Organizing your Twitter world with the right applications
Getting down to business with the help of Twitter tools
Connecting your Twitter account to your other online accounts
You need the right tools to get the most out of Twitter. New tools, services, Web sites, and applications are created for Twitter users every day, so the list of tools that you can choose from is always growing. To help get you started, we want to tell you about a few of our favorite examples, which give you a fun sampling that will give you some sense of different ways you can use Twitter.
Tip
Each time we tried to come up with a list of the top ten tools, we realized it's just not possible — too many great innovations are being built on Twitter's "platform." What is the best tool for you really depends on your needs, and, of course, popular new tools emerge all the time. Literally, because of this problem, Laura is working on a startup, www.oneforty.com, that will make it easy for anyone to find, use, and share the best Twitter-related applications and services. Stay tuned to that site for help making the most of your Twitter experience.
www.tweetdeck.com
Type: Desktop client
TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application that gives you the tools you need to keep track of large numbers of people in your Twitter stream. (For more on Adobe Air, see Chapter 9.) It allows you to put people in groups, keep permanent search windows open, view your Facebook account (and post to it selectively, as well), keep track of who's talking to you or about you, and much more. It does all this in a customizable interface.
Tip
Recent contender to the throne is Tweetie for Mac OS X (www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac) and iPhone (www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone), mainly because of the one-two punch of mobile plus desktop, combined with some favorite TweetDeck style features.
www.twhirl.org
Type: Desktop client
Twhirl is owned by Seesmic, a video messaging company that has fully integrated its video service into the new desktop application for Twhirl. Twhirl is missing a few key features for managing (and listening to) many followers, but it makes up for its shortcoming in the ability to have multiple accounts open at the same time. As this book went to press, Seesmic was publicly beta testing its Twhirl replacement Seesmic Desktop, which offers a great deal of new functionality.
https://cotweet.com
Type: Business dashboard
If you want a corporate solution that lets multiple users monitor and update a single account and displays all of your Twitter accounts in a single interface, you should look at CoTweet. Like the social media listening tool Radian6, CoTweet lets companies assign individual tweets to employees for follow-up. Still in beta (meaning that new features and functions are being added all the time), this service is hit or miss on features, but the planned feature set should take care of most of your company or organization's Twitter needs, from keeping organized and letting more than one person maintain an account to scheduling tweets ahead of time.
Tip
Make sure that you have full disclosure in your profile somewhere if you have multiple people tweeting for your company or you have a ghost tweeter tweeting for you. For shared accounts, authors usually sign the end of their tweets with an ^ and their initials.
Speaking of disclosure, Laura advises both CoTweet and a service named TipJoy that appears in Chapter 15. She played no part in selecting which companies to profile in these chapters and, in fact, only found out which ones Leslie and Michael chose just before the book went to press. Both CoTweet and TipJoy are unique innovators in their areas and got into the book on their own merits.
http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone http://code.google.com/p/pocketwit http://www.orangatame.com/products/twitterberry
Type: Smartphone clients
If you have a mobile phone, you may have trouble finding the perfect Twitter client. Even more frustrating, all carriers use different browsers and standards, making it impossible to find one client to fit all phones. Here are some of our favorites for each platform:
Tweetie: If you have an iPhone, Tweetie is the way to go. It's like having TweetDeck on your phone, in a slick iPhone interface. It also has a companion desktop client — an added bonus. (We talk about TweetDeck in the section "TweetDeck: Connecting with Many," earlier in this chapter.)
PocketTwit: For Windows Mobile phones that have touch screens, PocketTwit is made by Google Labs and offers several nice features, multiple-account management, and a nifty, avatar-included interface.
TwitterBerry: The current most popular solution for BlackBerry devices, TwitterBerry works with BlackBerry's proprietary interface, so you can easily tweet on the go. Laura whinges about how many basic Twitter features TwitterBerry lacks, but nothing great for the BlackBerry has taken its place. Yet.
Tip
Check your carrier's data and text charges before using these services. Twitter may be free, but some of the attached services may come with hidden costs for use if your phone is not already on unlimited data.
www.twellow.com
Type: Networking
Many directory sites have come and gone, but Twellow was the first. It doesn't have the sexiest interface, but it has a fantastic database of easily searchable, accurate information about people, companies, and categories.
Tip
Use more than one solution to find followers if you want to get a more interesting and beneficial demographic.
http://friendorfollow.com
Type: Networking
This Web site lets you see whom you're following, who's following you, and which follows are mutual — all in a nicely tabbed, avatar-based grid. And you can fix any follower/following discrepancies right from the site interface.
Tip
Don't unfollow people just because they don't follow you back. Twitter doesn't require you to follow someone back, and you never know whether that user might have just missed you. Try saying hi with an @reply to see whether you can get to know that person better.
http://twtvite.com
Type: Miscellaneous
This quick and easy Web site lets people tweet out their RSVP to your event. It then keeps track of who has RSVPed for you. This service offers the added bonus of marketing before the event while people tweet about their attendance.
Tip
Also make an EventBrite (www.eventbrite.com) or Facebook Event (www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2344061033) page to make sure that you're giving people a way to connect if they don't use Twitter yet.
It's worth mentioning that TwtVite parent www.TwtApps.com also offers eight more helpful and nicely integrated Twitter tools covering polls, jobs, greetings, travel, business, and even virtual pets.
http://twitterfeed.com
Type: Publishing
This handy service lets you schedule periodic scrapes of your blog for new posts, and then link these blog bits up on Twitter. Twitterfeed gives you a simple and easy way to drive traffic to your site or alert friends to a new post without having to remember to do it separately.
Tip
Set Twitterfeed to check your blog only every few hours to prevent your Twitter stream from seeming spammy.
www.twitpic.com
TwitPic is a popular image-sharing service for Twitter. Users can upload photos via camera or mobile phone and then share those photos on Twitter. You can also add comments on the pictures themselves.
http://xpenser.com
Type: Financial
Xpenser is a neat tool that integrates with sites such as FreshBooks (www.freshbooks.com) and applications such as Quicken to help you keep track of your business and personal expenses on the go. After configuring your account, simply send a direct (private) message to xpn to keep track of your spending. Now, reporting your business lunch or tracking your gas mileage is only a tweet away.
Tip
You can use Xpenser to get yourself in the habit of recording your expenses. Because the updates are made via direct message, you don't have to worry about your followers seeing the information.