For newer Twits, it may very well be. For those of us who were “early adopters”, we’ve got clearly different experiences. I remember Twitter before every television show and celebrity and news station had a Twitter account. Before every business went to crazy lengths to get followers. And before it became a place over-run with teenagers Tweeting about crazy sexual stuff. I remember when it was truly a networking place between colleagues, old and new. It was fun to go and see what some of the people I look up to in my field were reading or writing or talking about.

My personal feeling? There’s lots of clutter in Twitter these days. People who follow you in hopes of you following them back so they can increase their follower count, only to unfollow you if you don’t reciprocate, or once they’ve got you following them.

What do you think? Vote, and then discuss your answer in the comments!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Poll & Discussion: Is Twitter Still Awesome?

The tool Guy Kawasaki uses is Otweet, which is a paid web app that lets you schedule your tweets. Since Otweet is not free, you may be not interested, but luckily, there are some other similar and FREE web apps that let you schedule your tweets, among which, below 11 websites are the best for your reference:

1. CoTweet

You need to register before you can use CoTweet, which lets you schedule the tweets and send them right now or in any specific time to one or multiple Twitter accounts. You can read, reply or retweet the tweets of the mention/direct messages, your friends’ updates and your twitter lists. If the URL is shortened by bit.ly, you can see how many times it has been clicked.

2. Dynamic Tweets

You need to create a new account in Dynamic Tweets, then you can schedule the tweets and send them immediately, how many minutes/hours/days/weeks later, or in a specific time. You can add tracking code and spinnable text to every tweet. You can also send the tweet to multiple Twitter accounts at a time.

3. FutureTweets

You can register a new account, or log in with your OpenID. Once your Twitter account is verified, select your timezone, input the tweets, and then schedule the publishing time. There are 3 funny things you can do with FutureTweets: add some funny images to the tweets, flip the tweets, and set the time by moving the clock needles.

4. HootSuite

HootSuite lets you manage multiple Twitter accounts as well as your Facebook, your LinkedIn and your Ping.fm. You are able to attach pictures, videos and document to the tweets, to schedule and post the tweets to all the accounts at a time, to read, reply or retweet the tweets of twitter lists, and so on.

5. SocialOomph

SocialOomph was called TweetLater before. You can register a free account or a paid account. For free account, you can schedule how many minutes, hours, days, or weeks from now on the tweet will be posted to one or multiple Twitter accounts, but you can only schedule 12 tweets per hour.

6. Taweet

You need to sign in with Twitter OAuth and verify your email account, then you can schedule your tweets, post the tweet to multiple Twitter accounts one by one, read the tweets of your stream, replies, and direct messages, and so on. There will be a link added to every tweet you send from Taweet.

7. Twaitter

You can sign in with Twitter OAuth or your username and password. Twaitter lets you schedule public tweets and publish them in any time. And you can reply, retweet, or favorite the tweets, see if the tweeple follow you, manage your multiple Twitter accounts, and so on.

8. Tweet-U-Later

When you sign up, you will get an email address, to which you can schedule your tweets with Tweet-U-Later by sending emails. You are able to schedule public tweets as well as private massages, you are also able to schedule recurring tweets, but just don’t violate the Twitter rules.

9. TweetFunnel

You need to create a new account in TweetFunnel before you can schedule your tweets, which also can be published right now or held in the draft. You can see the tweets of home stream, mentions, direct messages and reply, retweet, or favorite them.

10. Twittontime

Sign in with Twitter OAuth, select your time zone, and then you can schedule your tweets. The Twittontime dashboard just looks like a calendar, you select a date, write down your tweets, and schedule the publishing time.

11. Twuffer

Sign in Twuffer with your Twitter username and password, select your timezone, and then you can schedule the tweets by hours, which means you are not able to set a specific time like 8:30 am, but only 8:00 am or 9:00 am.

Among the above 10 websites, HootSuite is my favourite, which one is yours? Or do you have any other nice similar web applications to schedule your tweets?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



11 Websites to Schedule Your Tweets Online for Free

Twicli is another service for posting photos to Twitter, yet it stands out from the rest with a set of very useful features.

