2 days ago, I met my friend Sam Mutimer (@sammutimer) for lunch. We talked about blogging, conferences and social media over lunch. I left with the opportunity to work with her team at Thinktank Media (@thinktankmedia) when they roll out strategies for new clients.

I was quite surprised – especially as I use twitter to hang out and connecting with awesome people when I have the time.

How I Got The Job

I don’t remember how I met Sam, but she soon encouraged me to go the the tweetup she founded called Tweetupmellers(@tweetupmellers) . She was great at getting me to talk to new people and was really encouraging.

I kept in touch with Sam, helping her out and just talking about her projects. I also focused on connecting with more people from the tweetupmellers community. Fast forward to two meetups later, and she was talking about a new project and how she might be needing additional help for it. In the past month, she has hired 3 of the twums attendees and has discovered many others through twitter.
My job is only 8 hours a month – but I will have the opportunity to earn an income while setting up my blog. I’ll be able to accept more work when she gets new clients and I’ll get some training in the business side of the industry.
This wouldn’t have been possible without twitter. Here are my five tips:

1. Go To Tweetups
I can’t stress the importance of this. I went to the tweetups with the view to hang out with fun people that I’d been talking to for months. It has since turned into one of the best ways to get people interested in your work.
I’ve observed:

• Neil creek(@neilcreek) get several clients – and a lot of buzz – due to his Meetheads concept at the tweetup.
• People talking about possible joint ventures on new projects.
• People hiring those that they’ve met at a tweetup.

2. Provide Advice For Free
I would often send DM’s to Sam with ideas for her projects. These were little things and didn’t take that much time. She would always send a DM back thanking me and would occasionally seek me out for advice.

She told me how she had done a similar thing when starting out. She worked for free and soon developed a strong reputation. I have seen this work very well for people building a portfolio. My tip would be to make sure you get testimonials. I do this by favouriting the tweets that compliment my work and by seeking LinkedIn recommendations.
I’ve done this a lot off twitter – guest posts, emails with advice and even meeting people to help with blogging projects.

3. Connect With Connectors
There are some people who love connecting people. They thrive on helping people. Sam is one of them. She has hired a number of my twitter friends including @mr_billiam and @ttam.

This also worked for a local web designer, @richardhuf. I was asked by a friend, @frankinoz, if I knew anyone who could do wordpress PSD’s. I didn’t know anyone so just pumped out a tweet asking for recommendations. Richard responded and has helped Frank for reveral projects. Based on this, I referred him to Sam. I’m still waiting to hear if anything came out of the referral.

You can accomplish so much by just focusing on people who love connecting and helping them out. Sam has since hooked me up with several leading business authors to interview and review their products.

4. Make It Known That You Are Looking For Work
I didn’t actively seek employment but I often talked about how I wanted to get a job at the end of the year. This was a major goal of me and many of my twitter friends had been helping me out and encouraging me to develop new skills.
As a result, I’ve had several offers to exchange skills and the eventual job offer from Sam. All of this before I was even prepared to re-enter the workforce.

5. Offer To Help
I do this often and its led to a lot of opportunities. Most people will reciprocate when they can.
I offered to review @sarahprout’s Twitter Success Blueprint (published on Twitip). As a result, I found a new friend and mentor. @Braqueen offered to exchange blogging advice for a mini makeover. I sent feedback to @howtomakemyblog and now have a guest posting opportunity.

This can help people see your skills and ascertain whether they want to work for you. You don’t even have to do it for free – you can do it at a reduced price.

Have you had success on twitter?
I have been hearing many more stories of people finding work on twitter. I’d love to hear about your success in the comments.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



5 Methods I Used To Get A Job Through Twitter

Twitterific is the most popular Twitter client application for the Mac. It is simple, has a clean interface, and is easy and intuitive to use. It has some tradeoffs for this simplicity, as we will see. Twitterific can be used free of charge without limitation, but advertisements are displayed once per hour. If you pay the IconFactory $14.95 US, ads are removed. Twitterific is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, as well.

The Twitterific screen is completely resizable, and is usable even at its smallest widths and heights. It is possible to go into full screen mode with a keyboard shortcut. The white-on-black appearance may not be very eye-friendly to everyone.

As seen in the screenshot, replies and direct messages are a different color. Twitter errors are shown inline as a yellow box if you have configured your preferences to show them. If you are using the freeware version of Twitterific, advertisements are shown inline as well. Tweets that have been read are dimmed.

All of Twitterific’s options are available at the click of your mouse when a tweet is highlighted — user tools, replying to a tweet, and the person’s website. Buttons for going to your Twitter home page, preferences and refreshing are at the bottom left, next to the tweet entry area.

Twitterific has an extensive set of keyboard shortcuts that make using it even faster. There are only a couple actions that are keyboard only, and these are the standard Mac screen shortcuts such as command-W to close the screen.

The user tools are accessed by clicking on the gear symbol when a tweet is highlighted. As shown in the screenshot, most Twitterific actions are available from this one menu. Keyboard shortcuts are listed as a learning aid.

