The 7 Rules of Healthy Fast Food

 The 7 Rules of Healthy Fast Food

Don’t want to order a McSalad? We don’t blame you.  Consider this supposedly healthy item: McDonald’s Fruit & Maple Oatmeal contains more sugar than a Snickers bar. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that a recent survey by the food research firm Technomic found though 47 percent of Americans say they want healthier restaurant options, only 23 percent actually order healthy. Why? The study indicated that most people don’t believe healthy menu options are healthy. You’re (often) right!
So how can you eat healthier at the fast food joint? Follow this advice.


1.THE BEST MEATS
You’re in the clear with turkey, roast beef, and ham, but avoid sausage or bacon. Replacing that sausage with ham? It can save you up to 500 calories a week. If you stick with the sausage, pair it with something nutritious and flavorful, like jalapenos or sweet red onions.


2.PLAIN, PLEASE
It’s a rule of thumb: the less ingredients, the better. Take a BLT: bacon, lettuce, and tomato—simple. And usually never more than 400 calories. Beware: Many restaurants butter buns. Ask for it dry and save yourself 100 calories.


3.THE PERFECT PIE
How about pizza? It all depends on the crust (choose thin over thick) and the toppings. Add toppers like spinach, pineapple, or ham instead of pepperoni—4 pieces can add almost 100 calories—to cut calories and add nutrients.


4.CHOOSE COLORFUL CONDIMENTS
Go with a colorful sauce. Red ketchup, yellow mustard, brown BBQ sauce: good. Creamy mayo, and “secret sauces”: bad. Burger King’s mayonnaise can add up to 160 calories to a burger. Swapping it with BBQ sauce saves you around 100 calories. Want an even better replacement? Salsa, America’s most popular condiment, is full of vitamins A and C from its tomato base. It also contains the cancer-fighting antioxidant lycopene.


5.GET IT GRILLED
Seems simple, but this rule is many-a-time abused in crispy chicken salads or KFC’s grease-lathered two-piece combo. Try asking the restaurant to swap fried chicken for grilled—it may not be on the menu, but it’s worth a shot.


6.PAY ATTENTION TO PORTIONS

The steak isn’t the problem so much as the size of steak. A serving size of beef is 3 ounces, the same size as a deck of cards. Consider this digit next time you’re eyeing that 12-ouncer. Save half of big-portioned meals for leftovers—this includes burritos, which can be a big-time offender of portion control. Chipotle’s Mexican Grilled Chicken Burrito packs 1,179 calories. Halving portion sizes halves calories.


7.THE COFFEE CULPRIT
Your latte could be to blame for those love handles. Whipped up with loads of sugar, the jolt you get from these babies is from syrup, not caffeine. Switching to a macchiato or cappuccino will save you about 60 calories a cup. For the real caffeine addicts, consider an Americano—a few shots of espresso and hot water. Other coffee commandments: sugar-free syrup will save you up to 50 calories a pump, and always skip the whipped cream (it adds 70 calories and 7 grams of fat).

Top 10 Health Tips of 2011

1. The faster you eat, the more weight you may gain
A Japanese study that followed more than 500 men over 8 years reported that faster eaters gained an average of 4.2 pounds during the study, while slow eaters gained only 1.5 pounds. It takes 20 minutes for your body to register how full you are. To slow yourself down, try sipping water between each bite of a meal.


2. Playing music keeps your mind sharp as you age
If you don’t want to constantly be searching for your lost keys through the years, it might be time to pick up a guitar—and the sooner you do it, the better for your noggin. A University of Kansas Medical Center study showed that people who had played music for more than a decade had the best memory and cognition. Because playing music has been shown to arouse so many different sections of the brain, practicing can have broad benefits to keep you sharp.


3. Cure those nagging pains with better posture
Here’s a simple trick for your brain the next time you go to the doctor for a routine—but painful—shot. Stand up straight and try to have a dominant pose, says a Journal of Experimental Social Psychology study. When taking dominant yoga poses over submissive ones, people could stand pain longer. By acting dominant, you’re likely releasing more testosterone to combat the pain you otherwise would feel.


4. Stay in touch with family to know if you should bump up a cancer screening
The American Cancer Society found that having a family member—even extended family—with cancer increased a person’s cancer risk substantially between the ages of 30 of 50, meaning that the colorectal cancer screening you thought you’d need at 50 might have to move up if your Uncle Ray recently was diagnosed.


