twitsnaps

Archive for August, 2009

Yes, you heard it right! We are introducing a Happy Hour contest*. Users who share photographs on TwitSnaps during the Happy Hour, stand a chance of winning $US 50. The contest, however, would be open only to users who are participating from the US. We’ll be tracking your IP address to verify your location.

What you have to do- Share your original photographs on TwitSnaps during the Happy Hour. Remember to use the hashtag #TwitSnapsHH in the description to be eligible for the prize.

When does Happy Hour begin? Within a few days, we will let you know the exact date and time. A blog will be posted specifying the details. Keep tracking @TwitSnaps on Twitter to learn more about it.

How long will it last? Initially, we plan it to be a 7-day affair. Depending on the response we get, we may extend it further!

How does it work? From all the photographs uploaded during #TwitSnapsHH, we’d randomly select one photograph. The user who uploaded the selected photograph, automatically becomes the #TwitSnapsHH winner for the day. He or she will get US$ 50 from us.

The payment-  We will make the payment through Paypal. It goes without saying, you need to be a Paypal account holder to get the $US 50 prize from us.

What about other photosharing sites?

It’s a nice thought, isn’t it? Rewarding users for sharing photographs over Twitter. As far as the photosharing space is concerned, TwitSnaps has always proved to be the thought leader. Whether it be introducing innovative features or responding to user’s queries and feedback about our service.

With the announcement of #TwitSnapsHH, we have raised the bar now. There is every chance that other photosharing sites will introduce contests and reward plans of their own. At that point in time, they’d be tacitly acknowledging TwitSnaps as the real “Thought Leader”.

It’ll be a win-win situation for all our users. That’s exactly what we are aiming at- to ensure you have a rollicking time sharing your snaps..! Please be patient, as we decide on the date and time for the TwitSnaps Happy Hour contest. We’ll let you know soon.

*Terms and conditions apply

Wow! Bollywood actress Celina Jaitly is on Twitter.  We are sure all her fans would be delighted to interact with her. For us, it’s double the joy. She’s now a user of TwitSnaps too. Celina Jaitly, Miss India 2001, has starred in popular Hindi movies such as No Entry and Apna Sapna Money Money.

To follow her on Twitter, please click here. To view her photographs, visit her TwitSnaps profile. Thanks for joining TwitSnaps, Celina. Hope you enjoy sharing photographs with all your fans.

Another Bollywood star has joined TwitSnaps- Dino Morea. We are more than happy to have him on board The cool dude is a popular Indian actor who has delivered box office hits such as Raaz and Kandukondain Kandukondain. Dino’s fans are eagerly awaiting the release of his next two movies- Acid Factory and Pyar Impossible. Best of luck Dino, for the two movies.

On last count, Dino’s photographs on TwitSnaps had been viewed more than 2800 times. To view Dino Morea’s profile on TwitSnaps, click here. Gals, this is where you can follow him on Twitter- Dino Morea. Other celebs who are already on TwitSnaps include Gul Panag, Nikhil Chinapa, and Amanda Palmer. Yes, Channel V India also uses TwitSnaps

Yes, TwitSnaps.com got more than 1 million views within 97 days of its official launch. It’s been an amazing period of time for all the MapXL Inc (founding company) team members. This milestone serves as an additional motivation for all of us to help our project grow.

Gul Panag- First user on TwitSnaps to get 100,000 views

Bollywood actress Gul Panag became the first user on TwitSnaps to get more than 100,000 views. At the time of posting this blog post, Gul’s 75 snaps had amassed 102,162 views and the numbers are still rising! Congratulations Gul, we cherish and enjoy the photographs you share. To view Gul Panag’s snaps click here. To follow Gul Panag, you can visit her Twitter profile- @Gulpanag.

Couple of quick mentions

We choose this occasion to congratulate one of our loyal users for reaching a personal milestone. Erika Saunders, popularly known as @CV6MajDisaster on Twitter, has got more than 10,000 views for her beautiful snaps.  At last count, her 160 photos had fetched her 12,153 views. You can view her entire collection of photographs here.