Here’s where some of Twitterific’s shortcomings become apparent. There is no way to easily retweet a message in Twitterific. You have to cut and paste, which is not that much of a pain, but something that would be easy to add to the program.

There are several important features that are missing in Twitterific that are common in other clients such as TweetDeck, iTweet, and Twhirl. There is no shortening of URL’s within the program, nor is there an interface with TwitPic, TwitScoop or similar programs or URL’s — however, Twitterific can update your status in iChat, Adium, or Skype when you post a tweet. Although you can favorite a tweet, you can’t display favorites, friends, followers, or a list of replies and direct messages. There is no grouping of people as there is in TweetDeck.

One of the strong points of Twitterific is its configurability. The preferences window has tabs for Tweets, Window, and System. Among the things that can be configured are:

• Download tweets from the public timeline or just the people you follow
• Refresh times from never to every hour
• Window transparency, shadow, font size, whether it is a normal window or floats above others, and whether it pops up on new tweets
• Expand or collapse tweets. Collapsing presents the tweets as a list. When you click on one, it expands.
• Automatically start Twitterific on login
• After posting a tweet, update status in iChat, Adium, and/or Skype
• Behavior when new tweets come in: keep the same view, most recent tweets, or last tweet selected
• Automatic login with last account used

You can also change the notification sound to four different bird twitters. Personally, I found them loud and intrusive, so I found a more polite bird sound and inserted it into the program. Let me know if you want to know how I did it!

The “Help” button is a disappointment: It only takes you to the IconFactory’s Twitterific page. I suppose they think that Twitterific is easy enough that help is not needed!

One of the things I have found most convenient about Twitterific is the ability to keep the same view when new tweets come in. That makes reviewing those hundreds of overnight tweets simple and easy.

Memory and CPU usage

This is an important consideration if you are using a Mac with limited resources. Twitterific’s memory footprint is quite small, and it uses a low amount of virtual memory. It uses very little CPU time except when checking for new tweets and making its notification sound. It plays very well with older Macs.

In comparison with TweetDeck (read our review of TweetDeck), Twitterific uses less than one-third of the memory, two-thirds of the virtual memory, and only 5 percent of the CPU time. Compared with Twirl, it uses half the memory, two-thirds of the virtual memory and only 10 percent of the CPU time.

AppleScript

Twitterific is unique among the Mac Twitter clients in that it supports AppleScript. For those that might not know, AppleScript is Mac OS X’s built-in scripting language. Twitterific’s support of AppleScript is pretty basic, just enough to send a tweet. But that means that you can write scripts that will send a tweet while using any other program.

Conclusion

Twitterific, for all its omissions, is as easy to like as it is to use. Although I have used other clients extensively, I keep coming back to Twitterific for its simplicity and its light load on my older Mac. It has many endearing features, mostly connected to its ease of use and configurability. It also has some annoying “features,” and some missing pieces that I hope will be fixed in the upcoming 3.2 version.

Pro’s of Twitterific

• Simple, clean interface
• Easy to use, intuitive
• Fast, no lag on redrawing images
• Flexible configuration
• Multiple accounts
• Small memory and CPU footprint
• Works well with older Macs and those with limited resources
• Replies and direct messages are in a different color
• Screen easily resized and is usable at any size

Cons of Twitterific

• No grouping or any way to just display favorites, replies, direct messages, friends, or followers
• No search function
• No retweet without cutting and pasting
• Loud and annoying notification sounds
• No interface with a URL shortener, TwitPic, etc.
• White on black screen may not suit everybody’s eyes

Have you used Twitterific as a Twitter Client? What is your opinion and user experience of it?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitterific Review

Back on November 10th, Darren did a reader poll where he asked, Do You Log Into Twitter.com To Tweet? So far, I sometimes use twitter.com and sometimes a client is in the lead with 430 votes. However, I always login to twitter.com is in second place with 247 votes. This review of Twhirl should provide insight into what those who are not using this client are missing.

Start From The Beginning:

Thanks to the API and the tremendous amount of third party support for Twitter, end users have a ton of options to choose from when it comes to accessing Twitter from something other than the Twitter.com website. There are FireFox extensions such as Tweetbar and TwitKit, sending tweets via cell phone etc. However, the focus of this review will be centered on Twhirl which is a desktop application built on top of Adobe AIR. In order to install and use Twhirl, you’ll need to first download and install the Adobe AIR framework.. Adobe Air is available for Windows 2000; Windows XP; Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise; and Mac OS X v10.4 or 10.5. The Linux release of Adobe AIR is under development.

Post Installation:

After Twhirl is installed, it will open up a dialog screen asking for your Twitter username and password. (Whether or not to trust third parties with your account username and password is fodder for another post but in my experience, Twhirl has not done anything unacceptable with my credentials.) The first thing you should do is provide Twhirl with a Twitter username. Once the username is added, select it and click on the Connect button. This should bring up the password box. After providing Twhirl your password, you should end up being logged into your Twitter.com user account. The next step is to configure Twhirl.

