Getting with the Twitter program
Considering third-party interfaces
Using Twitter everywhere
Twitter's a great tool for providing friends, family, and followers with updates on what's going on in your life. But, as you've probably noticed, life occurs in a lot of places, not just on the computer. Don't worry, though, because Twitter's got you covered. The folks at Twitter have designed their application so that you can use it in multiple ways.
In this chapter, we go over all the ways that you, as an individual, may want to use Twitter, and we also give you some pointers for maximizing the application, based on your needs.
If you want to get the most out of Twitter, you need to figure out how you prefer to access the service. Some people use the Twitter Web site or the Twitter Mobile Web site, text messaging, or any number of third-party services built by using Twitter's application program interface (API). You can use widgets, gadgets, browser plug-ins, and in short, a huge array of ways to interact with Twitter at your convenience and on your terms. This is a big reason for Twitter's popularity.
Like most users, you probably started by logging into Twitter.com and using the basic Web interface, shown in Figure 4-1, to manage your Twitter stream and communicate with your contacts. It's simple, no-frills, and convenient: Most of what you need is right there in the sidebar or in the top toolbar, and roughly half of all twitterers (probably more now with Twitter's extraordinary recent growth) use Twitter.com to access the service. But what happens if you need more functionality, mobility, versatility, or you just want more bells and whistles?
Some Twitter users prefer not to access the service through a browser window, need a few more organizational options than the Web page affords, or just want to share Twitter on an external Web site or blog. You can find plenty of options out there for doing all this and more.
You can fairly simply opt into receiving Twitter via text messages (SMS delivery). First, you have to set up a mobile device so that Twitter knows where to send your tweets:
Click the Settings link at the top-right of your Twitter Home screen.
The Settings page opens.
Click the Devices tab.
Enter your mobile phone number in the text field, check the box granting Twitter permission to send you a text message, and click the Save button.
You're given an alphabetical code and instructed to text this code from your phone to 40404.
Send the code from your phone as a text message to 40404.
You'll receive a text message from Twitter confirming that your device has been verified and SMS alerts have been enabled.
Refresh the page until you see your cellphone number listed.
Now, you can choose to have text-message notifications on, off, or direct messages only. You can also opt to have them turned off during a specific time (say, while you're usually sleeping or at work).
Turn on SMS device updates for your Twitter account and then click Save.
In the Device Updates drop-down list, select On if you want to receive tweets as text messages on your phone or direct messages if you would like to receive only your direct messages. Then click Save.
(Optional) Select a sleep period when you prefer not to receive updates and click Save.
If you're enabling device updates, but you don't want them coming in 24 hours a day, under the heading Sleep, select the Turn Off Updates During These Hours check box and select the hours during which you don't want to receive updates on your phone. Click Save when you're done.
Choose whose device updates you want to see.
Click Home and then click Following (or just go to
www.twitter.com/friends) to view a list of the people you follow. When device updates are on for your account, you'll see toggle buttons next to each person on your following list.
Warning
Make sure that your cellphone carrier has an unlimited text-messaging plan — or that you're willing to pay for a lot of extra texts — before setting Twitter device notifications to On. Twitter doesn't charge for texts, but your carrier might! Laura has unlimited texting even though she doesn't receive any text updates from Twitter, because she loves to use the text commands to add people, send tweets, and send direct messages.
Tip
You don't automatically receive device updates from everyone you follow on Twitter. You have to manually turn these device updates on for each individual. To check and see whether any given individual is set to device updates ON or OFF:
Go to that user's profile on Twitter.
You can access a user's profile by clicking the user's
@usernamein one of his tweets.Just under their avatar photo look for the device updates status.
The red dash and OFF means you won't get this person's tweets as SMS messages even when SMS device updates are turned ON for your account. The green check and ON means that you will.
Turn an individual's device updates on or off.
First, enable all device updates on your phone. Then on Twitter.com, select your Following link (
www.twitter.com/friends), and you can toggle Device updates On and Off for many users at a time right on one page.Of course, you can also control this setting using SMS on your phone. Send an on username message to turn Device updates on and off username to turn them off.
Tip
If you forget who you've set to receive mobile device updates from, you can always go to the list of people you're following by clicking Following (see Chapter 3 for more instructions) to find that information. It's listed underneath the person's username. If you turn device updates off, you won't be able to view it, but the information is still there and will reappear when device updates are turned back on for your account.
You can receive updates from Twitter via an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed, much like you would for any blog or news Web site that you follow.
An RSS feed delivers the content to you so that you don't have to constantly be logged into the Web page. You just need a way to see the feed: Most people use something called a feed reader. You don't have to know much about technology to get one of these and set it up. You can choose from many feed readers out there, but we recommend Google Reader (http://reader.google.com). You already have one of these accounts if you use Gmail, Picasa, iGoogle, or other Google-owned services. Follow Google's pretty easy instructions to get started with Google Reader. Then come back to Twitter and set up your RSS feeds.