5. Avoid health problems other than sore thumbs with video games
Those marathon gaming nights of Madden on PS3 aren’t bad for you just because you aren’t acquiring enough sleep. Prolonged sitting can cause deep-vein thrombosis—a blood clot in the lower limbs that can work its way up to the heart or lungs, triggering a heart attack. If you have to stay on the controller for several hours to crack a level or are simply stuck to your desk at work, make sure you take breaks each hour to keep your blood flowing.


6. Easy ways to avoid exercise-induced asthma
Not much is worse for an athlete than a good run or game of basketball taking a nosedive because your chest tightens up. Asthma is a disease caused by inflammation, and sadly many of us eat foods that help contribute to that inflammation. An Indiana University review found that certain foods, though, can increase or decrease your risk for an attack.


7. A simple way to cure your blues
If you’re bummed because of a recent layoff or you were dumped recently, hitting the gym for 30 to 45 minutes three to four times a week could really help your mental outlook. A University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center study found that 28 percent of depressed people eliminated their symptoms of depression when they worked out that much. The results were even better for men, and it was even more effective when they worked out longer.


8. Maybe you should avoid plastic altogether
If you always bring a sandwich to work in a plastic bag or drink from a plastic water bottle, listen up: Even BPA-free plastics can seep harmful chemicals like estrogen into your food or drink, according to a study in Environmental Health Perspectives. The best way to combat this is to use stainless-steel water bottles and glass containers.


9. Add some light to your (morning) life
If you’re always moving like a zombie after the alarm goes off in the morning, maybe you should be a reverse vampire and seek extra light before you awake. In a study, when sleepers were exposed to gradually intensifying light a half hour before the woke up, they felt more alert than sleepers who woke up to a sudden burst of light. We suggest you try a light-equipped alarm like the Verilux Rise & Shine Natural Wake-Up Light Clock.


10.  Kick diabetes with this drink that’s available everywhere
It’s more available than coffee or tea, and we don’t mean soda. Staying hydrated with 34 ounces of water a day made people in a 9-year French study 36 percent less likely to develop high blood sugar or diabetes. Why? If you’re dehydrated, your brain tells your liver to make more glucose for the body.

10 Lessons We Learned from Athletes in 2011

10 Lessons We Learned from Athletes in 2011 

Professional athletes don’t always make the best interviews. That’s less to do with their personalities and more the result of tight-lipped media training. But as futile as it can be to nab a good quote from sports stars, we accept their blank responses and one-word replies because it all adds to their mystique. Then, in the rare instances when athletes do open up and divulge their secrets, we pay extra attention to what they have to say.
Men’s Health had the good fortune this year of interviewing dozens of the biggest names in the world of sports, from clutch NFL quarterbacks to UFC champs to grizzled NHL vets. As part of our continuing year-end coverage, we chose the best quotes from these athletes—the words that, because they come from the mouths of our battle-tested heroes, provide an extra dose of inspiration in the times we need it most.


10. “Personally, adversity makes me hungrier. I thrive on being able to make a way out of no way, and I just feed it all to my teammates to get them to believe the same thing. Adverse situations really bring out the best players.”—NFL All-Pro running back Adrian Peterson, who knew a thing or two about adversity this year: His Minnesota Vikings team will finish the 2011 season with one of the worst records in the NFL.


9. ”Why focus on the negative when I can use this situation to go out there and help the world? I’m going to be able to raise a lot of awareness and a lot of money for charity, and it keeps me going, knowing I’m running for something much bigger than myself.”—Former professional soccer player (and Survivor winner) Ethan Zohn, who ran the New York City Marathon earlier this fall shortly after receiving news of a cancer relapse. Zohn is donating the money he raised from the marathon to Grassroot Soccer, which trains soccer stars to educate African youth about how to avoid HIV.


8. “I have to get the most out of my days, so how do I do that? Maybe that means not staying up as late at night, and knowing that you have to work hard during the day. As long as you can be really efficient, you’ll also make time for fun.”—NBA star Kris Humphries, on the struggle of balancing work (the free agent spent 2011 with the New Jersey Nets, in addition to owning and operating several Five Guys franchises) with play (his marriage to starlet Kim Kardashian lasted a brisk 72 days).


7. “If you feel good with what you’re wearing, it’s going to make you feel good about yourself. And when you know you look good, you’re always going to walk around with your head higher.”—Rickie Fowler, the flashy pro golfer who sports blindingly bright neon shirts, fitted flat-brimmed caps turned backwards, and zigzagged shoes to exude confidence on the green.