*Note* It’s important to note that Twhirl accepts multiple user accounts. You can even log into them at the same time. Twhirl will end up providing you a seperate status window for each account that you log into. I’d prefer a set of tabs that I can control from one main window but that isn’t supported at this time.

Configuration:

The configuration of Twhirl is separated by four distinct areas. General, Visual, Notify, and Network.

General: From this panel you can configure Twhirl to open the logged in account when the application starts, decide if Twhirl is always on top and to hide the window when minimized. This is where you can also decide if profiles are looked up through the application or in the browser by default.

Retweeting has become a popular way to rebroadcast information from one tweeter to another. However, the text that is part of the retweet count towards your 140 characters so it’s important to keep your retweet text as short as possible. For example, the default retweet configuration is Retweeting %s: %t. A better configuration I have seen people use is, RT %s: %t. The latter saves you 8 characters. This can be the difference between getting your message published or not.

Another strong point of Twhirl includes supporting the ability to post status updates to both Pownce and Jaiku. However, reading messages from these services is not yet implemented. Identi.ca is supported whereas in a future version, laconi.ca will also be supported.

Visual: As one could guess, the visual configuration deals with how the application looks and feels. This is where you can configure whether or not the tweet input is shown at the top, auto-hide the tweet input area, prefix tweets with sender’s name, and mark received tweets as new. The opacity configuration deals with how see-through the application window is when it is inactive. For instance, you can leave the Twhirl window open on your desktop with a low opacity value allowing the application to be less of a distraction. Only when the mouse cursor hovers over the window will the opacity reach 100%. The last option enables you to configure the font and size of the tweets. I’ve discovered that the Arial font is just fine but I prefer the size to be 12 versus 11.

Notify: This aspect of the configuration is all about messages received and messages sent. The first option, no notifications for old messages on start deals with whether or not you’ll see windows of old messages when you start the application. Disable this setting and restart Twhirl to get an idea of what I mean. The next option pertains to playing sounds and gives you a slider in which to control the sound volume. Sounds within Twhirl are heard after you receive the latest round of Tweets, Direct Messages, etc. Think of it as an audio queue. Personally, I have sounds turned off because Twitter by itself is distracting enough to the point that I don’t need to be continuously reminded to stickt my head in the stream.

The next option set is really cool and I recommend leaving it enabled. Notification windows are an excellent way to see the latest round of tweets or to view direct messages without having to see them within the application. For instance, I can have Twhirl minimized to the task bar but thanks to the notification windows, I can be kept updated without looking at the actual time line. I suggest fine tuning this option as it serves as yet another distraction. In my own use case, I configured Twhirl to only show me notification windows for direct messages or replies as those are the most important messages that I don’t want to miss. The last option provides a means of configuring how long the notification windows should be displayed. If you have quick eyes, you won’t need to edit this but in all other use cases, 4-6 seconds seems to be a good amount time.

Network: The network portion of configuring Twhirl is probably the most important aspect since it describes how the application behaves with the Twitter API. As it stands, the API limit for requests per hour is 100. Twhirl only allows a maximum of 80/req per hour, even if the box for following the reduced API limits is unchecked. The three sliders at the bottom determine the amount of time a request is made for a particular kind of tweet. If you are a heavy Direct Messenger, move that slider farther to the right. If you are more into replies, move that particular slider over to the right. With the way I use Twitter, I configure Tweets and Replies to update every two minutes while direct messages update every three minutes. While not real-time, this is close enough for me.

One thing to keep in mind is that the API limit is per account, not per client.

Almost Done:

Now that you have the application configured, it’s time to make it look better. With Twhirl opened, click on the logo in the top left hand corner. This will open up the account manager. Click on the colors tab. This will allow you to choose between 14 different color schemes. Personally, I enjoy the Into The Dark theme. While the official Twhirl website does not provide an area to download user generated color schemes, making your own is as easy as editing the XML files of the default scheme. I’ll explain how to do this in a future post.

Once you’re styling and profiling, you can either choose to change the language of the software from English to German, Italian or Spanish. Or, you can click on the Update tab that tells you which version of the client you’re using, a way to check for updates and a link to view the changelog. After you work your way through those tabs, you’re all set to start tweeting away at the luxury of your desktop.

Conclusion:

There are many choices for you to choose from when it comes to accessing Twitter from the outside. Twhirl just happens to be my favorite. This application serves as an excellent example as to what is possible using the Adobe Air Framework as a base for desktop applications. Considering Twhirl was acquired by Seesmic, INC. back in April of 2008, I see nothing but great things for this simple yet extremely effective application.

This Review of Twhirl was written by Jeff Chandler (@jeffr0) who is currently a writer for Performancing, BloggerTalks and is the host of two podcasts, WordPress Weekly and Perfcast.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twhirl [Review]

Once you’ve voted – tell us which client you use in comments below.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Do You Log In to Twitter.com To Tweet? [POLL]