Len Firewood was one of the early adopters of TwitSnaps. He suggested a few changes to the “Hall of Fame” feature we have on our site. The suggestions and feedback are much appreciated. Thank you Len, for putting in an effort to help us improve TwitSnaps.

What’s next?

10 million views for TwitSnaps in next 90 days? Yes, that’s what we are aiming at! We need more users, more snaps, to achieve this target. Join the family, you’ll enjoy the experience. TwitSnaps is one place on Twitter, where your voice is always heard. We love to interact with all our users. Post a comment and let us know what you think about TwitSnaps.

Some good news to share with all our users- TwitSnaps.com now supports OAuth. With the implementation of OAuth, it becomes more convenient for you to use TwitSnaps. You don’t have to worry about security issues anymore. Unlike Twitpic, which requires you to share your password details, TwitSnaps now allows you to use the application without sharing your Twitter credentials.

What is OAuth?

As per Apiwiki.Twitter.com, “OAuth is an authentication protocol that allows users to approve application to act on their behalf without sharing their password.” To learn more about OAuth, please click here.

Why we implemented OAuth?

We implemented OAuth because Twitter recommends it. Indeed, Twitter has already announced that at some point in time, deprecation of Basic Auth would take place. Also, some of our users wanted OAuth to be implemented on TwitSnaps.  These were two of the factors that led TwitSnaps to adopt OAuth.

But we haven’t completely done away with Basic Auth, as is visible on our site. We allow users a choice- you can  either log in using your Twitter credentials or use OAuth to activate your TwitSnaps account.

What about others?

Hopefully, other Twitter photoshare applications, such as Twitpic, would adopt OAuth too. It would help Twitter to grow into a more secure network.  Do tell us what you think about our OAuth initiative? We love to listen to your feedback and suggestions.

Wow! Amanda Palmer joined TwitSnaps. We welcome the lead singer of The Dresden Dolls into the TwitSnaps family. Within hours of uploading couple of photographs on the site, Amanda’s photos stormed into the TwitSnaps Hall of Fame! To view both the photographs that she shared, please click here.

Amanda is now in Russia. We wish her all the best for her trip. She’ll be performing in Russia for the first time. We are sure it would be a rocking experience for her! It’s #followfriday today, and TwitSnaps recommends Amanda Palmer. Do follow her.

Yes, you read it right! If Twitter is up and running, so is TwitSnaps. The denial-of-service attack on Twitter got all of us worried. Thousands of Twitter application developers may not be able to enjoy a good night’s sleep. Twitter’s API is still causing a few bouts of anxiety

We wondered how TwitSnaps would cope with this kind of an outage? The results have surprised and delighted us TwitSnaps continues to function properly. The only time when it didn’t was when Twitter itself was down Hence we say, “If Twitter is working fine, so is TwitSnaps”. Heck, even Amanda Palmer joined TwitSnaps! But more on that later

Credit really must go to the fine development team that has worked on this project. The team has been greatly responsible for ensuring the fine integration with Twitter. It may take Twitter some time more to fully recover from this attack. But we will be patient Twitter, and will do everything possible to help your users who want to continue sharing photographs and videos.

Are you facing any problems in sharing photographs and videos? Don’t worry, just use TwitSnaps.com. It works when Twitter works! You can also post your comments and let us know if you are facing problems in using other photoshare applications.

Twitter was down. Yes, it was really down. Next time you start doubting if Twitter is down or not, you can visit this site- Is twitter down? Or maybe, you could just check out status.twitter.com. Twitter had confirmed that they were facing a denial-of-service attack. Twitter search seemed to be working fine.

A number of “Twitter is down” tweets were pouring in. View this screenshot captured in real downtime of Twitter. Move the cursor over the snap- Screenshot. We found it a bit strange that Facebook was also struggling. But then, that has always been the case with Facebook?

So what were you doing when Twitter was “really down” ? How did life without Twitter feel like? Do let us know.