6. “When you’re doing something for a higher purpose, you can always do more than you think. A lot of it is mental. You can’t let the mind tell the body what it can’t do.”—Former NHL star Pat LaFontaine, who scored more than 1,000 points in a hall-of-fame career with the Islanders, Sabres, and Rangers. In September, LaFontaine and fellow vet Steve Webb completed a 500-mile charity bike ride from the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto to the NHL store in New York City in just 48 hours.


5. “That’s basically what you need to do—whether it’s a small or big mistake like this, you need to learn from it, put it in the past as fast as you can, and move forward in a better fashion.”—Oakland Athletics slugger Coco Crisp, who was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence in March during spring training. Crisp came back strong after the incident, playing in his most games since 2007 and swiping a career-high 49 stolen bases.


4. “A lot of people, once they feel uncomfortable, will simply stop whatever they’re doing. But I believe in order to succeed at anything, you need to be comfortable being uncomfortable.”—UFC light heavyweight champion Jon “Bones” Jones, who had an electrifying 2011 in the Octagon. Jones defeated his opponents in four title matches this year thanks to intense physical and mental preparation.


3. “A lot gets thrown at athletes these days, and everyone is trying to pull you one way or the other. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that the most important thing is to take care of—and to be true to—yourself.”—America’s biggest soccer star, Landon Donovan, who capped 2011 by winning his second MLS cup with the Los Angeles Galaxy. Donovan admitted that the money he’s made from soccer is secondary to the joy he gets from playing the game.


2.“But I realize that this is a different world. Everything I did in the past and things I’ve been involved in, I realize that they don’t exist if I don’t allow them to exist. So we have to try new things in this world, and we have to go forward and leave that old stuff in the past.” —Boxing legend (and budding movie star) Mike Tyson, who doesn’t dwell on his troubled past, especially incidents like biting off his rival Evander Holyfield’s ear in the ring and spending three years in prison on rape charges.


1. “The danger is not to set your goal too high and fail to reach it. It’s to set your goal too low and reach it.”—UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre, whose Zen-like mantras, intense training strategies, and methodical fighting style earned him widespread acclaim (and the MH March cover) in 2011.


Source menshelath.com

Make the Very Best Purchase

Two guys walk into an electronics store. One has already spent hours researching prices, features, and warranties, and will visit three more locations before buying a TV. The other finds a set that will fit in his living room and within his budget, whips out his credit card, and takes it home. Which one ends up second-guessing his decision?

According to a new study in Personality and Individual Differences, it’s the first guy—the “maximizer,” who obsesses over making the best possible choice. The second guy, known as a “satisficer” because he chooses the first option that satisfies his needs, ends up happier in the long run.

Here’s the bottom line: When you fully commit to a decision, whether it’s about a TV or a woman, you unconsciously start rearranging your thoughts and preferences to reinforce your choice. Other alternatives begin to look less attractive. You end up satisfied and confident you made the right call.

Satisficers get this ball rolling as soon as they make up their minds. Maximizers, on the other hand, waffle. “It is difficult, if not impossible, for maximizers to know that the choice they made was the right one; as such, it is difficult for them to fully commit to that choice,” says study author Joyce Ehrlinger, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Florida State University. And the reservation to commit robs them of the psychological processes that leave people satisfied, Ehrlinger says.

.Watch for signs that you’re obsessing about making the right choice, and remind yourself that going with your gut can leave you more satisfied. Try to frame decisions as the search for something great instead of a quest for perfection. And, if you can, limit the number of options you have to begin with—some experts think having too many alternatives brings out our maximizing tendencies, Ehrlinger says.

Source menshealth.com

The Best Music of 2011

      The Best Music Albums of 2011 

1) Adele, “21″

2) Rihanna, “Talk that Talk”

3) Shelby Lynne, “Revelation Road”

4) The Strokes, “Angles”

5) Coldplay, “Mylo Xyloto”

6) Kanye West and Jay-Z, “Watch the Throne”

7) Drake, “Take Care”

8 ) Various Artists, “Rio: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack”

9) Foo Fighters, “Wasting Light”

10) The Civil Wars, “Barton Hollow”

*Click on photos for further album information 

20 Kids Teriffied Of Santa!

20 Kids Teriffied Of Santa!

The Thing

The Thing

Genre:Horror,Mystery,Sci-fi

Synopsis(English)

At an Antarctica research site, the discovery of an alien craft leads to a confrontation between graduate student Kate Lloyd and scientist Dr. Sander Halvorson. While Dr. Halvorson keeps to his research, Kate partners with Sam Carter, a helicopter pilot, to pursue the alien life form.

