We talk a lot about how Twitter is an amazing real-time platform. The news of the hour, delivered to you within seconds. But while Twitter is always bringing us closer to the present, sometimes our Tweets are a way of looking back to the past. This week’s #OnlyOnTwitter is about looking backwards. We’ve collected musicians’ memories of MCA. We also have a short Twitter essay remembering NFL linebacker Junior Seau. And we have a project developed by NBC LA to live-tweet the Los Angeles riots from 20 years later. All examples of Twitter’s power to make you a part of a global, collective history. And to bring you closer not just to the present, but to the past as well.

Today we were heartbroken to see the news that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys passed away. The news was shared via Tweets, passed around the world by fans whose lives had been touched by his work. And shortly thereafter came the memories— Tweets about listening to the Beastie Boys, Tweets about meeting “MCA”, Tweets about the impact his music had on all of music that followed. A flow of Tweets in which we were all sharing what this man meant to us as individuals, collectively.

I think this is something important about Twitter. On Twitter our individual memories become a collective history that is more powerful, more meaningful and more instructive than ever before.

RIP MCA
Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys passed away this Friday. Across Twitter, musicians celebrated his work and remembered his impact on their lives and careers.

Remembering Junior Seau
After the suicide of Chargers linebacker Junior Seau, NFL player Eric Olsen remembered him on Twitter.

Re-living the Los Angeles riots
Twenty years ago LA erupted in a firestorm of riots after the Rodney King verdict. This year, NBC LA set up an account to tweet out updates from twenty years ago, exactly how and when they happened. These are excerpts from the first night of rioting.

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The Discover tab makes it easy to discover information that matters to you without having to follow additional accounts. Starting today, the Discover tab will begin to surface content that is even more personalized and meaningful to you. We’ve incorporated additional personalization signals to select Discover stories, including Tweets that are popular among the people you follow and the folks they follow.

The Discover tab’s new design shows who tweeted about particular stories. You can click “View Tweets” on any story to see popular Tweets from your network or recent, relevant Tweets directly below the story summary. This social context helps you understand why each story matters to you and makes it easier to join the conversation. You can reply, retweet or favorite these Tweets, or you can “Tweet this story” to share your own perspective.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be rolling out this redesigned and more personalized Discover experience on Twitter.com, iPhone and Android. This update is part of our ongoing development of Discover; we will continue to work to make discovery on Twitter a magical experience that brings you instantly closer to the information that matters most to you at the right time, any time.

- Satya Patel, VP of Product (@satyap)

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Last night’s Latin Billboard Awards proved to be a big night for Latin music’s hottest artists, and for fans on Twitter. The conversation really took off on Twitter, both in Spanish and English — there were nearly half a million Tweets about the show, which was more than double last year’s volume. Fans particularly turned to Twitter to share their reactions when Don Omar and Maná won trophies, and during Marc Anthony’s Premio Salon de la Fama award tribute, sending thousands of Tweets during those moments.

Before the show started, folks behind the scenes were sharing pictures of the stars as they walked the red carpet:

Fashion cam #billboards @sensato @pitbull @dreateamagency instagr.am/p/J6QB8jDeF0/

— Susan Stipcianos (@DreamTeamSusan) April 27, 2012

A lucky fan in Miami for the Billboards shared the view from her seat during one of the performances:

#Favorite performance of the night!! #Billboards2012 @gerardoortiznet twitter.com/YAREL_RAMOS/st…

— Yarel Ramos (@YAREL_RAMOS) April 27, 2012

Right after taking home an incredible 8 awards, Prince Royce took his acceptance speech to Twitter and made sure to thank his fans around the world:
Prince Royce made sure to thank all his fans:

8 awards @LatinBillboards!!! I am so grateful for all of you guys, my fans!!! Without you this is not possible!! What a night!

— Prince Royce (@PlanetRoyce) April 27, 2012

The team at Trendrr also followed the Latin Billboards closely, and pulled together this infographic showing the way the show played out on Twitter, which you can check out here.

