Mother's Day to raise money for charity

— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) May 7, 2012

Creator and star of HBO’s “Girls,” Lena Dunham lets us in on the rapport she and her mom share:

An email from my mom contains the phrase "she very annoyed me." I just love her so much sometimes it gives me an ache.

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) December 2, 2011

Twitter isn’t just a place to come to talk about your mom: it’s also a place to come to talk to your mom. Families use Twitter to keep in touch, and share their affection.

When actor Neil Patrick Harris posted a picture of his new twins, a very proud mother and grandmother quickly replied:

@ActuallyNPH wow. Those are the cutest children, well, among the top four children I've ever seen. s/ Mamaw

— Sheila Scott Harris (@gladsheila) March 17, 2012

After publishing her first book, Katherine Schwarzenegger shared her appreciation for the support from her mom, Maria Shriver, perhaps not coincidentally a public figure and best-selling author:

“@mariashriver: Amazing journey, Katherine. So proud of you. You are a gift from God.” best mommy ever!

— K Schwarzenegger (@KSchwarzenegger) April 27, 2012

What’s the secret to center-fielder Matt Kemp’s great start with the Dodgers this year? Maybe it’s the workout encouragement he and his mom share with each other:

Becuz ur a beast!!! RT @dodger27mom: @dodger27mom: cardio for 1.5 hrs on leg day wit squats sucks! Remind me why I do this please?

— Matt Kemp (@TheRealMattKemp) December 9, 2011

@dodger27mom: takes one to know one!!!!! RT@TheRealMattKemp: @TheRealMattKemp: Becuz ur a beast!!!

— Judy Henderson (@dodger27mom) December 9, 2011

Today, share your own mom memories and moments on Twitter. But flowers are still a good idea too. Read More

We’re so excited that our friends on Android can now experiment with tilt-shift, or selective focusing, on Instagram in order to create miniature scenes and give the appearance of depth of field!

Tilt-shift photography is a process that uses a special lens with the ability the physically tilt for plane of focus, and then shift to adjust the position of the subject. Since mobile photography doesn’t employ external lenses, the process typically refers to selective focus in order to simulate miniature scenes. Selective focus can also be used to create a shallow depth of field in order to place the focus on a subject then blur out either the foreground or background, creating the appearance of depth.

Since we’ve previously provided tips on how to best utilize the tilt-shift tool we wanted to showcase some fantastic photographs shared to Instagram utilizing this brand new Android feature!

Top photo by @owenkam.

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Cultivating a trusted marketplace is something we take pretty seriously at TaskRabbit, so much so that Leah decided to tackle this very topic in her latest Huffington Post column, “The Evolution of Online Trust.” She shares a bit about the efforts we make to build transparency and authenticity into the experiences of both TaskPosters and [...] Read More

We have a very special group of women blogging on Formspring today! The Moms View is a YouTube channel for women to come together and share their opinions on topics such as parenting, relationships, coping with anxiety, self image issues and more. They just started their Formspring page and have we wanted to ask them [...] Read More

From hotels to pilots, there are plenty of ways to get your travel fix through Instagram photos. Here are a few of our favorite accounts!

@thestandard - Hotel

@virginamerica - Airline

@seeaustralia - Tourism

@bkindler - Pilot

The photo at the top is by @nikosono.

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We have a couple of moments to share with you this week of things that happened #OnlyOnTwitter. Two of our stories this week are about announcements. In one, Twitter was the platform of choice for hundreds of thousands of people to express their views on President Obama’s decision to support gay marriage. In another, Twitter was the creative canvas upon which The Atlantic drew a graphic. And then, just for fun, did you know that Salman Rushdie follows Molly Ringwald? He does.

On Wednesday, President Obama expressed his support for gay marriage during a taped television interview. He quickly shared the news on Twitter, driving the conversation to its highest levels:

"Same-sex couples should be able to get married."—President Obama

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 9, 2012

Gay marriage conversation peaked at 7,347 Tweets per minute at 3:22p ET yesterday. CHART: twitter.com/gov/status/200…

— Twitter Government (@gov) May 10, 2012

Elected officials from both sides of the aisle also turned to Twitter to voice their opinions about Obama’s announcement:

Historic day for justice and equality. Our United States President Obama endorses marriage equality. I rejoice in this announcement.

— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) May 9, 2012

“Glad Pres finally laid out position to American ppl, but changing def of marriage isn't something I can support" ow.ly/aOaXy...

