According to our sources at Citysearch , Twitter is opening a new Sign-Up API. Citysearch wrote us to say that the API will "allow local businesses to integrate their existing Twitter presence or create a new account directly from the Citysearch business profile and tweet from their Citysearch profile page." How does this new API relate to Twitter's OAuth feature? What can a Sign-Up API do that OAuth doesn't? Also, how did Citysearch get wind of this development before a general announcement was made? Sponsor We were able to confirm that the API is, in fact, different from Twitter's OAuth feature. Citysearch rep Brandi Willard told us this evening that Twitter has not yet made a public announcement about the API. "We're the first company to implement it," she said. Willard continued, "There are a lot of options for the type of content you can show with Twitter integration. It's pretty much the same functionality [as OAuth, but you can also sign up." "We've been talking to them for a while about integrating Citysearch with Twitter, and they were looking to bring on more smalll businesses. It just made sense." So Twitter is dipping into Citysearch's trove of small, local businesses - and potential Twitter users - for the maiden voyage of its latest API. This makes sense in light of Twitter's recent integration of geolocation information with some tweets, and it also makes sense from a monetization standpoint. Companies in the small, local business space could benefit a lot from sign-up and geolocation APIs, and many of these companies are already devoting significant chunks of marketing budgets to the online and interactive advertising. Twitter is definitely a hot commodity for small businesses that can figure out how to use it, but we're still unclear on exactly how the new API will work. Here's what the sign-up looks like on Citysearch, and what the Twitter data will bring to a business' Citysearch page: We will bring you more news and technical details about the Sign-Up API in the morning, when we'll interview more Citysearch execs and quiz them to our heart's content. In the mean time, the folks at Citysearch are happy to have another avenue to integrate Twitter data. "We really value having all the right content on our site to allow consumers to make an educated decision,' said Willard. "We see social media as a big part of that, whether the content is generated on our site or elsewhere. The more businesses that sign up for Twitter, the more content we'll have on our site." We applaud Citysearch's new semantic, synaptic direction in aggregating content, and we look forward to learning all about how their new sign-ups will work tomorrow morning. Stay tuned! Discuss

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Twitter Rolls Out New Sign-Up API, Citysearch First to Implement [SCREENSHOTS]

Favrd , a site which aggregated the most popular starred tweets, has closed down. The site was a favorite of Twitter humorists, people who use Twitter mainly to express their wit. Favrd was the first of its kind to repurpose Twitter favorites (stars) into an aggregation site, where users could see who had "faved" their tweets, view tweets with 3 or more faves as a real-time feed, and check the most faved tweets in a 24-hour period on the Leaderboard. It was kind of like the Techmeme of funny tweets. Sponsor A similar site called Favstar launched in mid-09 ( our review ) and it appears to have taken the momentum from Favrd. Favrd was the original though, so it's disappointing to see it throw in the towel. Most people think of stars as a way to keep a personal library of favorites. But according to a regular Favrd user we spoke to, "Favrds" (people who used Favrd frequently) throw them like confetti and rarely look back at their own stream of favorites. Favrd was also different from Favstar because it only counted faves of people who were registered - although you could fave anyone. For a good overview of why many Twitter humorists liked Favrd, read this post by popular witterer Joe Schmitt ( @joeschmitt ). The site's creator, Dean Cameron Allen a.k.a. @textism , left the following suicide note for Favrd. You can tweet your condolences using this hashtag: #thankyoutextism . "Alas, stars on Twitter have become mere take-out menus hung on the doors of other restaurants. There are still lots of clever and funny things to read every day, but finding these is no longer a challenge - you already follow your sources. Sites like this one now serve mainly as fuel for emotional up-fuckedness in the guise of a game. Just an idea: next time you see something you like, write the person who made it a note telling them so. Even better, explain why. Take care! - dca" Discuss

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Favrd Shuts Down - Not Twitter's Last Laugh (Thank you, Textism)

Tomorrow morning, teams from all across the United States will try to find 10 red balloons. The federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans to moor 10 red weather balloons at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States, and whoever sends in the GPS coordinates of all the balloons first will win $40,000. With this event - called the

There's a new iPhone application from Favstar.fm which launched late last night in the iTunes App Store. Like the Favstar website, the new Favit app (iTunes link) aggregates the "best" Twitter posts based on the number of stars they receive from other Twitter users. Although in theory starred tweets should point to interesting and useful content that people want to save for later viewing, the Favstar service tends to favor humorous tweets instead. The new iPhone app does the same which makes it the perfect addition to your collection of time-wasting apps for curing boredom. Sponsor Nearly all iPhone users have at least one if not more applications whose sole purpose is to help kill time. Whether you're sitting in a a waiting room or standing in a long line, these apps are lifesavers for those of us who are so digitally connected that a few minutes of boredom feels like a death sentence. For many people, these apps include casual games. But outside of that genre, there are plenty of other apps for quick-fire entertainment meant to be consumed in small doses. For example, FML (iTunes link) is a personal favorite. This app lets you read through people's posts of their unfortunate, embarrassing, and downright hilarious personal stories. Trivia-based Cool Facts (iTunes link) is another. (And yes, both were discovered thanks to a high-school aged family member. Don't judge!) The new Favit application fits right into this category of casual, entertainment apps. Using Favit With a very simple interface, Favit displays one Twitter post at a time on the screen. After reading the tweet, you can flip to see the next one using a finger swipe. If you see a tweet you want to star yourself, just tap the giant star button beneath the tweet. You can also swipe down on the tweet for more interactions. Doing so reveals the author and then lets you re-tweet their post or email it to someone. In addition, clicking on the "+" (plus) sign lets you add the author to a special Favstar.fm list which is synchronized with your saved lists on Twitter. This allows you to build your own personalized list of favorite twitterers, accessible from Twitter.com or any other Twitter client supporting lists. What's Missing Although the iTunes app description notes that Favit has a celeb and tech filter built in, we couldn't find these settings in the application itself. However, you can follow these pre-filtered lists via the Favstar website's Leaderboard section. We hope this feature is coming to the application in an update because it would be great to be able to switch from the funny and entertaining tweets over to the tweets from tech and social media set and then over to celebs, depending on whatever interests you at the time. Another missing feature from the application is one of our favorite features from the Favstar website - the ability to see who has been favoriting your tweets. The Favit app could offer a quick and easy way to track those people and then add them to a list or follow them, but sadly it does not. Still, that's hardly a deal-breaker since Favstar offers RSS feeds for this purpose via their website . Besides, it's clear the app is meant to be more of a fun toy for casual users rather than a handy utility meant for data-obsessed folks like us. If you want to check out the new Favit application (iTunes link), you'll have to fork out a little cash. Favit, unlike similar time-wasters including the above-mentioned FML and Cool Facts, doesn't come in free and pro versions. Instead, it's one price only: $2.99. That may seem like a lot for an app just meant to amuse you, but the next time you're terribly bored, you'll be glad you downloaded it. Discuss