Υποθεση

H παλαιοντολόγος Δρ. Κέιτ Λόιντ (Μέρι Ελίζαμπεθ Γουίνστεντ) φτάνει στην Ανταρκτική για να συναντήσει μία ομάδα Νορβηγών επιστημόνων, που ανακάλυψαν θαμένο στον πάγο έναν εξωγήινο οργανισμό. Μετά από ένα απλό πείραμα όμως, το αγνώστου προελεύσεως ον 'ξυπνάει' και στρέφεται ενάντια σε ό,τι συναντάει, με μία μοναδική ιδιότητα: να μετατρέπεται σε πιστό αντίγραφο κάθε ζωντανού οργανισμού. Η Κέιτ θα πρέπει να ενώσει τις δυνάμεις της με τον πιλότο Κάρτερ (Τζόελ Έτζερτον) και τον φίλο του Τζέιμσον (Άντεγουεϊλ Ακινουόγε-Αγκμπάζε) για να αποτρέψουν την καταστροφική πορεία του μυστηριώδους οργανισμού που καταφέρνει να στρέψει τον άνθρωπο ενάντια στον άνθρωπο. Το πρίκουελ της κλασικής ταινίας τρόμου του Τζον Κάρπεντερ 'The Thing', μέσα από τη ματιά του πολλά υποσχόμενου νεαρού σκηνοθέτη Μάτις Βαν Χέινινγκεν και με την εγγυημένη υπογραφή των παραγωγών του φιλμ 'Dawn of the Dead'.

View Trailer Here

Official Film Site Here

Twitter History-Interesting Info

Twitter History-Interesting Info

Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets". It was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 300 million users as of 2011,generating over 300 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. It has been described as "the SMS of the Internet."

Creation

Twitter's origins lie in a "daylong brainstorming session" held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Dorsey introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group. The original project code name for the service was twttr, an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass, inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes. The developers initially considered "10958" as a short code, but later changed it to "40404" for "ease of use and memorability." Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9:50 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST): "just setting up my twitter".

"...we came across the word 'twitter', and it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' and 'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was." – Jack Dorsey

The first Twitter prototype was used as an internal service for Odeo employees and the full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006.In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo and all of its assets–including Odeo.com and Twitter.com–from the investors and shareholders.Williams fired Glass who was silent about his part in Twitter's startup until 2011.Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007.

Reaction

The tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000. "The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages," remarked Newsweek's Steven Levy. "Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it."Reaction at the festival was highly positive. Blogger Scott Beale said that Twitter "absolutely rul[ed]" SXSW. Social software researcher Danah Boyd said Twitter "own[ed]" the festival. Twitter staff received the festival's Web Award prize with the remark "we'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!"

Previous Twitter logo, used until September 14, 2010.

The first unassisted off-Earth Twitter message was posted from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut T. J. Creamer on January 22, 2010. By late November 2010, an average of a dozen updates per day were posted on the astronauts' communal account, @NASA_Astronauts. NASA has also hosted over 25 "tweetups", events that provide guests with VIP access to NASA facilities and speakers with the goal of leveraging participants' social networks to further the outreach goals of NASA.

In August 2010, the company appointed Adam Bain as President of Revenue from News Corp.'s Fox Audience Network.

On September 14, 2010, Twitter launched a redesigned site including a new logo.[citation needed]

Leadership

As chief executive officer, Dorsey saw the startup through two rounds of capital funding by the venture capitalists who backed the company.

On October 16, 2008, Williams took over the role of CEO, and Dorsey became chairman of the board.

On October 4, 2010, Williams announced that he was stepping down as CEO. Dick Costolo, formerly Twitter's chief operating officer, became CEO. According to a Twitter blog, dated October 4, 2010, Williams was to stay[dated info] with the company and "be completely focused on product strategy."

According to The New York Times, "Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Costolo forged a close relationship" when Williams was away.According to PC Magazine, Williams was "no longer involved in the day-to-day goings on at the company". He is focused on developing a new startup, but he became a member of Twitter's board of directors, and promised to "help in any way I can". Stone is still with Twitter but is working with AOL as an "advisor on volunteer efforts and philanthropy".

Dorsey rejoined Twitter in March 2011, as executive chairman focusing on product development. His time is split with Square where he is CEO, and whose offices are within walking distance of Twitter's in San Francisco.

In September 2011, Board Members and investors Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet resigned from Twitter's Board of Directors.