Twicli is provided by Picli, a photo sharing site based on users’ votes, or “Photo-Digg” if you wish. Picli has adapted itself to the Twitter era with Twicli. They harness the features of a photo sharing site in a nice way.

How do I use it?

In order to start using Twicli, you first need to authorize it with Twitter. If you’re already signed into Twitter, then you only need to allow Twicli to access your Twitter account. Otherwise, you’ll need to sign in.

Afterwards, Twicli offers to synchronize your background image to the background image on Twitter. If branding is important to you, this is a feature you’ll appreciate.

Now that we’re in, we can start uploading photos. Twicli offers uploading of photos via the web and posting them on Twitter. You can also upload a set of photos. This way, the photos will be bundled in one URL that can be posted to Twitter. By using the set feature, you avoid flooding your Twitter timeline with too many tweets.

The more interesting option is uploading pictures via your mobile phone. Twicli allocates a special email address for this use. After taking a picture on your mobile phone, you simply send it via email. The picture is uploaded and gets a short URL. The picture’s URL is posted to Twitter together with the subject line of the letter.

Users of Twitpic or other Photo-Twitter services may ask themselves: what’s new here? Well, here come the advantages.

Twicli advantages

Apart from the option to upload a set of photos, Twicli allows publishing the photos in different sizes. This is a benefit taken from Picli, and very familiar to users of Flickr. The different photo sizes make it easy to find the right image for to embedding in a blog.

Another cool feature is the tags: Picli extracts the words from the subject line and turns most of them into tags. Using tags, we can easily find similar pictures. This is also used in the homepage – popular tags are highlighted there.

Maybe the best feature of Twicli are the comments: other Twitter users can comment on the photos, and the comments are posted back to Twitter. This tight integration empowers Twicli. This way, you can get to know other peole through the photos.

Twicli photo page – click to enlarge

Twicli also has an option to upload videos, but I haven’t tested it.

Twicli shortcomings

Twicli has a few minor usability issues. The file name of the photo is used for the title in the image page and also as a tag. The vast majority of people who take pictures with mobile phones don’t change the default file name. In my case, it’s just a long meaningless number.

Twicli offers a short URL as well as a permanent URL. I find it unnecessary, and even confusing.

The last shortcoming is the lackof an editing option. I would like to have the option to edit the title and the tags of my photos.

Twicli is still in beta, so I find these shortcomings minor in comparison to the advantages.

Out of all the photo services for Twitter, I find Twicli to be the best. Enjoy!

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Review: Twicli – Twitter Photos Improved

Image by Shaver

For centuries, “journalist,” “reporter,” and “newsman,” have been reasonably interchangeable. After all, a reporter often works for a newspaper or TV station, where they are employed to do journalism.

But recent trends in publishing and digital tools have required that we look at new definitions for these words. Being a journalist has started to mean being someone who ties stories together into a narrative, whatever the medium.

How do these differences apply to Twitter?

News

I see news as being different from journalism because news is just the facts (ma’am). Twitter is great for news, and there have been several cases where Twitter has established itself as the spot for breaking news.

Take the semi-recent explosion in virginia, or Amy Gahran’s experience tracking a tornado as examples.

Sure it’s fast. But is it always accurate? Is it Journalism?

Journalism

Journalism is different. Journalism requires that stories been constructed, facts be tied together, narratives presented, and context created.

In short, journalism is the big picture.

No one would argue that you can get the pig picture in 140 characters. But what about aggregate tweets? One person over a long time, or many people over a large subject?

Does election.twitter.com count as journalism? Watching it can certainly give you the 20,000 foot view.

The question

On Twitter more than any other new service the question arises: can you be a journalist? Is 140 characters enough to convey more than a headline would? Do multiple tweets make a narrative?

Is Twitter a viable, standalone medium for journalism? What do you think?

About the author: You can learn more about the future of publishing by following Jason’s thoughts on his blog, Eat Sleep Publish. Or you can just subscribe to his RSS feed. Follow Jason on Twitter at @jasonp107

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitizen Journalism: Can Twitter Be a Real News Platform?