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Image source from wired.com.

Twitter is finally learning a lesson from Facebook: If you can’t buy it, build it. In the coming months, Twitter plans to update its mobile applications to introduce filters for photos that will allow people to share altered images on Twitter and bypass Instagram, the popular mobilecentric photo-sharing network, according to people who work at the company but asked not to be named as they are not allowed to discuss unannounced projects.

The filters on Instagram make photos look like they were shot with 1960s Kodachrome or with 1890s sepia tone film. Although adding photo filters to Twitter may seem like a trivial addition to a social network that processes nearly a billion 140-character missives every two days, it could prove to be an important part of the company’s business.

As most smartphones are now equipped with high-resolution cameras, photography and mobile devices go together like peas and carrots. Flickr, which was once the go-to photo-sharing site on the Web, has since seen an exodus of people who have opted for Facebook or Instagram. Twitter has proved to be very popular among advertisers who want to reach people on smartphones, where the company’s audience tends to flock.

Carolyn Penner, a Twitter spokeswomen, declined to comment. According to one Twitter employee, the company’s V.I.T.’s, or Very Important Tweeters, as they are known internally, usually celebrities and media personalities, would be especially happy to see filters in the Twitter mobile apps. Most V.I.T.’s now use Instagram to take photos, and then share them on Twitter, where they often have a larger following.

Although Twitter considered a photocentric product acquisition for some time, the move to build its own filters was hastened after Facebook said it would buy Instagram for $1 billion. (The deal ended up closing at $715 million after Facebook’s precipitous stock drop.)

After the Instagram acquisition was announced, Twitter executives explored buying a competing photo service or application. Jack Dorsey, the company’s co-founder and executive chairman, and Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive, both led the search, people close to the executives said. After meeting with and appraising some companies, Twitter’s executives decided the price tags were not worth the goods, and decided the company could build its own filters instead.

Although Twitter inked a deal with the photo-storage site Photobucket in June, the company has since started storing images on its own servers. Twitter is exploring adding other tools to its mobile applications, one employee said, including the ability to upload and possibly edit videos without having to go through a third-party application or service, like YouTube. Sadly, the Twitter-centric photo filters are not expected to be named after birds [NYTimes].

Owners of the original Moto G are now receiving their much-anticipated Lollipop upgrade. The release makes Motorola’s most popular smartphone one of just a small few handsets released in 2013 that are already running Google’s latest Android software.

Rolling out to users in India first, Lollipop for the 2013 Moto G is essentially the same software that started reaching the newer 2014 Moto G last month. Users get a Material Design makeover the way Google intended it — without any third-party tweaks — as well as lock screen notifications, improved multitasking, and Smart Lock, which automatically disables lock screen security when your Android Wear device is nearby.

User can also look forward to Ambient Display, a flashlight toggle in the Quick Settings menu, Motorola Assist, and significant performance and battery life improvements. All of these things make Lollipop the Moto G’s biggest update yet. It also means this is a big download, so you’ll want to get it over Wi-Fi rather than a cellular connection.

Although this update hasn’t been spotted in other markets yet, it won’t be long before Motorola pushes it out elsewhere — providing no issues are found. And if you have a Moto G in India, look out for your software update notification, or search for the release manually via the software update section inside the Settings app [Motorola].

Twitter has long said it works best as a tool for serving up news on whats happening as it happens.

Twitter has long said it works best as a tool for serving up news on what’s happening, as it happens. Now, Twitter hopes that will work with commerce on its network, as well. On Tuesday, the company unveiled a program that introduced deals to tweets on the 284 million-user social network.

The program, Twitter Offers, is aimed at marketers who want to drive sales directly through Twitter advertisements and is an attempt to kick-start Twitter’s nascent efforts to build e-commerce into its platform. After buying a Promoted Tweet — a paid ad that appears as content inside a user’s Twitter stream — a marketer can insert a deal, such as a time-sensitive discount, which users can redeem on their smartphone.

Twitter says it believes that for advertisers, the program will be a novel way to woo new customers to their stores. “I think new customer acquisition is going to be the primary use case here,” said Nathan Hubbard, a former chief executive of Ticketmaster, who now leads Twitter’s commerce efforts. Mr. Hubbard said that marketers could use Twitter’s ad targeting software to focus on specific demographics of people who were most likely to buy products from their company.