Growth

The company experienced rapid growth. It had 400,000 tweets posted per quarter in 2007. This grew to 100 million tweets posted per quarter in 2008. In February 2010, Twitter users were sending 50 million tweets per day. By March 2010, the company recorded over 70,000 registered applications. As of June 2010, about 65 million tweets were posted each day, equaling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter. As noted on Compete.com, Twitter moved up to the third-highest-ranking social networking site in January 2009 from its previous rank of twenty-second.

Twitter's usage spikes during prominent events. For example, a record was set during the 2010 FIFA World Cup when fans wrote 2,940 tweets per second in the thirty-second period after Japan scored against Cameroon on June 14, 2010. The record was broken again when 3,085 tweets per second were posted after the Los Angeles Lakers' victory in the 2010 NBA Finals on June 17, 2010, and then again at the close of Japan's victory over Denmark in the World Cup when users published 3,283 tweets per second. The current record was set during the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Final between Japan and the United States, when 7,196 tweets per second were published.When American singer Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, Twitter servers crashed after users were updating their status to include the words "Michael Jackson" at a rate of 100,000 tweets per hour.

Twitter acquired application developer Atebits on April 11, 2010. Atebits had developed the Apple Design Award-winning Twitter client Tweetie for the Mac and iPhone. The application, now called "Twitter" and distributed free of charge, is the official Twitter client for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.

From September through October 2010, the company began rolling out "New Twitter", an entirely revamped edition of twitter.com. Changes included the ability to see pictures and videos without leaving Twitter itself by clicking on individual tweets which contain links to images and clips from a variety of supported websites including YouTube, Flickr, as well as a complete overhaul of the interface, which shifted links such as '@mentions' and 'Retweets' above the Twitter stream, while 'Messages and 'Log Out' became accessible via a black bar at the very top of twitter.com. As of November 1, 2010, the company confirmed that the "New Twitter experience" had been rolled out to all users.

On April 5, 2011, Twitter tested a new homepage, as well as phased out the "Old Twitter." However, a glitch came about after the page was launched, so the previous "retro" homepage was still in use until the issues were resolved; the new homepage was reintroduced on April 20.

On December 8, 2011, Twitter overhauled its website once more to feature the "Fly" design, which the service says is easier for new users to follow and promotes advertising. In addition to the Home button, the Connect and Discover buttons were introduced along with a redesigned profile and timeline of Tweets. The site's layout has been compared to that of Facebook.

Features

Tweets are publicly visible by default; however, senders can restrict message delivery to just their followers. Users can tweet via the Twitter website, compatible external applications (such as for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries. While the service is free, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

Users may subscribe to other users' tweets – this is known as following and subscribers are known as followers or tweeps (Twitter + peeps). The users can also check the people who are un-subscribing them on Twitter better known as unfollowing via various services.

Twitter allows users the ability to update their profile by using their mobile phone either by text messaging or by apps released for certain smartphones / tablets.

In a 2009 Time essay, technology author Steven Johnson described the basic mechanics of Twitter as "remarkably simple":

As a social network, Twitter revolves around the principle of followers. When you choose to follow another Twitter user, that user's tweets appear in reverse chronological order on your main Twitter page. If you follow 20 people, you'll see a mix of tweets scrolling down the page: breakfast-cereal updates, interesting new links, music recommendations, even musings on the future of education.

In June 2008, Twitter launched a verification program, allowing celebrities to get their accounts verified.Originally intended to help users verify which celebrity accounts were created by the celebrities themselves (and therefore are not fake), they have since been used to verify accounts of businesses and accounts for public figures who may not actually tweet but still wish to maintain control over the account that bears their name - for example, the Dalai Lama. Verified accounts can be identified by a white check in a blue background, known as a verification badge, next to the user's full name, on the profile itself or next to the name in search results.

Messages

Users can group posts together by topic or type by use of hashtags – words or phrases prefixed with a "#" sign. Similarly, the "@" sign followed by a username is used for mentioning or replying to other users. To repost a message from another Twitter user, and share it with one's own followers, the retweet function is symbolized by "RT" in the message.

In late 2009, the "Twitter Lists" feature was added, making it possible for users to follow (as well as mention and reply to) ad-hoc lists of authors instead of individual authors.

