Hasta La Gadget!

Twitter has just launched its new advertising API. The new ads API is designed to help marketers get their ad campaigns out to the right type of audience. This way, Twitter can help create more relevant advertisements for both marketers and users alike. Twitter states that “our focus has been on delivering better ads for users, not more ads”, because more ads would mean a lot of angry Tweeters.

There are 5 initial partners who have implemented Twitter’s Ads API into their marketing program. This list includes Adobe, HootSuite, Salesforce, SHIFT, and TBG Digital. By advertising using the marketing campaigns from these companies, marketers will not only be able to get their ads out through the company’s existing marketing program, but also to Twitter’s 200 million users as well.

The new API system will also be more targeted, providing Twitter users with ads that are most relevant to them. This new system was tested with the five partners back in January, and over several weeks, the companies were seeing very positive results. Adobe’s media optimizer was able to increase Adobe’s number of followers from 2 dozen new followers a day to about 400 new followers a day. By the end of the test, there was a steady rate of 115 new followers per day for Adobe.

Twitter is looking for new partners to add onto the list, and have placed an application on their blog. In the near future, you should see more promoted tweets, and more promoted accounts, but they should appear based on your interests. Twitter is also looking to launch a “promoted products” feature in its advertisement API soon.

[via Twitter]

Twitter launches Advertisement API is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

In what we can only assume is a replay from yesterday, Jeep’s Twitter account was hacked and much of the branding was changed over to Cadillac logos and images, mentioning that Cadillac has acquired Jeep, although that couldn’t be further from the truth. We’re guessing it’s the same hackers behind yesterday’s Burger King/McDonald’s Twitter hack.

Many of the tweets are also similar to what we saw yesterday, mainly dealing with the superiority of Cadillac over Jeep, mixed in with some incoherent language and hashtags. The background was also changed to a McDonald’s-laden blinged-out car, pretty much confirming that it’s the same hacking group that we saw yesterday, due to the McDonald’s reference.

If it is the same group, then the Defonic Team Screen Name Club are the ones behind today’s Twitter hack. The group is best known for hacking into Paris Hilton’s phone a while back. Of course, Jeep is gaining hundreds of new followers by the minute, similar to how Burger King’s following grew by 30,000 users in about an hour’s time.

Jeep’s Twitter account hasn’t been suspended, unlike Burger King’s account, and it seems things are back to normal. Jeep’s head of brand communications Todd Goyer says that the company is “aware of the issue and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible.” Most of the branding is back to normal and all of the irrelevant tweets have been deleted.

Jeep Twitter account hacked, taken over by Cadillac fanboys is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Hacking into systems and servers to play some harmless pranks isn’t anything new, but today Burger King’s official Twitter account was breached and the hackers appeared to be die-hard McDonald’s fans, because they ended up changing the page’s branding to the McDonald’s logo and name, and mentioned that Burger King “just got sold to McDonald’s because the Whopper flopped.”

Burger King’s Twitter account, which has almost 90,000 followers, was made to look like McDonald’s own Twitter feed, with a McDonald’s logo and all. The only difference was that the username remained unchanged. Many of the tweets beared the hashtag “#DFNCTSC”, which seem to suggest that the hackers behind this comical trick are a part of the Defonic Team Screen Name Club, who are best known for hacking into Paris Hilton’s phone.

The hackers continued to tweet for 30 minutes before the account was finally suspended for the time being. Tweets were filled with text, photos, and videos that made fun of Burger King and its employees, including a couple of tweets mentioning employees doing drugs in the bathroom. The rest of the tweets were pretty random and some didn’t really make sense.

Twitter has recently been a huge target for hackers, with over 250,000 passwords leaked from a hacker who broke into the service’s servers. This also isn’t the first time that verified accounts, and popular Twitter users have been targeted. Major League Baseball was recently hacked, as well as the New York Yankees account, which made fun of Derek Jeter.

UPDATE: We’ve received some stats about the hacking from Unmetric regarding the Twitter account. The number of followers that the account gained jumped from 83,000 to 110,000 within 60 minutes, and the hackers sent a total of 55 tweets before the account was eventually suspended, 33 of which were either replies or retweets. McDonald’s also chimed in on the Burger King hack, assuring users that they had nothing to do with the fiasco.

[via ABC News]

Burger King Twitter account hacked to show McDonald’s superiority [UPDATE] is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Not surprisingly, Twitter has put the kibosh on Posterous, which it acquired just under a year ago. Posterous made its grand appearance in 2008 as a startup offering users the ability to simplify their online sharing using Spaces. Come the end of April, the service will officially be shutdown, including its mobile apps. Fret not, however; two of the company’s co-founders are creating an alternative service.

Posterous announced the upcoming shutdown on its blog earlier today, stating that it is a move that allows the company to focus all of its efforts on twitter. Once April 30 rolls around, those who use the service won’t be able to edit or view their Spaces, and so users who want to preserve their content should back it up before then.

Backing up Spaces is a rather simple process. Users should navigate to “Posterous.com/#backup,” where they’ll need to log in if they’re not already. Once logged in, the user will then need to select “Request Backup” next to the Space they want to archive. The backup will then be created, and once it is completed, an email will be sent to the address tied to the account. Returning to the backup URL will then present the user with a ZIP file to download containing the Space’s content.

According to the folks over at TechCrunch, Posterous’s co-founders Garry Tan and Brett Gibson are working on a new service called Posthaven, which they promise will be around forever, specifically saying that it will never be acquired, and that its URLs will always be kept online. The service will cost $5 a month, with users being able to reserve a name now.

[via Posterous]

Twitter to shutdown Posterous on April 30 is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Facebook and Germany have been going back and forth for years, but the most recent development was the disagreement between the two entities as far as using real names or pseudonyms. Facebook wants its users to use their real names, but Germany insisted otherwise. However, Facebook just won the court battle that will force Europeans to use their real names.

After a German court initially ruled that Facebook couldn’t force people to use their real names, a successful appeal in another German court has ruled otherwise. However, the ruling will yet again be appealed by the Schleswig-Holstein state’s data protection body, who say that using real names “breaches German privacy laws and European rules designed to protect free speech online.”

The administrative court in northern German Schleswig argued that Germany’s privacy laws weren’t applicable because Facebook has its entire European headquarters in Ireland, which is a country with different sets of laws and rules associated with privacy and using real names online. However, it doesn’t seem likely that the ruling will be overturned yet again.

Facebook argues that its real-name policy protects users, rather than invading their privacy on the internet. This really only seems like a huge deal if you’re pretending to be someone else on the internet, whether it’d be for parody purposes or to stalk someone else online (both of which are unnecessary), but it seems a lot of Germans are into that kind of thing. However, it won’t last much longer.

Facebook wins court battle that forces Europeans to use real names is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.