Whether you’re a Latin music lover, an aspiring electronic music producer, or want to re-live rock’s most memorable moments, Twitter is the place for music fans to connect with their favorite artists.

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Today you can download new versions of Twitter for iPhone in the App Store and Twitter for Android in Google Play. These updates make it easier to find out what’s happening on Twitter with improvements to discover, search and notifications.

Discover
The Discover tab helps you find interesting and timely content that matters to you. With this update, you can see Activity on Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android. Activity is a stream of updates that shows which Tweets are favorited or retweeted by the people you follow and which accounts those people follow or add to lists.

Activity appears below the redesigned stories in Discover. Now you can tap any story once to see Tweets about a particular trend or news article. You can then read the entire story or join the conversation by replying, retweeting or favoriting related Tweets.

Search
Search is now simpler in both mobile apps. You can see suggestions for different spellings and related terms for your queries. Finding the people you’re looking for is faster, too. In the Connect tab, you can start typing the first or last name or username of the person you’re looking for and the name will autocomplete for people that you follow.

We’ve also made a few improvements specifically for iPhone: when you tap the search box in Discover, you’ll see your most recent queries. You can also go directly to someone’s profile when searching for a username in Connect.

Notifications
Lastly, we’ve added push notifications for Interactions, so you can know immediately when your Tweets have been retweeted or favorited, or when somebody new follows your account. You can manage your push notifications settings to stay as connected as you’d like.

Download Twitter for iPhone today from the App Store and Twitter for Android in Google Play.

This update was a great collaboration between many teams at Twitter including Android, iOS, Discover, Search and others. Many thanks to everyone who contributed to this effort.

- Sung Hu Kim, Product Manager (@sunghu)

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We love Hack Week so much that we’ve been doing it once a quarter, and this time, the week’s theme was efficiency. For five days, we suspend all but the most critical projects to focus on building out new ideas and tools. Engineers and others from across the company self-organize into teams around whatever projects they’re most passionate about, new and old.

Collectively, we review and vote on our favorites — some hacks make it into product roadmaps, some improve our internal systems, and all of them teach us something about the breadth of what’s possible with a little extra passion and flexibility. People designed everything from a tool to quickly and easily test new features with users to a better way of finding open meeting rooms.

One of the big hits of the week was #CodeClass, an accelerated curriculum on JavaScript and Front-End engineering. Experienced coders from other disciplines learned how to write interfaces for their projects, and beginning coders from every department got started in programming by learning HTML and JavaScript. I was excited to work on it because skills exchange and personal development are such an important part of our culture here — over 150 people signed up for the three different levels, and our video production team even made a very professional promo spot for it:

We’ve already blocked out time for next quarter’s #hackweek, theme TBD. Personally, I plan on ignoring whatever the theme is and running another session of #CodeClass.

Posted by Marcus Phillips, Software Engineer (@mracus)

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If you post to Twitter, you’re a writer in your own right. While you may not be writing novels, you’re telling your own stories 140 characters at a time. This week on #OnlyOnTwitter we have a number of posts about writers and writing. From authorial Twitter takeovers to crowdsourcing speechwriting to a Twitter staging of a play— it’s everything from 140 characters to 140,000 words in this week’s edition of #OnlyOnTwitter.

Susan Orlean’s crowdsourced commencement speech
Stumped on a commencement speech, author Susan Orlean asked her Twitter followers for help…and tried out a few ideas on them, too.

Anna Quindlen takes @atRandom on tour
Author Anna Quindlen is currently promoting her new book Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake. She took over her publisher’s Twitter account to document one manic day in the life of an author on her book tour.

“Glengarry Glen Ross” Twitter Bot Theater
In a new experiment in the performing arts, Twitter Bot Theater reenacted the movie adaptation of the famous David Mamet play, “Glengarry Glen Ross”, by having automated accounts tweet the play line-by-line. Here’s a bit of the scene with Blake, played in the film by Alec Baldwin and played here by @theBlake970. (Don’t worry, we picked one of the lines that’s not profanity-laden.)