Through SMS, users can communicate with Twitter through five gateway numbers: short codes for the United States, Canada, India, New Zealand, and an Isle of Man-based number for international use. There is also a short code in the United Kingdom which is only accessible to those on the Vodafone, O2 and Orange networks. In India, since Twitter only supports tweets from Bharti Airtel,an alternative platform called smsTweet was set up by a user to work on all networks. A similar platform called GladlyCast exists for mobile phone users in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The messages were initially set to 140-character limit for compatibility with SMS messaging, introducing the shorthand notation and slang commonly used in SMS messages. The 140-character limit has also increased the usage of URL shortening services such as bit.ly, goo.gl, and tr.im, and content-hosting services, such as Twitpic, memozu.com and NotePub to accommodate multimedia content and text longer than 140 characters. Twitter uses its own t.co domain for automatic shortening of all URLs posted on its website.

Tweet contents

Content of Tweets according to Pear Analytics.

  News

  Spam

  Self-promotion

  Pointless babble

  Conversational

  Pass-along value

San Antonio-based market-research firm Pear Analytics analyzed 2,000 tweets (originating from the US and in English) over a two-week period in August 2009 from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM (CST) and separated them into six categories:

Pointless babble – 40%

Conversational – 38%

Pass-along value – 9%

Self-promotion – 6%

Spam – 4%

News – 4%

Social networking researcher Danah Boyd responded to the Pear Analytics survey by arguing that what the Pear researchers labelled "pointless babble" is better characterized as "social grooming" and/or "peripheral awareness" (which she explains as persons "want[ing] to know what the people around them are thinking and doing and feeling, even when co-presence isn’t viable").

Rankings

Twitter is ranked as one of the ten-most-visited websites worldwide by Alexa's web traffic analysis.Daily user estimates vary as the company does not publish statistics on active accounts. A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network based on their count of 6 million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits. In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing website in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had annual growth of 1,382 percent, increasing from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009. It was followed by Zimbio with a 240 percent increase, and Facebook with a 228 percent increase. Twitter has a user retention rate of forty percent.

Adding and following content

There are numerous tools for adding content, monitoring content and conversations including Twitvid (video sharing),Tweetdeck, Salesforce.com, HootSuite, and Twitterfeed. Less than half of tweets are posted using the web user interface with most users using third-party applications (based on analysis of 500 million tweets by Sysomos).

Trends

A word, phrase or topic that is tagged at a greater rate than other tags is said to be a trending topic. Trending topics become popular either through a concerted effort by users or because of an event that prompts people to talk about one specific topic.These topics help Twitter and their users to understand what is happening in the world.

Twitter's 30 March 2010 blog post announced that the hottest Twitter trending topics will scroll across the Twitter homepage. Users will also be able to find out why a specific topic got to be a trending topic.

There have been controversy surrounding the Twitter trending topics: Twitter censored hashtags that their users found offensive. Twitter censored the #Thatsafrican and the #thingsdarkiessay hashtags after users complained that they found the hashtags offensive.

Authentication

As of August 31, 2010, third-party Twitter applications are required to use OAuth, an authentication method that does not require users to enter their password into the authenticating application. Previously, the OAuth authentication method was optional, it is now compulsory and the user-name/password authentication method has been made redundant and is no longer functional. Twitter stated that the move to OAuth will mean "increased security and a better experience."

Demographich

Twitter is mainly used by older adults who might not have used other social sites before Twitter, said Jeremiah Owyang, an industry analyst studying social media. "Adults are just catching up to what teens have been doing for years," he said.According to comScore only eleven percent of Twitter's users are aged twelve to seventeen.comScore attributes this to Twitter's "early adopter period" when the social network first gained popularity in business settings and news outlets attracting primarily older users. However, comScore as of late, has stated that Twitter has begun to "filter more into the mainstream", and "along with it came a culture of celebrity as Shaq, Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher joined the ranks of the Twitterati."

According to a study by Sysomos in June 2009, women make up a slightly larger Twitter demographic than men — fifty-three percent over forty-seven percent. It also stated that five percent of users accounted for seventy-five percent of all activity, and that New York has the most Twitter users.

According to Quancast, twenty-seven million people in the US used Twitter as of September 3, 2009. Sixty-three percent of Twitter users are less than thirty-five years old; sixty percent of Twitter users are Caucasian, but a higher than average (compared to other Internet properties) are African American (sixteen percent) and Hispanic (eleven percent); fifty-eight percent of Twitter users have a total household income of at least $60,000.

On September 7, 2011, Twitter announced that it has 100 million active users logging in at least once a month and 50 million active users every day.

Technology

Implementation

The Twitter Web interface uses the Ruby on Rails framework,[99] deployed on a performance enhanced Ruby Enterprise Edition implementation of Ruby.

As of April 6, 2011, Twitter engineers confirmed they had switched away from their Ruby on Rails search-stack, to a Java server they call Blender.

