Chirp is Twitter’s official conference, and this year is the conferences first. If you couldn’t make it to the show in San Francisco, you can watch the event live above.

Twitter has just confirmed that the rollout of their retweet project has now officially began.

The company have confirmed that the new retweet functionality, which integrates the retweeting experience directly into users Twitter.com account, has now been activated on a select number of accounts.

For those unfamiliar with the retweet project it all started earlier this year, when Twitter announced that it would begin to officially support the popular ‘retweet’ action used on their site. A retweet is when one user republishes another users tweet in order to spread the word or message. Currently this republishing is done simply by copying and pasting the other users message, and accrediting them by displaying ‘RT @username’ as a precursor to the copied message. This action has been favorably adopted by third-parties and now makes up a large part of what Twitter is about, with it now being present in a number of applications, programs and websites.

Unfortunately we are yet to have the new functionality on our accounts, but if you are using the new retweet features be sure to let us know!

[Via TheNextWeb]

Earlier this week over on the official Twitter blog, Biz Stone detailed how the company was moving towards adding true geolocation functionality into Twitter.

The announcement detailed how in the near future the Twitter API will allow developers to add longitude and latitude information to any tweet sent, essentially allowing your followers to exactly pin point you when ever you update. Of course Biz was keen to stress that this planned service, which offers similar functionality to Google Latitude, is strictly an opt-in extension to the existing Twitter website.

Since the announcement, the web has been a flurry with suggestions as to why this move is both good and bad. The various posts suggest a number of advantages such as finding people local to you with relevant interests, down to disadvantages such as harassment from local companies who know you are in the area and attempt to sell you things.

What are your thoughts on the annoucement, is this a service you would use, do you want people knowing your location, and what are your very own geolocation pro’s and con’s, be sure to let us know.

Over the last few days there has been mounting confusion over the legality of using the word “tweet” as Twitter took action against certain third parties who where using the term in their applications, but it seems now the issue has been clarified via Twitter’s own Biz Stone over on the official blog, and the company don’t have a big an issue with third parties using the term as first thought:

“We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of “going after” the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.”

So it’s pretty straightforward, if you use the term “tweet” in a negative, damaging way Twitter will not be pleased, but beyond that everything is sweet. Just don’t forget, Tweet™.

A word of warning, when using Twitter this month, be it on the web or via your favorite app just be careful not to give your details away. The guys over at Twitpwn have declared July to be the ‘Month of Twitter Bugs‘, but according to them they do not intend harm, they just have a desire to expose vulnerabilities with current systems in order to force them to be fixed, they also claim they will give warnings, read on to see what they said in full:

I’ve decided to declare July 2009 as “Month of Twitter Bugs” (MoTB). I’m doing so in order to raise the awareness of the Twitter API issue I recently blogged about. MoTB could have been easily converted to any other “Month of Web2.0 service bugs”, and I hope that Twitter and other Web2.0 API providers will work closely with their API consumers to develop more secure products.

Each day I will publish a new vulnerability in a 3rd party Twitter service on the twitpwn.com web site. As those vulnerabilities can be exploited to create a Twitter worm, I’m going to give the 3rd party service provider and Twitter at-least 24 hours heads-up before I publish the vulnerability.

So while it may sound harmless enough (if developers take notice of warnings) we do recomend to change your password, just in case.

Ever since Twitter began the service has slowly seen tweaks and improvements in its user interface, adding functionality and improving the overall experience. The latest changes to be introduced concentrate on refining the Followers & Following lists. Before the changes a simple list was presented to users, with an option to follow or unfollow. This new update adds much more interactivity choices, such as being able to send them a “mention”, a DM, and block them, all from a handy drop down list.

In addition to these in-line options, you can also view your followers in a list view (seen above) or in the traditional expanded mode. A few small changes which really do add to the convenience of managing and connecting with your Twitter buddies!

After yesterday’s tragic news regarding the unexpected death of the ‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson, Twitter was in a flurry of related messages mourning the death of one of music’s most respected musicians. But it would seem not all wanted to pay their respects, but instead attempt to use the news as a way to attract people to a website.

This is exactly what the official Google Maps API twitter account did, by sending the following tweet, which they have since deleted:

Soon after sending the senseless self-promoting tweet, they clearly received a large amount of negative replies, or realised the error in using the tragic news as a means of promotion, as a follow up tweet apologising was sent out. Your thoughts?

Could the days of often annoying auto accounts, and so called ‘Twitter bots’ be over? It seems that Twitter wants to take action against such accounts if a recent developer email is to be believed. The message in full detailed how the use of various third party applications to gain followers would result in the offending account possibly being suspended.

Doug Williams of Twitter revealed that Twitter was planning to take action on such unavailing accounts. He detailed the processes that a large number of these accounts take, for example an account will start by following a large mass of individuals and benefit from the social connections made, but then if an individual does not reciprocate the follow back, the connection is then broken. Through gaining a large number of mass followers via this method an inaccurate portrayal of the offending account’s legitimacy is depicted, which on a whole degrades the Twitter experience for all.

Are auto follow tools a bad thing, are you sick of auto direct messages, and do you want less ‘noise’ on Twitter?

Back in April we posted on how Twitter was enjoying tremendous growth, but it now seems the sites popularity is finally starting to level out if recent stats are to be believed. Latest figures from Compete for the month of May suggest that Twitter only saw an increase in growth of 1.47%, a tiny increase in comparison to growth enjoyed by the site over the past year. As the following chart shows, it really has leveled out:

A sign of things to come?