— Senator Hatch Office (@SenOrrinHatch) May 9, 2012

While our @gov team tweeted their data about the gay marriage conversation via an embedded image, The Atlantic’s new business site “Quartz” turned their Tweets into infographics about cellphone usage:

▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ Macao: 2.06

— Quartz (@quartznews) May 8, 2012

▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ Cayman Islands: 1.78

— Quartz (@quartznews) May 8, 2012

Finally, it’s always fascinating to see how Twitter can bring people together. This week, a writer in New York casually noted that author @SalmanRushdie is following actress @MollyRingwald -- and was in for a bit of a surprise when they both responded:

I love that @SalmanRushdie is following @MollyRingwald. What a weird world we live in.

— paulabernstein (@paulabernstein) May 8, 2012

.@MollyRingwald @paulabernstein That goes for me too.

— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) May 8, 2012

Posted by Andrew Fitzgerald, Manager, Editorial Programming (@magicandrew) Read More

Spotlight Since launching, we’ve seen Instagram spread from our headquarters in the Bay Area to every corner of the globe. In this series we’ll highlight top users from countries and cities with thriving Instagram communities.

Israel is as young as it is small. The coastal nation turns just 64 years old this year, having been declared an independent state in 1948. A full 70% of its 7 million inhabitants live in a narrow strip of land as little as 9 miles (14 km) wide.

Despite Israel’s compact size, the country manages to churn out some of the artsiest Instagrammers on the planet. The photo above is by @alonik and below are more of our favorites.

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“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” – Henry Adams Do you remember your favorite teacher? Maybe it was that English teacher that first sparked your love of poetry, or the social studies teacher that introduced you to new parts of the world and new ways of thinking. How have [...] Read More

When your company was 2 guys/gals and a dog it was obvious what the customers issues were. But as you grow up as a company there's a tendency to firewall off the rest of the company from the actual customer interactions your customer-facing team is having. You mean to protect them, but instead this can mean that they lose sight of who they're trying to help. How do you fix this?

Get your customers back into the spotlight with our new HipChat integration. HipChat is a fantastic chat platform for inter-company communications (which we use every day at UserVoice). And now, through a simple service hook, you can pipe events from your UserVoice into your HipChat chat rooms. Suddenly, you can bring the customer back into the organization.

Check the integration out in action here:

The HipChat service hook is available on all plans, even the free ones. To set up UserVoice in HipChat, follow the instructions in this article.

How might you use Hipchat and UserVoice? Check out our in-depth post on how we use HipChat to keep our team connected to each other and our customers.

Like this integration? Build your own!

Check out UserVoice service hooks, an easy, powerful way for you to build connections between UserVoice data and your own app.

-Evan Hamilton
Community Manager, UserVoice

Read More

Winners from contests ending April 25 have been announced. Click here

Credits: “Swimming” by Lyndsey Keegan; “Be Early” by Matt Kleinmann

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Sorry for the delay. One down: http://www.trazzler.com/contests/water

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This week’s “The Making Of” takes us to Red Wing, Minnesota, where Red Wing Shoe Co.—@redwingheritage on Instagram—has been in production for over 100 years.

Red Wing’s Instagram feed is a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at the production—and producers—of their handmade footwear. And of course, they also provide plenty of finished product photos for their followers to ogle.

Know any other Instagrammers doing something unique with their hands? Send us a note through Tumblr.

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Hurrah! Instagram for Android v1.1.0 is now available in the Google Play Store! We’ve appreciated all of your feedback since our last release, and are excited to announce we’ve added the feature you’ve all been waiting for: 

    

An image before and after applying tilt-shift.

Tilt-Shift

Our popular tilt-shift feature allows you to easily alter depth of field in your photographs. By adding a realistic blur to the setting around a focal point, you can emphasize the heart of your photos and even make some scenes look miniature. To get you started, here are some great tips on how to maximize tilt-shift.

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Last month Nokia launched a new Windows Phone, the Nokia Lumia 900. While received well from a general standpoint, a serious bug was quickly discovered: many phones "were often unable to send or receive data over AT&T’s cellular network".

Before anything else, I'll give Nokia credit for acknowledging the issue very quickly. Too many companies (coughapplecough) try to hide issues or simply don't respond to them (coughrimcough).

But what came next was even more surprising: 

Nokia also announced that any customer affected by the bug will receive a $100 credit on his or her AT&T bill, making the Lumia 900 free. Going one unprecedented step further, Nokia has offered the $100 credit to unaffected Lumia 900 users as well, and even to customers who haven’t yet purchased the phone — the credit will be available to anyone who buys a Lumia 900 through April 21st.

 

I'm really torn here. Is this Nokia providing some really fantastic, empathetic customer service? Or is this simply them trying to save their big product launch by paying off early adopters and complainers?