What can you see with a Twitter RSS feed? You can set up a feed for your @replies so you never miss a message, one for your DMs (direct messages), or one for the people whom you follow. After you get your RSS feed reader set up, you just have to look for the feed symbol in your browser's URL entry field (see Figure 4-2), click it, follow the instructions, and the feed shows up in your feed reader.
Tip
The feed symbol is universal, not unique to Twitter. If you see one on a Web site, that means you can add its content to your feed reader.
To get your @replies RSS feed:
Click the Profile link in the upper-right of any Twitter page.
Your Profile page appears.
Click the Mentions tab in the right sidebar (which is marked with
@username).Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the orange RSS button.
You can also click the RSS logo in your browser. This logo is usually all the way to the right in the text field where you enter URLs, but it may differ, depending on which browser you use.
Clicking this button (or logo) automatically prompts you to add the feed to the feed address into Google Reader if you have it set up. If you use an application other than Google Reader, you may have to copy and paste the RSS feed's URL into your reader.
You can access Twitter through one of the many downloadable desktop applications that third-party developers have created using Twitter's API. We cover these desktop clients more thoroughly in Chapter 7. Some of the most popular applications are Twhirl, Twitterrific, and TweetDeck (shown in Figure 4-3).
Basically, a Twitter client allows you to use Twitter from your desktop without having a browser open. Many of these clients also offer features that Twitter doesn't, including the ability to thread tweets and track conversations, create groups, filter content, open simultaneous accounts, delete direct messages, and more.
These services work by talking to Twitter to get the information they need. So, they don't work if Twitter isn't working; they rely on it to gather and relay the data you see and use.
A third-party application created for Twitter is TwitterFox (http://twitterfox.net), which is a plug-in that you can build onto your Mozilla Firefox Web browser. Plug-in just means that the application gets installed right into the browser and runs from there. It won't run on Safari or Internet Explorer, and you can't use it if you don't use Firefox.
Tip
Although most plug-ins and add-ons made for Twitter are safe to put on your computer, always be careful any time you install something new. A good way to tell whether an application is okay is to ask your friends on Twitter whether they use it. Most active Twitter users are happy to provide tips and recommendations.
Note
Mozilla approves plug-ins that have been submitted to its developer program. Plug-ins that are proven not to be harmful are endorsed by Mozilla.
Twitter and other sites offer widgets (or, as Google calls them, gadgets) that let you embed information from a service such as Twitter onto other sites so that you can share Twitter more easily. Sometimes, widgets come in the form of HTML code that you can copy and paste into a MySpace profile or blog template. Other times, they come in the form of an application that you have to install on a social-network platform, such as Facebook. You can use dozens and dozens of official and unofficial widgets for Twitter. Using free widget-building tools, anyone can build a widget using any RSS feed as the content supply, so there's no telling how many thousands of Twitter widgets actually exist.
Twitter has an official page where you can find the code for an embeddable widget, complete with step-by-step instructions for installing it. Just go to http://twitter.com/downloads.
You can find an official Twitter application for Facebook, too, which means that you can make your Twitter updates show up as your Facebook status updates, or you can display a badge of your tweets on your Facebook pro- file. You can find the Twitter application for Facebook at http://apps.facebook.com/twitter.
The Google gadget works on Google Desktop, as well as the iGoogle personal home page product. You can install the Google gadget by clicking the download button at http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/twitter.html.
In our opinion, the key to Twitter happiness is mobility. You should be able to use Twitter anywhere, anytime, and any way that you want, including on your phone. You can get this mobility via SMS (which we talk about in the "Text messages (SMS delivery)" section, earlier in this chapter) or on the Twitter Mobile Web site at http://m.twitter.com. Twitter Mobile is missing a few of the regular, Web-based Twitter site's features (for example, you can't see your favorites or a list of your followers), but you can use it pretty much as you do the normal site.
If you have a higher-end phone, such as the iPhone or BlackBerry, you can try out a few downloadable Twitter apps. Apple's iPhone has a nice interface for Twitter, and you can find several options in the iTunes App Store that you can download to make Twitter on the go even easier. Some of these apps (such as Twinkle and TwitterFon) are free, some (such as Tweetie, which you can see in action in Figures 4-4 and 4-5) cost a few bucks, and some (such as Twitterrific) have both free and paid versions.
BlackBerry users have fewer applications at their disposal, including the extremely popular TwitterBerry (shown in Figure 4-6). BlackBerry users also have a challenge — the device's specialized browser can't display all the content on Twitter, such as photos and some links.
Tip
If you have a Windows Mobile phone, we recommend an application called ceTwit if you don't have a touch screen. If you do have a touch screen, look into an iPhone-like interface client called PocketTwit (made by Google Labs).
Everyone pretty much swears by the apps they love the best, and no user group is more enthusiastic than the iPhone crowd, whose debates over Twitterfon (free), Tweetie ($2.99), and Twittelator Pro ($4.99), among others, can keep a conversation going through several pints of beer at a tweetup.
These mobile Twitter apps barely scratch the surface of what you can find out there, and new ones are created fairly regularly. There's no real consensus on which is the best. Try out a few to see which ones you prefer. Again, once www.oneforty.com launches, we hope to have much better answers to your perennial Which app is best for. . . ? questions.
