If you can believe it, seven years ago today you had never even heard of a “tweet”. It was on March 21, 2006 at 8:50pm that founder Jack Dorsey first posted “just setting up my twttr” from his personal handle. Fast forward to 2013, and this social media platform is an integral part of most of our daily lives, with 400 million monthly visitors to twitter.com and more than 200 million monthly active users around the world.

When it comes to important, immediate communication, Twitter is generally the one to break the news. At one point during the 2011 Egyptian protests, U.S. State Department even called the site, asking it to postpone its “routine maintenance” because of the crucial role tweeting played in communicating the movement. However, the world wasn’t always on board with tweeting. Back in 2007, when the company was first starting out, the idea of Twitter seemed incredibly trivial. Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief of MIT’s Technology Review, remembers thinking that “Twitter was in the business of allowing people to advertise trivialities.” By now they’ve converted us, and in 2013 Twitter is making big moves to advertise more than just worthless banter.

On February 20th, Twitter announced that it was opening up its advertising API (application-programming interface) and enabling five launch partners to build their own tools for creathing and managing ad campaigns on the platform. The companies will be able to develop software on top of the Twitter ads platform, which will allow brands and agencies to more deeply test campaign-performance factors. By tapping into third-party tools, advertisers will be able to upload and edit ads in bulk, run campains much more effortlessly, and gain cross-channel insights from campaign delivery across Facebook and LinkedIn. Additionally, as Twitter expands their Ads API partner ecosystem, vendors will be able to give marketers the ability to run highly targeted and highly contextual ad campaigns.

In addition to WWE’s recent Saturday Morning Slam announcement, the multimedia entertainment company (and digital media client of TargetCast tcm!) continues to expand its reach and television presence by adding an additional hour of programming to its roster with the debut of WWE Main Event tonight at 8/7C on Ion Television.  Every Wednesday, WWE Main Event will be built around one “Main Event” between top WWE Superstars from both Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown with an in-depth look into the personalities and characters of each participant.

We urge you to help WWE celebrate their new show by posting the following message on your personal or corporate Twitter/Facebook accounts:

• For Twitter: Tune in tonight as @WWE debuts WWE Main Event at 8/7C on @IONTV

• For Facebook: Tune in tonight as @WWE debuts a new weekly one-hour original series, WWE Main Event, at 8/7C on ION Television. WWE Main Event will feature in-ring action and the popular Superstars and Divas from the rosters of Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown.

Get ready. Get set. Get Social!

Below is an neat infographic (provided by ExactTarget) representing the impact of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in the Twittersphere.  Interestingly, during the 2008 Summer Games, Twitter was banned (and still is) in China , resulting in low traffic.  This year, the UK is expecting such a large increase in traffic that they have to expand their internet infrastructure.  Enjoy!

Thanks to all who joined our very first #TargetTalk last night! There was some great conversation from some really bright people. Moving forward we will plan to hold #TargetTalk on a monthly basis with the next session going down Tuesday August 21st @ 7PM ET. Topic and framing post will be released over the next few weeks. In the meantime please click the link below for a transcript of last nights session.

TargetTalk 7.17.12

Interested in gaining as many followers as the celebrities?

Although it may not be just as good as winning a million dollars, Twitterrich, a Virginia-based advertising firm is now giving Twitter users a chance to become a Twitter-follower-millionaire with a new social media experiment called @1MillionRicher.

Once @1MillionRicher gains 1 million followers, Twitterrich will turn over the Twitter account to a random follower.

Though the benefits of winning this social media contest are not exactly clear, some lucky follower’s social media popularity is going to boom overnight.

Be sure to follow @1MillionRicher fast for your chance to become the next Twitter superstar!

Facebook is updating their offering(s) at a frightening pace, and either Apple or Google seem to dominate the headlines with a new product, rumor, or technology update on a daily basis. Needless to say some very complex technology developments are advancing digital, mobile, print, tv and out-of-home experiences to unprecedented levels.