 

Quotes and original story from BGR.
Image courtesy of John Karakatsanis.

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How I Shoot How I Shoot is a series where we ask Instagrammers to tell us about their photo-taking processes. In this post, Finn Beales (@finn) explains “dodging and burning,” a  photo-editing technique popularized by American photographer Ansel Adams.

Vantage Point: I generally look for a strong central focal point. A roadway, tree or something else that sits smack in the center of the frame.

Shooting: I shoot with the iPhone native camera app and usually expose my pictures to a mid-tone, bringing back areas that I want to highlight during processing. There’s often a lot of detail in the sky, as well as the shadows, and it’s a shame to lose this. Double tap an area on the screen that is closest to the midpoint between black and white (i.e gray). This will give you the best exposure for all the elements in the frame. 

Editing: For this photo, I made edits using Snapseed. First, use Tune image > Ambiance at about 30% to put some life back into the picture. Next, choose the selective adjust tool and add points to areas of the image that you want to enhance. I generally work with the light already in the picture. It’s a simple process of brightening the highlights and darkening the shadows, always working to isolate the subject at the center of the frame. This technique is called dodging and burning, and the legendary Ansel Adams was a master of it (although he used chemicals to get the effect as opposed to a swipe of the finger!).

When you’re finished editing in Snapseed, save the photo and then apply an Instagram filter that tones the image according to your preference. In this case, I used Sierra.

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StackMob is very excited to partner with inneractive, a leading brand in the world of mobile advertising. To commemorate this partnership we have asked Hillel Fuld (@hilzfuld), head of marketing at inneractive, to share what possibilities StackMob and inneractive are … Read more → Read More

May has come around again, and with it another crop of exciting StackMob SDK features. We’ve got for you count requests, null and not equal queries, logged in user checks, and a user data model for android. There’s no unifying … Read more → Read More

You know who’s awesome? Your mom. Moms are superheroes that shape our lives, nurture our dreams, and make possible all that we accomplish. Yet when it comes to Mother’s Day, many of us still rely on generic greeting cards or overpriced, impersonal flower deliveries to say “Thank you.” As we traded stories about the amazing [...] Read More

Two weeks ago we launched Inspector - a powerful tool to give you context about who you’re really talking to in UserVoice Helpdesk. We wrote all about how it saves you valuable time and can show you what someone’s said about your company on Twitter.

Good news: this week we’ve launched Inspector for UserVoice Feedback as well!

When viewing an idea you’ll automatically see information about the creator of the idea within Inspector. Need info about someone else on the page? Simply click their name to load them in Inspector.

Inspector is available on all plans, even the free ones.

Want to add your own gadget to the Inspector sidebar?

It’s not that hard - learn how on our developer blog.

Enjoy!

-Evan Hamilton
Community Manager, UserVoice

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Weekend Hashtag Project is a series featuring designated themes & hashtags chosen by Instagram’s Community Team. For a chance to be featured on the Instagram blog, follow @instagram and look for a photo announcing the weekend’s project every Friday.

This weekend’s theme was #buggingout, which asked participants to capture photographs of bugs. Every Monday we feature some of our favorite submissions from the project, but be sure to check out the rest here.

Photos by @shutterbugbri, @drewdomkus, @deepskywonders, @amy_leee, @arctologiste, @famousjody, @unicornpoop, @eprimasatya, @lukepenketh, @undertheopensky, @sheribisbee & @worksology.

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Today we’re updating Twitter for mobile web (mobile.twitter.com) in an effort to give every person on the planet a consistent Twitter experience. People who access Twitter from feature phones, low-bandwidth networks or older browsers can now enjoy the new version of Twitter we introduced in December.


In this updated version of mobile.twitter.com, you can see all the Tweets from the accounts you follow in the Home tab and check your @mentions in the Connect tab. You can see what’s trending in the Discover tab, and access your direct messages and Tweets in the Me tab.

Like Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, mobile.twitter.com is fast, like a native mobile app; it uses one-third less bandwidth than the previous iteration. We’re rolling out this new mobile web experience starting today, and will continue to make Twitter the most accessible way to connect with the world, even with the weakest signals and the simplest devices.

- Satya Patel, VP of Product (@satyap) Read More

News

• Instagram wins a Webby Award!
• Mashable rounds up 25 beautiful Instagram cityscapes
• Vulture on How to Shoot Instagram Photos That Look Like Your Favorite Directors’ Films
• Guest of a Guest with Must-See Moments from LA’s May Day Demostrations

Get Involved

• Weekend Hashtag Project: #buggingout. View photos from the last project, #socialtravel.