From the spring of 2007 until 2008 the messages were handled by a Ruby persistent queue server called Starling, but since 2009 implementation has been gradually replaced with software written in Scala. The service's application programming interface (API) allows other web services and applications to integrate with Twitter.

Interface

On April 30, 2009, Twitter adjusted its web interface, adding a search bar and a sidebar of "trending topics" — the most common phrases appearing in messages. Biz Stone explains that all messages are instantly indexed and that "with this newly launched feature, Twitter has become something unexpectedly important — a discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now."

Open source

Twitter released several open source projects developed while overcoming technical challenges of their service.[145] Notable projects are the Gizzard Scala framework for creating distributed datastores and the distributed graph database FlockDB.

URL shortener

t.co is a URL shortening service created by Twitter. It is only available for links posted to Twitter and not available for general use. Eventually all links posted to Twitter will use a t.co wrapper.Twitter hopes that the service will be able to protect users from malicious sites,and will use it to track clicks on links within tweets.

Having previously used the services of third parties TinyURL and bit.ly, Twitter began experimenting with its own URL shortening service for direct messages in March 2010 using the twt.tl domain, before it purchased the t.co domain. The service was tested on the main site using the accounts @TwitterAPI, @rsarver and @raffi. On September 2, 2010, an email from Twitter to users said they would be expanding the roll-out of the service to users. On June 7, 2011, Twitter announced that it was rolling out the feature.

Integrated photo-sharing service

On June 1, 2011, Twitter announced its own integrated photo-sharing service that enables users to upload a photo and attach it to a Tweet right from Twitter.com. Users now also have the ability to add pictures to Twitter's search by adding hashtags to the tweet. Twitter also plans to provide photo galleries designed to gather and syndicate all photos that a user has uploaded on Twitter and third-party services such as TwitPic.

Decentralized architecture

The traditional centralized client-server architecture has not scaled with user demand, leading to server overload and significant loss of availability. There is some decentralized architecture to enhance the scalability of Twitter including Fethr and Cuckoo.Fethr adopts a fully decentralized scheme, which connects micropublishers in a single global network. Users contact each other directly via HTTP, and gossip is utilized for data delivery among the subscribers. Cuckoo utilizes a peer-assisted architecture to offload the processing and bandwidth costs from the server site. Cuckoo classifies the microblogging users into two categories, i.e., social network users and news media users. For a social network user who has few followers, it delivers its new tweets directly to its followers in a unicast fashion. For a new media user who has a significant number of followers, it utilizes gossip for tweets delivery, i.e., enabling its follows to share new tweets with each other. At the same time, server cloud is kept for ensuring the high data availability and data consistency.

Use and social impact

Dorsey  said after a Twitter Town Hall held in July 2011, that Twitter received over 110,000 #AskObama tweets.

Main article: Twitter usage

See also: Censorship of Twitter

Twitter has been used for a variety of purposes in many different industries and scenarios. For example, it has been used to organize protests, sometimes referred to as "Twitter Revolutions" and which include the 2011 Egyptian revolution, 2010–2011 Tunisian protests, 2009–2010 Iranian election protests, and 2009 Moldova civil unrest. The governments of Iran and Egypt blocked the service in retaliation. The service is also used as a form of civil disobedience: in 2010, users expressed outrage over the Twitter Joke Trial by making obvious jokes about terrorism; and in the British privacy injunction debate in the same country a year later, where several celebrities that had taken out anonymised injunctions, most notably the Manchester United player Ryan Giggs, were identified by thousands of users in protest to traditional journalism being censored.

Twitter is also increasingly used for making TV more interactive and social. This effect is sometimes referred to as the "virtual watercooler" or social television. Twitter has been used successfully to encourage people to watch live TV events, such as the Oscars, the Super Bowl and the MTV Video Music Awards; this strategy has however proven less effective with regularly scheduled TV shows.Such direct cross-promotions have been banned from French television due to regulations against secret advertising.

In May 2008, The Wall Street Journal wrote that social networking services such as Twitter "elicit mixed feelings in the technology-savvy people who have been their early adopters. Fans say they are a good way to keep in touch with busy friends. But some users are starting to feel 'too' connected, as they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher cellphone bills and the need to tell acquaintances to stop announcing what they're having for dinner."

Tech writer Bruce Sterling opined in 2007 that using Twitter for "literate communication" is "about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite the Iliad". In September 2008, the journalist Clive Thompson mused in a The New York Times Magazine editorial that the service had expanded narcissism into "a new, supermetabolic extreme—the ultimate expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world." Conversely, Vancouver Sun columnist Steve Dotto opined that part of Twitter's appeal is the challenge of trying to publish such messages in tight constraints, and Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School, said that "the qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful".