But we’ve noticed a small trend that serves as a little reprieve from what can at times feel like technology overload – the vending machine. We wrote a few weeks ago about the giant vending machine via Tourism British Columbia that dispensed kayaks and bikes in San Fran and now the latest from BOS Ice Tea with a Twitter tie-in. Users have to send a tweet to @bos with the hashtag #BOSTWEET4T and the vending machine will dispense a free sample of the product. Always love to see companies leverage Twitter as a main part of their marketing program.

For NHL players “chirping” is just a part of the game.  Chirping is hockey’s term for trash talking.  Some hockey players are known to “chirp” at opposing players on the ice or from the bench.  As many players save the chirping for game time, the L.A. Kings social media team has decided bring the chirping into the Twitter-sphere.  Unlike most professional sports teams, and most brands for that matter, the L.A. Kings have decided to talk trash against opposing teams and even the cities of opposing teams.

For example, the LA Kings twitter account has dished out insults like this- “Aside from fist pumping, what else is there [to] do in NJ?” prior to the start of the Stanley Cup Finals series with the NJ Devils.  They have been responding to trash talkers as well.  When Conan O’Brien made a dig at the team on Twitter, they responded “@conanobrien Don’t make us sick @DustinBrown23 on you. He hasn’t been kind to redheads in these playoffs.”

Does this approach work?  Since the playoffs the Kings have gained over 60,000 followers to their Twitter account, while the Devils have only gained 20,000.  Do you think the other sport teams should follow suit?

British Prime Minister David Cameron is looking for ways to put a stop to the rioting in London.  One solution that is currently being explored is barring suspected rioters from using social media and other communication devices.  Theresa May, the Home secretary, met with executives of Facebook, Twitter, and Research In Motion (maker of BlackBerry) to seek ways to prevent rioters from using these mediums to organize more trouble.

Cameron said, “when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these Web sites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

Facebook has said it has removed “credible threats of violence” from the site.  However, they have also noted that social media has been used in positive ways such as mass cleanups of the riots.

In attempting to restrict use of social media, the British government was met with protest by free-speech campaigners.  This case is an brings up some interesting questions.  How much responsibility is in the hands of these social media companies?  Is the government approaching a violation of British citizens’ basic freedoms?  Read the full article here.

Mashable recently reported that Google’s Realtime search function, disabled in July due to stalled negotiations with Twitter, is planned to resurface and will include data from additional social sources as well as Google+.  Realtime Search, “Updates” on the Google SERP, delivered relevant Twitter, Facebook and other social media data streams in real time whenever major current and world events hit a boiling point.

Adding Google+ data to the results is also under serious consideration, with the Google+ Stream possibly functioning as its own search engine and real time feed, which coincidentally is Google+’s most requested feature.  This could essentially negate the need to incorporate any data outside the Google family of products (like Tweets and Facebook News Feeds).

This is very interesting. France has officially banned the names of the top two social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter, from being mentioned on radio or television…UNLESS, they are part of a news story. Dating back to a 1992 decree that says, “mentioning services by name is an act of advertising,” France has taken a stand against both of the social giants.

As described by Christine Kelly, a spokesperson for France’s Counseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), “Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition. This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s Box– other social networks will complain to us saying, ‘why not us?’”

TechCrunch sums this up nicely, “Instead of referring to specific social networking pages, like saying ‘Find us at Facebook.com/Audi’ or follow us on ‘Twitter.com/Pepsi’ brands will have to skirt around the issue, saying things like ‘Find us on social networking sites!,’ or directing viewers to their community pages and hoping that viewers will just pick up on where to go.”

France has a history of trying to regulate language used on air. According to the Toubon Law,  the French government can mandate the use of the French language in official government publications, in all advertisements, and in all broadcast audiovisual programs, with some exceptions (most notably, private non-commercial communications).

Some say the French government is going overboard in terms of restricting “the spread of American culture” which some bloggers attribute to traditional French protectionism, similar to how in 2003, the French banned the use of the word “email” in all government communications and publications.

In all, the true nature of the ban is not clear, but Facebook and Twitter are certainly making their way across the globe. Think about the earned media the two companies get every day, in every advertisement featuring one of their “brand pages.”

You never know, maybe France does support smaller social networks…or better yet, maybe France is launching their own social network (unlikely), where you have to be French to partake. Didn’t Facebook start with the promise of exclusivity?