Itamar Kestenbaum

It looks like Twitter and Bit.ly are teaming up to bring you instant HoverCard Analytics. Considering Bit.ly dominates the short URL sector on Twitter, this isn’t surprising!

Here’s how it works. When you hover over:

Usernames

Over the past few years, there have been thousands of “Guides to Twitter” – but nobody can say it better than Twitter themselves! So finally Twitter are showing customers how to use their service for good, and not evil. At the bottom of the LogIn page, there’s a little text that says “New To Twitter? Twitter 101!” – click on that – and you’ve got yourself a Twitter Guide For Businesses.

A few months ago, I reported on a DM spam phenomenon that had taken over Twitter and was creating a big security problem. The story got picked up by CNET and Mashable, and everyone became aware of it, and Twitter solved it. It was a phishing scam. This seems like more of a spyware spam thing – but it’s equally annoying. The spam is being sent via @replies. They are so annoying and frequent that I deleted them immediately, but @ElyssaD was kind enough to lend a screenshot of the situation:

A little while ago, Twitter announced that they will be releasing Twitter HoverCards. Yesterday, it went live! For those of you who are curious, here’s an example of a hovercard from hovering over @natasha’s twitter handle: