Internet reports suggest that Twitter will launch its own picture sharing service this week. The move will undoubtedly affect third party picture sharing service providers that are currently on the miniblog.

The chief executive of Twitter, Dick Costolo, is expected to make the announcement during the D9 conference on Wednesday. Costolo is billed to address the conference on Wednesday and TechCrunch was the first to report that he will make an announcement of the service. If the report turns out to be accurate, third party picture sharing service providers like Twitpic and Yfrog will be disadvantaged.

The companies along with other similar providers are currently the only means to share picture on the famous social site. It is believed that Twitter is trying to take back control of its services. The company had in the past announced some services which were previously offered by third party providers.

The report did not indicate how Twitter plans to implement the picture sharing service. The third parties took users to their website where they made profit by displaying advertisements along the picture that is being viewed.

Twitter’s popularity is skyrocketing because of the many celebrities and personalities that use the service to keep their followers informed.

Foursquare is the most popular location based social networking tool, and now it just got better. Foursquare now lets you attach photos to your Checkins, in fact, when you checkin anywhere with your iPhone app now, you’ll be prompted to add photos of that place. Photos can also be attached to tips and venues. Once you have checked in, you can continue to add more photos to your checkin detail page.

Another big feature Foursquare just rolled out is the ability for your friends to post comments on your Checkins. Photos that you upload are visible to your Foursquare friends and your friends at other permitted social networks like Facebook and Twitter, your comments however are only visible to your Foursquare friends. You can also view these photos and comments related to your past checkins on your History page anytime.

With everybody and their grandma creating a social networking service, Foursquare has made the right move to let their service be more interactive with these two features. This will give Foursquare a powerful boost with increased activity and definitely better loyalty of users. These features will also be rolled out to the Android app within next few days and to the Blackberry app early next year.

That’s essentially the question social media analytics company Sysomos posed in a survey of 1.2 billion posts made over the past 2 months and found that 71% of the posts from the Twitter microblogging site elicited neither a retweet nor reply.

Just 6% of Tweets got retweeted and 23% were apparently intriguing enough to warrant a reply. More than 90% of retweets take place within an hour, so the shelf life of a Tweet appears to be pretty short.

As for replies, 85% involve just a single reply, throwing some cold water on the notion that Twitter is bursting with “conversations.”

Maybe all this will change for the better as a new generation is born with an online presence, with an increasing number of parents securing Twitter addresses for their offspring from the start.

Not that Twitter is standing pat.

The basic Twitter page got a revamp in September featuring embedded videos and pictures as well as threaded replies (though there are a lot of really short threats based on the Sysomos study). Twitter also recently revamped its search engine, boosting its speed and capacity to index posts.

Twitter has also had its hands full fighting off worms.

In addition, company founder Evan Williams handed over the CEO reins to Dick Costolo, who is charged with turning Twitter into a money-making machine now that it’s established itself as a social networking leader. Costolo used to head FeedBurner, a news feed service that Google bought, and joined Twitter about a year ago to work on advertising services and licensing deals.

Twitter offers a three ways to add TWEET BUTTON – using JavaScript, using iframe and a simple HTML. The HTML is very simple it won’t add any extra weight to your blog and you’ll also be able to use it everywhere.

Twitter also allows to create own button with various images and same Tweet Button sharing functionality with your own style.

Here’s why this “official” Twitter button may be better than your current solution:

* It displays the number of times a particular link has been shared on Twitter – this makes it easy for your visitors to quickly guess the popularity of your content.
* It uses t.co for shortening links. Since t.co is owned by Twitter, your shortened links are likely to stay around for a long long time.
* When someone shares your page on Twitter, you have an option to recommend him up to two Twitter accounts after he is done sending the tweet. That may help you win new followers who may otherwise not know that you even exist on Twitter.

Writing plain HTML:
If you are on WordPress (the self hosted version), you can add the following code anywhere in your template (single.php):

<a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=<?php echo urlencode(the_permalink()); ?>&amp;text=<?php echo urlencode(the_title()); ?>&amp;via=blogaccount&amp;related=myaccount">Tweet this</a>

If you are on Blogger, the code will be something like this. Search for the class “post-footer” in the Blogger XML template and copy-paste this snippet somewhere near it.

<a expr:href='"http://twitter.com/share?text=" + data:post.title + "&amp;url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;via=blogaccount&amp;related=myaccount"'>Tweet this!</a>

Click here to see how it works – Tweet This

Check out the video how to use Tweet button:

The company will route all links submitted to the site through a filter created to catch links that lead to malware, the company said on the Twitter blog on Tuesday.

“A couple weeks ago, Biz [Stone, Twitter co-founder] explained how Twitter users were being victimized by phishing scams spread primarily through links in direct messages,” the post said. “Basically, people click the link and bad things happen. My team can only detect these scams after malicious links have already been sent out.”

With the new filtering service, even if a bad link is already sent out in an e-mail notification and somebody clicks on it, the user will be safe, according to the post.

The filtering will focus on links sent via direct messages and e-mail notifications about direct messages since the attacks occur primarily in those communications.