Around the Community

Photos

@thenosyt

@alexanderpavone

@urkele

@riverotter

@twopennykarma

@rachelng

@foh_toh

@dmeek

@jordangibbons

@kristinrogers

@evanvucci

@derafrances

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The Kentucky Derby takes place today in Louisville, Kentucky at 3:24pm PST. This thoroughbred horse race spans for only one and a quarter miles, or two kilometers, and is known in in the United States as “The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports” as a result of its extremely short duration.

Spectators have been sharing their pre-race preparation photographs of traditional Derby items such as as mint julips and lavish oversized hats, as well as photographs behind-the-scenes from Churchill Downs, with Instagram.

The Kentucky Derby is also known as “The Run for the Roses” due to the blanket of 554 red roses draped over the Kentucky Derby winner, as presented by the Governor of Kentucky, every year. As a result, the rose has become the race’s official flower.

Whether you’re at the race in-person or attending a Kentucky Derby viewing party, be sure to tag your photographs with #kentuckyderby!

Photos by @karynkelly, @carriec, @lookingforlaura, @thejeanniemai, @natalienicole03, @audreylasalle, @madi_frame, @jadthegent & @jauntingjill.

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Today we’re excited to introduce smiles for questions on Formspring! You can smile any question you see anywhere on the site — in your inbox, on the home feed or on a friend’s profile. Smiles are the Formspring community’s unique way to give positive feedback. Fantastic questions are the backbone of the Formspring experience. Smiled [...] Read More

From boxers to surfers to sprinters, there’s an incredible group of top notch athletes sharing their photos on Instagram. Below we’ve gathered together a sampling of our favorite accounts. With the Olympics just around the corner, be sure to stay tuned to them and our other notable athletes as they prepare for London 2012!

@tonyhawk - Skateboarding

@serenawilliams - Tennis

@kaka - Soccer

@af85 - Track

@kellyslater - Surfing

The top photo of Kevin Durant (@trey5) was taken by the Oklahoma City Thunder (@okcthunder).

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We are thrilled to announce that we have a new position open for an operations engineer!  See the full description here. StackMob is a start up backed by an impressive group of investors and founded by an experienced team. We … Read more → Read More

There has been a lot of news recently about small to medium sized game studios gaining significant traction in the mobile space. First there was Zynga’s acquisition of OMGPOP, and just this week, we saw Gree acquire Funzio. We are … Read more → Read More

To celebrate Cinco de Mayo, we scarfed down burritos from The Little Chihuahua while our product team regaled us with ukulele music and feature updates. Read More

Enter the Work of Art Writing and Photography Contest

We’ve found that taking on an entire museum just doesn’t do justice to the works contained within. This week’s theme narrows the focus to a particular work of art that functions as a microdestination unto itself. We’re leaving the concept of a “work of art” quite open to interpretation. It could be a room of Calder mobiles, a mural that captures a neighborhood’s history, an industrial wasteland transformed into a garden of graffiti, ancient paintings in the Kalahari desert, or an architectural detail on a building… enter now.

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We talk a lot about how Twitter is an amazing real-time platform. The news of the hour, delivered to you within seconds. But while Twitter is always bringing us closer to the present, sometimes our Tweets are a way of looking back to the past. This week’s #OnlyOnTwitter is about looking backwards. We’ve collected musicians’ memories of MCA. We also have a short Twitter essay remembering NFL linebacker Junior Seau. And we have a project developed by NBC LA to live-tweet the Los Angeles riots from 20 years later. All examples of Twitter’s power to make you a part of a global, collective history. And to bring you closer not just to the present, but to the past as well.

Today we were heartbroken to see the news that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys passed away. The news was shared via Tweets, passed around the world by fans whose lives had been touched by his work. And shortly thereafter came the memories— Tweets about listening to the Beastie Boys, Tweets about meeting “MCA”, Tweets about the impact his music had on all of music that followed. A flow of Tweets in which we were all sharing what this man meant to us as individuals, collectively.

I think this is something important about Twitter. On Twitter our individual memories become a collective history that is more powerful, more meaningful and more instructive than ever before.

RIP MCA
Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys passed away this Friday. Across Twitter, musicians celebrated his work and remembered his impact on their lives and careers.

Remembering Junior Seau
After the suicide of Chargers linebacker Junior Seau, NFL player Eric Olsen remembered him on Twitter.

