We receive literally dozens of emails every week about new Twitter tools, applications, and different ways to use Twitter. Every Sunday (almost) we post a few of them for you all to try out and let us (and the developers who emailed us) what you think! Here’s this week’s list:
Datatoy – Turns tweets into charts. You can tweet about your visits to starbucks, calorie consumption, glasses of water you’ve finished… and Datatoy will automatically produce a graph for you. You can also use widgets to take it to your blog if you want to display your graphs to the world.
Twesents lets you send virtual gifts to your twitter friends. Everything from cutesy to risque, you can send gifts just like you can do on FaceBook.
ShortGPS – A new service that helps you save postal addresses or locations in a unique and short URL to exchange via tweets, email, or SMS. Locations can be changed via the Map and a satellite/hybrid version of the map are also saved into the URL.
Today’s roundup encompasses three Twitter related apps that are entirely different from each other, however are highly amusing for anyone interested. These were submitted to the editorial team and we try to highlight a few each week.
Motor Mouths
Essentially a “Rotten Tomatoes” for cars instead of movies, they’ve recently begun using Twitter to grow their web app. You can follow them @MotorMouths.
Radaroo
Tired of seeing the same faces on every online dating site you go to? Take it to Twitter with Radaroo. The idea behind it is that the usual dating sites don’t always give you enough info, but personally I see it as a way to connect with people whom you might not find on regular dating sites, and the 140 character “chat” limit might make it a little less daunting to introduce yourself to someone.
Twivial
Short and sweet, Twivial is a fun and easy way for people to play trivia on twitter. Players simply follow the @Twivia_bot and direct message it the answers. Points are determined based on how quickly players answer the questions.
TwitLookup – Just released, a new tool for twitter users which allows them to lookup dictionary, weather and more from twitter. They’re soon adding hashtags and support for other lookups shortly.
TweetIE – An extremely simple Twitter add-on for IE called TweetIE, it works for IE 6,7 and 8. FireFox plug-in is also available. When it is installed you can select a text on the web page and click a toolbar button, it will send a text as an update to your twitter account and attach a short URL of that page.
multiTwit – New, free widget lets you send tweets to multiple Twitter accounts at once. Helpful for those who just can’t get beyond their multiple twitter personality disorder, and need to have more than one account.
TweetBrain – A purposefully built crowdsourcing tool for the Twitter community. Many are using TB creatively for polling, contests, customer support, even educational purposes.
Twitpaper – Another site for 100% free Twitter themes, layouts, and backgrounds. Site claims to add 5-10 new themes a day and will also design custom themes for free.
Hey folks, another Sunday Roundup from a few suggestions made through the contact form for Twitter related sites and tools to check out. You may or may not be familiar with these, but each week I’m trying to feature three of the dozens that come in. – Lara
Pair your Twitter account with your favorite IM client (Yahoo, Windows/MSN, or Google Talk) with Twip.me (requires username and password for Twitter’s API). Uses simple calls to send your tweets to “twipme” and have them post to your Twitter status, @replies, or direct messages.
Chirbit aims to take “microblogging” to the next level with “micro-podcasting” where you can record short blips of audio, much like you would a 140-character tweet.
Tweetcloud’s goal is to quickly show users “what’s being said” across the Twittersphere or from a specific Twitter user through an intuitive interface (a cloud). Useful for searching #hashtags or by username and topic.
Hey folks, just wanted to make mention of a few suggestions some of you have made through the contact form for Twitter related sites and tools to check out. Many of these I’m sure you probably haven’t heard of yet. We get SO many of these, that I’ll likely be posting some every week. – Lara
Virgil Vo writes:
I’ve just recently created a new Twitter Application called Listento.fm. You can share both music and video files on Twitter. All you have to do is cut and paste a direct MP3 link or a YouTube/IMEEM link, as well as supplying the name of the artists and the title of the song. Upon doing so, a media page will be created and you can then share it with your followers.
Just a quick post about a new Twitter service called Twuulu, that connects your Hulu watching habits to your Twitter account.
In case you’re wondering, Hulu is a really cool service that lets you watch your favorite movies and television shows for absolutely free. Miss that last episode of Ugly Betty? Watch it anytime you want at Hulu.
Reminder: As one commenter below noted, Hulu is only available to US residents at this time. They’re working to resolve that, however it is a timely process of acquiring permissions for distribution and so on. Learn more at Hulu’s support page on geofilters.
by Lara Kulpa. Lara is the owner of Ginkgo Consulting, a web marketing and consulting firm. Follow her at @larakulpa.
Reader Question: My company recently started a Twitter account and we chose to have 3 “tweeters” in order to spread workload, include separate areas of expertise, and just give it variety. Do you think that a twitter account should always be (or at least look like) one person? Right now we describe each person in our bio. – Sean Robbins (@saucony)
As more and more businesses get into Twitter, this question is one that I’m sure many will struggle with. If the CEO of a company joins Twitter and decides to connect with people, that’s great. But the question is bound to come into a follower’s mind, “Is this really the CEO or is it someone acting on his/her behalf on Twitter?”
But what if your company has different types of products or services, geared toward different types of users? In that case, yes, I think it’s a good idea for multiple “company” twitter accounts. Let’s use the time-tested “widget company” for an example:
Widgetz is a company that manufactures, sells, and repairs widgets of many different kinds.
CEO of Widgetz should have a Twitter account to initially put a “face to the name”.
The VP of manufacturing should also have a Twitter account.
As should the VP of Sales.
And also the VP of Marketing/Advertising.
And definitely, the VP of the Repairs department too.
All five of these people bring different experiences with widgets to the table. They interact with the product differently, their day-to-day dealings with customers, suppliers, and retailers are entirely different. Therefore, they should be interacting with people differently, regardless if it’s on Twitter or not.
In the case of @saucony, the people using the account are currently adding their names to the end of each tweet. With only 140 characters available, they’re using valuable real estate to say who it is that’s actually responding, upwards of 8 characters worth! Having separate accounts would alleviate this.
The bottom line is that not only should multiple employees of a company be using Twitter, but they should have their own Twitter accounts. The “streaming” nature of Twitter makes it extremely difficult to have multiple people logging into one account to track follower questions or participate in a flow of discussion, without the follower being confused or unsure of exactly who he or she is talking to.
Just make sure that you’re all together avoiding overly repetitive tweets (or too many RT’s) and make sure that you’re not using Twitter with each other when you should be using an IM service. Not that you can’t interact with each other on Twitter, but keep it to a reasonable level.
Bonus Tip:Develop a Twitter landing page on your site that all the Twitter accounts link to in their profiles. There, you can explain the accounts and who’s behind them, all on one page. That’ll give you more chances to get visits to your site, and you may wind up encouraging followers to follow all members of your team on Twitter!