#DontDoubleMyRate
The White House is encouraging Congress to prevent an increase in federal student loan rates— and they deployed a new hashtag to do it. With #DontDoubleMyRate, the White House has encouraged students and college grads to tweet their support. It’s been a pretty successful campaign, helped significantly by the President’s appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

You missed Zac Efron’s party
Actor Zac Efron held a fan chat to promote his new movie “The Lucky One”. One unlucky fan wanted to throw a party at Zac’s house and found out he might have missed the boat.

A Twitter-powered game of catch
Colorado Rockies pitcher Jeffrey Guthrie was looking for a throwing partner on a lunch break. Local fan and cancer survivor Woody Roseland just happened to have some free time and a glove.

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Thursday night, Telemundo is bringing you one of the hottest parties of the year: the Latin Billboard Awards, celebrating the best in Latin music. Whether you’re a fan of pop, tropical, Mexican, or rhythm music, be sure to tune in to watch the performances, cheer the winners and (of course) see what everyone’s wearing. From the minute the red carpet is rolled out, you’ll want to follow the whole fiesta on Twitter.

You can already see the action building now at #Billboards2012:

Mexican superstar Paulina Rubio, winner of many Billboard awards herself, can’t wait to take the stage for her live performance during the show:

Emocionada de ser parte de los premios @LatinBillboards este jueves por @telemundo! No te lo puedes perder!! #billboards2012

— Paulina Rubio (@paurubio) April 23, 2012

“Excited to be part of the @latinbillboard awards this Thursday. Don’t miss it!”

Red carpet host Jorge Bernal has been sharing pictures all week, capturing preparations for the big night. Look like he’s just about ready for the show:

Listos? #billboards2012 instagr.am/p/Jx9qqLnjRu/

— Jorge D. Bernal (@JorgeBernal) April 23, 2012

“Ready?”

And @LatinBillboards lets you know what kind of party you’re in for:

Rehearsals for @Akon just wrapped. Get ready to dance. It’s gonna be good #Billboards2012

— Premios Billboard (@LatinBillboards) April 24, 2012

As soon as the limos pull up, the @LatinBillboards team will be providing you with exclusive behind-the-scenes Tweets. They’ll share pictures as the stars arrive — before you can even see them on TV — for those of you who can’t wait to see what everyone’s wearing. As they make their way down the red carpet, some of the biggest names in Latin music will be tweeting their night.

Over at @Telemundo, find out who’s performing next, so you won’t miss your favorite artists. The lineup includes Paulina Rubio (@paurubio), Pitbull (@pitbull), Prince Royce (@PlanetRoyce), and the highly-anticipated Brazilian sensation Michel Tel (@MichelTelo). And @LatinBillboards will capture some of the most emotional moments of the night, with exclusive Tweets and pictures from backstage, catching presenters and performers right before they face the crowd — and winners right after they walk off the stage.

And of course, share your own thoughts as the night unfolds — remember to include #Billboards2012 and you may even seen your own Tweet on air.

¡Lluvia de estrellas estilo latino!

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One of the best things about Twitter is sharing pictures in real-time. Pictures from behind the scenes, pictures from abroad, pictures from the past. This week we have a number of Twitter moments of people sharing experiences and sharing photos in a way that could happen #OnlyOnTwitter. We have DC residents pointing the cameraphones at the sky to snap pictures of a space shuttle’s last flight. We have José Andrés finding Anthony Bourdain’s favorite restaurant in Singapore and posing with the chef. And we have a Twitter account dedicated entirely to plumbing the depths of the Sports Illustrated photo archives.

All of that and more, happening every day #OnlyOnTwitter.

#spottheshuttle takes over DC
Washington, D.C. residents left their offices in droves this Tuesday to watch the space shuttle Discovery, piggy-backed on a Boeing 747, circled the city three times before landing at Dulles Airport. Thanks to Twitter, even the folks who couldn’t leave their desks were able to see the shuttle from just about every angle in the city.

From the vaults of Sports Illustrated
Andy Gray at Sports Illustrated may have the coolest job in the sports world: he gets to dig through the archives of the magazine’s photos and share them on Twitter! His is a great feed to follow for any sports fan and a great example of how a publication can creatively use its archives on Twitter.