In 2009, Nielsen Online reported that Twitter has a user retention rate of forty percent. Many people stop using the service after a month, therefore the site may potentially reach only about ten percent of all Internet users. In 2009, Twitter won the "Breakout of the Year" Webby Award. During a February 2009 discussion on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, the journalist Daniel Schorr stated that Twitter accounts of events lacked rigorous fact-checking and other editorial improvements. In response, Andy Carvin gave Schorr two examples of breaking news stories that played out on Twitter and said users wanted first-hand accounts and sometimes debunked stories. Time magazine acknowledged growing level of influence in its 2010 Time 100; to determine the influence of people, it used a formula based on famous social networking sites, Twitter and Facebook. The list ranges from Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey to Lady Gaga and Ashton Kutcher.

After claims in the media that the hashtags #wikileaks and #occupywallstreet were being censored because they did not show up on the site's list of trending topics, Twitter responded by stating that it does not censor hashtags unless they contain obscenities.

Reception

In 2006, when Twitter launched under the name "Twttr", Michael Arrington of TechCrunch commented that although he liked the service, he also noted that he felt uncomfortable with the fact that every user's Twitter page is available to the public.

Change of focus

The mobile version of twitter.com

Twitter emphasized its news and information-network strategy in November 2009 by changing the question asked to users for status updates from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?" Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "Limiting yourself to 140 characters—the maximum for messages on this diabolically addictive social-networking tool—is easy."

On November 22, 2010, Biz Stone, a cofounder of the company, expressed for the first time the idea of a Twitter news network, a concept of wire-like news service he has been working on for years.

Click on the photo

Think before you "Like" on Facebook

The founder and president of New York City's Pace Public Relations is a successful and sober-minded individual, but when it comes to this one thing, she has a definite compulsion. It's the "Like" button on Facebook -- she just can't stop clicking it."I'm totally obsessed with it," says the 31 year old. "Just like a lot of people I know. My friends and I call it 'Like-Bombing', where you go online and like everything."So it's a good thing for serial "Likers" like Scranton that there are more and more rewards for consumers who click that button.Hotel chain Marriott, for instance, is currently offering prizes totaling 10 million reward points for those who Like its Facebook pages, including two grand prizes of a million points each.Think of it as a social-media arms race among corporations, to see which can amass the greatest number of online followers."It's become a real competition between companies to grow the size of that number, and to have more fans than your rivals," says Matt Simpson, marketing director for Phoenix-based Bulbstorm, which develops social-media apps for companies such as NBC and World Wrestling Entertainment."Over the last year, we've been seeing more and more of it, and it's been driven largely by promotional applications like sweepstakes."

PROMOTIONS AND LIST BUILDING

If you "Liked" Toys 'R Us before Thanksgiving, for instance, you got a shot at a limo ride, a $1,000 shopping spree, and exclusive store access before its doors opened for Black Friday sales.Travel site Expedia, meanwhile, hosted a 'FriendTrips' sweepstakes for those who Liked its Facebook page, offering voyages to one of 13 different destinations.As a result, in the third quarter of this year, an average of 100 million "Like" buttons were being clicked on Facebook every day. That's double the amount of liking going on, compared with the same period last year.Corporations are doing this for a reason, of course. They're building marketing lists, they're aiming to boost sales, and they're planting themselves in users' news feeds.When Coca-Cola has more than 36 million Likes, and Disney has more than 29 million, they've assembled a ready-made audience that can be tapped at any time.And here's a little secret: While companies are certainly happy to have you as a fan, what they're really interested in isn't you; it's your friends.Because if you officially Like Starbucks, your friends see that you've liked Starbucks, and they become more likely to spend there as well."Friends of fans represent a much larger set of consumers than the brand's own fans," says Elisabeth Diana, Facebook's manager of corporate communications. "In fact they're 81 times the size of the actual fan base, so Likes are a way to reach those people as well."The promotional pushes seem to be paying off.Expedia's FriendTrips campaign, for instance, garnered 900,000 new Likes for the company. And while Marriott's contest is ongoing until the end of the year, its new Marriott Rewards Facebook page has already gone from zero to more than 170,000 Likes."We've surpassed all other hotel rewards programs in under three weeks," says Michelle Lapierre, Marriott's senior director of customer relationship marketing, taking a slap at rivals Hilton, Starwood and Hyatt.