Here are my top eight picks for Facebook and Twitter add-ons. Many of these solve common user gripes (such as not knowing to what site shortened URLs will bring you on Twitter). Some, like “Facebook Fixer,” enhance the site and allow you to customize it beyond standard options. Do note that most of these scripts require that you first download Greasemonkey, and not all are compatible with every browser, so be sure to check the requirements before you download a script.

1. Facebook Fixer.

This script lets you customize your Facebook account and offers many features that are enabled by default, but can be enabled or disabled independently. Some of these features include: larger profile and album pictures; homepage customization where you can hide independent sections such as pokes, suggestions and “connect with friends”; and calendar integration, which includes a link on each profile that synchs birthdays with Google Calendar, or the option to export a file with all your friends’ birthdays, which can be imported into sites such as Google Calendar, Yahoo, Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook and more.

2. Facebook Purity.

The Facebook Purity script cleans up your homepage and removes all newsfeed items from third-party games such as Mafia Wars and FarmVille, and zaps announcements on who’s become friend with who, who’s attending a certain event, who joined a group and who became a fan of something. Optional items you can block include: comments on a status, photo, photo album or link; tags in a photo or photo album; and event postings.

3. Unfriend Finder.

Ever wonder if you’ve been dropped by a Facebook friend? Every time you log in, the script checks to see if someone is missing from your friend list. When the script detects someone is no longer your friend, you get a notification and a bubble counter in the Facebook toolbar. There are two types of “unfriends:” Either you removed them from your friend list or they removed you (but they’re still on Facebook), or they deactivated their account and are no longer on Facebook. If they reactivate their account, you’ll also be notified.

4. No Facebook Ads.

If you’re tired of the age-targeted ads Facebook runs, take advantage of this script. Downloading it will remove ads from your Facebook account-including flyer ads, network ads, bumper ads-leaving its appearance a lot cleaner.

5. TinyURL Decoder.

While URL shorteners do save space on Twitter, you’re often clicking at your own risk-phishing scams and spam-laden direct messages are becoming more and more common on the microblogging site. This script decodes the shortened URLs on Twitter’s website and displays the original URL, so you can decide whether or not to click.

6. Nested Twitter Replies.

Twitter’s website still only allows you to view @replies in a list, which can be confusing if you’re trying to follow a conversation. Applying this script automatically displays tweets in a nested conversation format, making it easier to follow.

7. @Troynt’s Twitter Script.

This Twitter script does it all. Among its many features: expansion of Links in tweets; inline inclusion of YouTube videos and Twitpic images; nested tweets; option to save, reply to or retweet a tweet when you hover over it; autocompletion of a username when you begin typing “@” in a tweet and much more.

8. Twitter Old Style RT Emulator.

If you hate Twitter’s retweet button and long for the old method, this script will convert all retweet symbols and user pictures into “RT @username.” Note that this script only works in Safari and Firefox.

Millions of Indians went crazy over micro blogging site Twitter on a seemingly dull Monday afternoon as the topic #AwesomeIndianThings all of a sudden began trending, and went on to become the number one Trending Topic in a span of 30 minutes!

Needless to say Indians bored at work or even at home were entertained as hundreds of Tweets appeared every 10 seconds, detailed with things that are #awesome in India. Some folks rooted for cricket demi God Sachin Tendulkar, some tweeted about delicious food items like Paani Poori and Vada Paav, others took names of famous Indian authors like RK Narayan and even Chetan Bhagat, who apparently started the topic a few days ago. Some mentioned Sardar Jokes, Santa-Banta, Mehendi, and even the number ‘Zero’ which was invented in the country.

Movie buffs had quite a time tweeting famous lines like ‘Mere Paas Maa Hai’, or even popular songs like ‘Emotional Atyachaar’, or even Bollywood biggies Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh, Aamir and Salman Khan. Goes without saying, Rajnikanth was the most popular name mentioned in the celeb list. From what we noticed ‘Amul – the Taste of India’, ‘Cutting Chai’ and ‘Indian Women’ were tweeted the most number of times.

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has certainly generated more than its share of buzz regarding its plans to get deeper into social media. On Tuesday, the search giant revealed those plans: Google Buzz, which takes a big step into Facebook and Twitter territory while keeping one foot firmly planted on its Gmail foundation.

While the initial version of Buzz released during a press conference and demonstration at the company’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters focused on consumer-friendly uses — status updates, comments, link and media-sharing, either at a desktop or via smartphone — Google made it clear that there will also be a future place for Buzz in its enterprise goals.

“I think a lot of past services have focused on just friends and entertainment,” Google cofounder Sergey Brin told the audience. “I found personally a huge amount of productivity in using Google Buzz internally, and therefore I think the bridging of those worlds is very powerful.”

Corporate-centric versions of Buzz would be coming soon, added Google Vice President for Product Management Bradley Horowitz. “We’ve been testing Buzz in the context of our enterprise products,” Horowitz said. “We found it invaluable, and it changed the way we communicate.”

Consumers who are on Gmail will get the first shot at the new features over the next few days.

People who tried to access Twitter early Friday were redirected to a Web site from the “Iranian Cyber Army.”