Re-living the Los Angeles riots
Twenty years ago LA erupted in a firestorm of riots after the Rodney King verdict. This year, NBC LA set up an account to tweet out updates from twenty years ago, exactly how and when they happened. These are excerpts from the first night of rioting. Read More

In order to offer you the simplest and most engaging Twitter experience, we frequently test hundreds of variations of new features and designs with small groups of users. We test everything from subtle tweaks in the language of our sign-up pages and removing the search box from our homepage to big shifts in navigation elements. These experiments help us understand what experiences people like best or use most often. When an experiment ends, we study the results and roll out the most successful variation to everyone as soon as we can.

After recent experimentation, we introduced a slight redesign to every Tweet that flows through your timeline on Twitter.com. A Tweet may be our basic unit of communication, but it also contains a universe: each one has an identity with a username, real name and avatar; a 140-character message that includes text as well as metadata like time and language; some context (replies, favorites and retweets of that Tweet), and perhaps media (photos, videos or links).

Now, when you hover over the newly-redesigned Tweet, you'll always see options to reply, favorite or retweet in the lower-left corner against a grey background.


If the Tweet contains media, you’ll also see specific options like “View photo” or “View video”; otherwise, you’ll see the option to “Expand”. You can expand any Tweet in your timeline to see inline context like favorites or retweets from other people, or additional Tweets from that same conversation. You can also click on any Tweet’s timestamp or “Details” to see that Tweet’s permalink, the unique web page for that Tweet.

We made these changes because this iteration showed a significant increase in engagement, the highest of all the implementations during our experiment. We hope you like this change, which we think makes all of the possible ways to interact with a Tweet more clear. Even more, we hope you don’t mind our ongoing experiments. We’re always curious to find new ways to delight you, and to improve your Twitter experience.

- Othman Laraki, Director (@othman) Read More

There are phrases whose origins fade in the rush of time, and “water cooler moment” is one of those. Apparently first cited c. 1999, it meant a prime-time TV moment that co-workers discussed the next day at the office (presumably with small pointed paper cups in hand).

Flipping forward, Twitter has been increasingly invoked as creating such “must-see” moments for a newer world — in real time, no waiting. This week, on NPR’s flagship show, “All Things Considered,” (@npratc) interviewed former NBC President Warren Littlefield, who reigned during the network’s "Must-See TV" heyday. His new book details that era, and he bemoans the loss of those “water cooler moments” in our multi-channel multiverse where we’re madly and asynchronously watching stuff constantly.

Host Audie Cornish (@nprAudie) felt bemoaning was not in order:

“When I'm watching the Oscars, and everyone is on Twitter…I do feel like I'm having a communal experience with the show — in some cases enjoying it more, because you're having the water cooler conversation at that moment."

"Absolutely. I agree with that", said Mr. L., known on Twitter as @TopOfTheRock_WL.

We’re glad he concurs that Twitter has elevated the water cooler experience into the very fabric of shows. Others are noting this too. Today’s USA Today story quotes Greg Kahn, EVP of Optimedia: “The water cooler used to be the next day, now it's while the show is going on."

And as Philadelphia Inquirer TV critic Ellen Gray (@elgray) notes, Twitter isn’t just for viewers, either: TV showrunners and writers are on Twitter to gauge viewer feedback and try out new material.

This new wave of “Twitter TV” has given us a real driveway moment, as NPR might say — one that’s neatly summed up by Daniel Block (@spacemonkey95):

“So Twitter is the new water-cooler. … Twitter enables a truly communal viewing experience. Like never before it is possible to share a televisual experience with other viewers across the nation. I know of some people who sometimes choose to watch a programme broadcast live, rather than on a catch-up service later, because they want to "join in" on Twitter.”

- Chloe Sladden, VP, Media (@ChloeS) Read More

The Instagram team obviously loves photography, but we count a number of cycling enthusiasts among our ranks as well. Rarely do these two passions—cycling and photography—collide in such spectacular fashion as in the case of @stanridgecycles.

Stanridge Cycles—owned and operated by Adam Eldridge—is a Columbus, OH based builder of custom, hand-crafted track, road, and city bicycles. Through his Instagram feed and blog posts, Adam exquisitely documents the complete fabrication cycle, leaving his followers with a deep appreciation for the craft and artistry that goes into each bicycle.

Afraid that following @stanridgecycles won’t be enough for your hand-built bicycle fix? Check out @feathercycles (from the UK) and @averycountycycles (from Denver, CO) too!

Know any other Instagrammers doing something unique with their hands? Send us a note through Tumblr.

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If you plan to invite people over to spend this weekend devouring tacos and margaritas at a Cinco de Mayo fiesta, you’re going to need a little help. Whether you’re throwing a grown-up shindig or a kid-friendly party, you can hire a TaskRabbit to help with your celebration. TaskRabbits can keep your party going by: [...] Read More