José Andrés goes to Singapore
Chef José Andrés took a trip to Singapore and received some travel recommendations from everybody’s favorite culinary tourist Anthony Bourdain.

NASCAR goes to the White House
The President invited 12 of the top Sprint Cup drivers to the White House. They put on their suits and ties and then shared pictures of the whole event.

Three Stooges answer dozens of questions
In anticipation of opening weekend for #TheThreeStooges @theseanhayes, @DiamantopoulosC and @WillSasso answered questions for fans who want to know Moe.

The lonesome cry of the Canadian penny
When the Canadian government decided to eliminate the Canadian penny, Steve St. Pierre began a Twitter account to tell the other side of the story— from the penny’s perspective. What began as a joke became a movement to donate pennies to charities.

Jim Gaffigan hosts a comedic Q&A
Comedian Jim Gaffigan released a new comedy special called “Mr. Universe” and released it online, directly to his fans. As a part of the promotion for Mr. Universe, he invited questions from his fans on Twitter.

@TwitterMusic interviews artist @KatGraham
Twitter Music conducted an interview with questions tweeted by fans for “Put Your Graffiti On Me” singer Kat Graham.

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By now it’s clear that Twitter serves as the roar of the crowd during live events like the Super Bowl and award shows. Twitter is also a great place to watch your favorite comedies and dramas arm-in-arm with the rest of the world–and even the show’s stars themselves.

Sunday night has long been a great time to make a date with your TV, and last night was a particularly fun one to keep your eyes on Twitter as well as the screen.

During the premiere of HBO’s highly anticipated new show @GirlsHBO, television fans were tweeting in full force. Right along with them were the stars and producers of the show:

All your tweets are making my heart so warm! Thank you so much to all those watching. I am watching alone with my family’s dog Dean. Love u!

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) April 16, 2012

Five minutes till Girls. Here is how I prep. twitter.com/JuddApatow/sta…

— Judd Apatow (@JuddApatow) April 16, 2012

The show even has some famous fans who took to Twitter to share their reviews:

GIRLS.Holy shit.Think @louisck is “painfully honest”? Wait ’til you take a squirm-rocket with the hilarious @lenadunham.

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) April 16, 2012

This show is genius. #Girls

— Martha Plimpton (@MarthaPlimpton) April 16, 2012

Fans, reviewers, and stars of other shows took to Twitter last night too: Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Celebrity Apprentice and The Good Wife each inspired active conversations last night. No matter what your must-watch shows are, the viewing party happens on Twitter every day of the week.

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Cross-posted on the Twitter Engineering blog.

One of the great things about Twitter is working with so many talented folks who dream up and build incredible products day in and day out. Like many companies, we apply for patents on a bunch of these inventions. However, we also think a lot about how those patents may be used in the future; we sometimes worry that they may be used to impede the innovation of others. For that reason, we are publishing a draft of the Innovator’s Patent Agreement, which we informally call the “IPA”.

The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.

This is a significant departure from the current state of affairs in the industry. Typically, engineers and designers sign an agreement with their company that irrevocably gives that company any patents filed related to the employee’s work. The company then has control over the patents and can use them however they want, which may include selling them to others who can also use them however they want. With the IPA, employees can be assured that their patents will be used only as a shield rather than as a weapon.

We will implement the IPA later this year, and it will apply to all patents issued to our engineers, both past and present. We are still in early stages, and have just started to reach out to other companies to discuss the IPA and whether it might make sense for them too. In the meantime, we’ve posted the IPA on GitHub with the hope that you will take a look, share your feedback and discuss with your companies. And, of course, you can #jointheflock and have the IPA apply to you.

Today is the second day of our quarterly Hack Week, which means employees – engineers, designers, and folks all across the company – are working on projects and tools outside their regular day-to-day work. The goal of this week is to give rise to the most audacious and creative ideas. These ideas will have the greatest impact in a world that fosters innovation, rather than dampening it, and we hope the IPA will play an important part in making that vision a reality.

- Adam Messinger, VP of Engineering (@adam_messinger)

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