Welcome back to my weekly blog! All my articles seek to document the ongoing story of how Elon Musk is transforming Twitter for the better. There were a lot of exciting changes this past week and I’ll try to summarize all of them for you!
- Twitter Verified Organizations went Global
- The Recommendation Algorithm AND Community Notes are open-source on GitHub
- Elon Musk talked live on Twitter Spaces (transcript)
- Dogecoin Logo Appears on Twitter! (update 4/7/23 doge logo disappeared)
- Twitter sign Becomes Titter!
“If Twitter can be the least imperfect place to find the truth on the internet, then I will consider that we have done a good job.” – Elon Musk
Twitter Verified Organizations became available globally
Twitter Verified Organizations are how organizations and their affiliates can distinguish themselves on Twitter. Twitter allows the Verified Organization to fully control vetting and verifying accounts they’re affiliated with.
To connect people with accounts affiliated with the organization, each account features an affiliate badge on its profile with the organization’s logo. It is easy to find these accounts because they are featured on the organization’s Twitter profile.
Twitter’s beta program included sports teams, news organizations, financial firms, Fortune 500 companies, and nonprofits. Now Verified Organizations is rolling out globally to all interested businesses, nonprofits, governments, and multilateral organizations. But there was one organization that loudly protested Twitter’s new offer, that was the New York Times.
New York Times
The New York Times decided to forgo any type of verification leading to dramatic news stories across the internet and funny comments from Elon Musk. The New York Times drama only served as free advertising for Twitter’s new Verified Organization program.
Twitter seeks to gain the trust of the people, and one way to do that is to open-source codes.
GitHub and Twitter Transparency
Now there are two source codes available to all on GitHub!
- “Twitter recommendation” open source code. GitHub twitter / the-algorithm
- Community Notes open source code. GitHub twitter / communitynotes
Twitter Engineering said,
The goal of our open source endeavor is to provide full transparency to you, our users, about how our systems work. We’ve released the code powering our recommendations that you can view here (and here) to understand our algorithm in greater detail, and we are also working on several features to provide you greater transparency within our app. Some of the new developments we have planned include: - A better Twitter analytics platform for creators with more information on reach and engagement - Greater transparency into any safety labels applied to your Tweets or account - Greater visibility into why Tweets appear on your timeline
With so many changes happening, Elon Musk spoke on a LIVE Twitter space on April 1st.
Live Conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces
April Fool’s Day brought many pranks and also a delightful talk with Elon Musk LIVE on Twitter Spaces!
Here is a transcript of the highlights of the conversation:
“We’ll be adding in the ability to do voice DM. Through DMs, you’ll be able to speak to someone through a voice chat or a video chat. So if you’ve got a DM group and you want to turn that into private Spaces or an audio chat or a video chat, you can do so.
I think it would be kind of cool to have a conversation with someone else without having to give away your phone number.
There’s some pretty insightful people at Twitter talking about Twitter being like “Trust” as a service and really that is kind of what we’re going for.
It’s to try to be the most trusted place on the internet in a world where so many people and entities and governments are trying to influence you and in a lot of cases try to trick you with information that isn’t true.
Where can you go that is the most trusted, or where is the information you can actually count on? Which is not to say that Twitter is perfect, but if Twitter can be the least imperfect place to find the truth on the internet, then I will consider that we have done a good job.” – Elon Musk
Dogecoin Logo Appears on Twitter!
On April 3, people started noticing a Dogecoin logo had replaced the blue bird logo in the top sidebar area of Twitter (and it appears in other places too). Elon Musk has always liked Dogecoin, “the people’s currency.” He has mentioned it is more fun because it has dogs and memes. (update 4/7/23 the sneaky little doge disappeared and was replaced with the twitter bird logo)
The playful and sly-looking character of the Shiba Inu dog is delightful to many people, especially to children! Artists and fans of Dogecoin (including Elon Musk) reacted with joy and celebrated with creating memes. I’m sharing a few examples below! Elon is always ready for humor, and the next day he pulled another prank!
Twitter sign Becomes Titter
On March 5, an image was shared by @softwarejameson on Twitter. A photo (see below) showing the Official Twitter HQ Building was shared and the “W” in the sign was covered up! This was verified by other videos.
Fans all over the internet began to meme and comment on how Elon was making good on a promise last year when he asked in a survey, “Delete the w in twitter?”
Fans create AI Art for Twitter and Dogecoin
Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to What’s Up Twitter – April 6, 2023. All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author is to support Twitter 2.0 and Elon Musk in both making lives better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization. I write these articles, I will not use AI of any form to write them, they are time-consuming and I appreciate the opportunity to do this.
WHAT'S UP 𝕏 by Gail Alfar 