The service is powered by CardSpring, a company that Twitter acquired in July that links coupons to a user’s credit or debit card, and automatically redeems the deal when a customer uses the card to buy an item. So, for example, if a user sees a Twitter Offer for an ice cream shop in their stream, they can link that deal to the credit card they have on file with their Twitter account. Later, if the user decides to visit the shop and buy a cone of rocky road using the same credit card, the Twitter Offer will automatically be applied to the purchase.

Twitter also stressed how easy it was to use the product. Merchants will not have to install new hardware to redeem offers, and users will not need to present a coupon at the point of sale in order to redeem it. It is not Twitter’s first foray into online commerce. The company announced it was testing a “buy button” that would allow users to buy physical goods, like coffee mugs and T-shirts, directly inside of Twitter from a select group of companies. But that program has not been introduced widely since it was announced in September.

Offers, however, could prove valuable to Twitter by bolstering its advertising business, which makes up the vast majority of the company’s revenue. As Twitter’s pitch goes, the Offers program provides advertisers a concrete way to measure their return on investment; if a user redeems a coupon, that marketer will know their ad has worked.

While Twitter is starting small with a handful of retailers, its ambitions are much larger. Eventually, Mr. Hubbard imagines Twitter will rely on the location data in users’ smartphones to deliver an advertisement with a Twitter Offer at the exact time a person is most likely to redeem it, including, perhaps, the very moment a user is walking by a retail store that has partnered with Twitter.

“I think location will play a huge part of this going forward,” Mr. Hubbard said.

While Twitter did not disclose the retailers it will begin working with on Twitter Offers, Mr. Hubbard said it would span a number of industries, including chain restaurants, big retailers and small mom-and-pop merchants. The program will begin in time for Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year [NYTimes]

SONY Pictures Entertainment and FBI were seeking more information about an attack computer system.

LOS ANGELES — Sony Pictures Entertainment and the F.B.I. on Wednesday were seeking more information about an attack that crippled Sony’s computer systems — including whether North Korea, or perhaps a former employee, was responsible.

“The investigation continues into this very sophisticated cyberattack,” the studio said in a statement. It added that a news report by the technology site Re/code, which said that North Korea had been identified as the source of the attack and that the studio planned an imminent announcement, was “not accurate.”

Sony was hit by hackers on Nov. 24, resulting in a companywide computer shutdown and the leak of corporate information, including the multimillion-dollar pre-bonus salaries of executives and the Social Security numbers of rank-and-file employees. A group calling itself the Guardians of Peace has taken credit for the attacks.

The studio, working with various law enforcement agencies, has been exploring whether the breach was related to one of Sony’s coming movies, “The Interview,” a comedy about two American tabloid TV journalists recruited to assassinate the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. North Korean officials have been sharply critical of the film.

The leaked data is likely to raise embarrassing questions about Deloitte’s own insider-threat program. The firm has aggressively marketed its digital threat intelligence services and has been providing advice to corporations about how to protect data from employee leaks [NYTimes]

Twitter is Already a real time emporium for news.

Twitter is already a real-time emporium for news, photos, video clips and 140-character snippets of thought. Now, the real-time social network wants to be a shopping mall for real products, too. The company announced on Monday that it would begin publicly testing a “buy” button that can be embedded in posts to allow users to buy a product with a couple of clicks.

The feature — initially limited to mobile versions of Twitter and aimed at selling limited-edition or time-sensitive items like T-shirts and event tickets — could eventually create a new revenue stream for the social network, which currently relies on advertising for virtually all of its income.The test comes as competition in the world of mobile e-commerce intensifies.

Still, billions of dollars of online sales are already associated with social networks. Many marketers post messages on services like Twitter and Facebook promoting their products and offering links to external sites where they can be bought.Now Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest are trying to take a step out of that process by offering customers the ability to buy advertised products instantly.

The service will then prompt them to enter credit card and shipping information or, if it is already on file, ask them to click again to confirm the purchase.“I think of Twitter as the place to connect with the things that you love,” said Nathan Hubbard, a former chief executive of Ticketmaster, who joined Twitter a year ago to lead its commerce efforts. “How can you bring a transaction into the experience to make it additive?”

Mr. Hubbard said the test would initially be limited to a small number of Twitter users in the United States and would include items for sale from 19 entities, including popular musicians like Rihanna and Eminem, nonprofit groups like the Nature Conservancy and Donors Choose, and the retailers Home Depot and Burberry for long time activity [NYTimes].