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Star That Tweet! Favit Launches in iTunes App Store

Twitter is testing out a new mobile interface at http://mobile.twitter.com the company announced just minutes ago and it really is a must-see. Beautiful design and some unique functionality are built on top of the company's own API. It's a relatively simple way to interact with Twitter but below are three key features that weren't available on Twitter's mobile interface before. Two features, lists and saved searches, are missing so far - and that's enough to be a deal-breaker for this reviewer. Sponsor View what you're replying to when you reply. The new reply view displays the tweet that's the subject of your reply below the message composition box. All Twitter apps should do this! Threaded DMs You can see the history of Direct Messages between you and any user whose profile page you're on. It's similar to how Tweetie 2 does it and it's pretty nice. Oddly, there's no way to view all your most recent DMs though. That's something that will probably be fixed soon. Mobile Fail Whale That's right - now you can get the beloved Fail Whale, Twitter's error message, on your phone. It's fun the first time. We'll see how it feels after repeated appearances. Two Missing Features and One Dream Unfulfilled There are no support for Twitter Lists in this interface. Twitter without groups of some kind is a cluttered mess if you have a lot of people you're following. This new interface is going to be best suited to people who make casual use of Twitter. There's no access to your saved searches , on of the nicest things about the web interface. There is access to trending topics, though. That's further evidence that this is intended to be a "fun" mobile interface. As such, it's great. Finally, there's no utilization of the new Geolocation API . It's been a week already and no one has changed our lives with this API yet! All in all, it's a great improvement to the mobile site - but it isn't going to replace the Tweetdeck or Tweetie iPhone apps on my phone. Discuss

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Twitter Takes Features (and the Fail Whale) Mobile

Some six months ago, we had a small conniption over an augmented reality application for Twitter on the iPhone. With the release of Twitter's geotagging API, however, users were bound to see more and better AR apps for the popular microblogging service. Twitter 360 has just come up on our radar, and it looks like a dream from the outset. But will its features live up to user expectations? Sponsor Back in the day, we wrote of TwittARound, "You can see live tweets around your location and you can even see how far away they are. To accomplish this, TwittARound uses a combination of the iPhone's compass and its accelerator-enabled GPS to determine the location of tweets and then layers those on top of a live video feed." Sadly, Apple wouldn't allow the app in the App Store and would only work on a jailbroken 3GS. How, then, does this new hotness compare? First, it's not a full-featured Twitter client. The team plans to add more features as time goes by, but with so little time between the official geotagging API's announcement and this application's debut, we're clearly looking at a case of "launch early, launch often." On startup, the app updates a user's location automatically, and it also allows for an "invisible mode" during which the user isn't discoverable through digital means. For users who have enabled the geotagging feature in Twitter, the app annotates tweets with location information. That users' friends can then see, via augmented reality, the location from where that user's last tweet was posted. The Latest Tweets mode shows the latest tweets of followed users and the location from where they were posted. When a tweet is selected, the users sees a blue arrow indicating the direction and distance to the location from where the tweet was posted. In Locate my Friends mode users can find their friends, again with a blue arrow showing the distance and direction to a friend's location. Moreover, Twitter 360 plays nicely with Google Maps: Currently, the app is available on 3GS devices only. And yes: It's made it to the App Store . Check out this nifty demo video, and let us know what you think in the comments: Discuss

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New Twitter AR App Powered by Geotagging API

After a long weekend, you may find you're all caught up on your favorite shows. If you're looking for a new source for entertainment, Berkeley-based community Redux is finally emerging from closed beta. ReadWriteWeb first covered Redux's Facebook and Twitter integration in early October . Since then the company has increased its member base, created some new tools and most importantly, built on the strength of its video. Sponsor Similar to Digg, Redux allows users to upload, share and vote on content across the network. Tools like its embeddable blogging widget and inline video comment threads encourage ongoing dialogue and engagement. The community's best content and dialogue has been its video, and TV mode is a way to celebrate that. Redux lets you stream videos continuously in full screen mode from your friends, networks, and favorite channels. Because the community pulls a live feed from your Twitter and Facebook networks, clips arrive as real-time suggestions from friends and community members. In the past ReadWriteWeb has looked to Redux as a great way to bypass Bit.ly's malware issues as the site offers a thumbnail preview prior to clicking on links. With TV Mode, users can bypass the act of clicking altogether and watch an unadulterated stream of real-time video. To register visit Redux . Discuss

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Redux Launches as Twitter's Real-Time Video Feed