I’ve previously written about Twitter’s behavior towards its third-party developers and the risks they’re taking if they focus only on developing Twitter-based tools (See Twitter Commits Suicide and Twipocalypse Now). The bottom line is that building a business that is entirely dependent on a single partner isn’t a safe model to follow.

Surprise, Surprise?

So, should Twitter’s actions come as any surprise?

Yes! And, No.

Yes, because Twitter was built on the backs of tens of thousands of third-party developers who added much need functionality and played a key role making Twitter what it is today. These third-party developers, along with the broader Twitter community, were the ones who implemented hash tags, RTs, @ replies and many of the features that Twitter now takes for granted. Even Evan Williams, one of Twitter’s co-Founders, admitted as much at the 2009 TED Conference. See the embedded video below (thanks to Tac Anderson reminding me about this in his post Twitter Grows Up Figures Out Its Business Model And Doesn’t Need You Anymore).

And, No, because there has been ample warning about the risk of developing for Twitter – just read my posts mentioned above, and I certainly was not alone. Also, in their announcement, Twitter stated that enterprise tools such as Seesmic and HootSuite and special-purpose apps are welcome.

So, why is Twitter doing this?

For some insight, consider the following:

• Usage: While Twitter claims that 90% of users are using official Twitter apps, the blog Mashable disagrees claiming that only 58% of Twitter users access the service through official Twitter apps. That leaves a whopping 42% who never see the Twitter home page or those Twitter apps. This means that 42% of Twitter’s users may never see any of the various advertising features that Twitter has been counting on to actually justify its valuation.
• Money: Investors have poured $360 Million into the company over the past 5 years and it’s easy to understand why they might want an out. While these investors certainly could find eager buyers for their shares, they want to maximize their returns. That means pumping up the valuation of the company and finding an appropriate buyer who can afford it.

Buyer Beware

Unfortunately, there aren’t too many adequate suitors for the company, especially when it has a rumored price tag of $8-10 Billion. In order to justify that valuation Twitter needs to do the following:

• Work the kinks out of its advertising model so it can maximize ad revenue. To do this, Twitter needs to…
• Increase the number of people who use Twitter properties, thus maximizing exposure to those ads. To do this, Twitter needs to…
• Get those users to stop using third-party apps and “come home.” To do this it needs to…
• Kick those third-party apps out of the loop. This ultimately means putting an end to the Twitter ecosystem. To do this, Twitter needs to…
• Prevent third-party app developers from getting into the game and making conditions for those who are already there too difficult for them to operate, thus they’ll be forced to close down. To do this, Twitter needs to…
• Add more features to its properties. Something it’s already been doing.

My Prediction

I could go on, but to me the path is clear; within the next 12-24 months, as Twitter slowly improves its mobile apps and website, it will eventually cut off ALL third-party apps including TweetDeck and Seesmic. Then, once its numbers (traffic and review) demonstrate clear upward momentum, it will be sold to the highest bidder. Perhaps after that, Twitter’s new owners will remember the goldmine of innovation that Twitter’s third-party developers provided the company and invite them to return

One can only hope.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Neal Wiser is Vice President of Digital Strategy and Operations at The ODM Group where he leads teams in the creation and execution of digital marketing campaigns. You can follow Neal on Twitter (his handle is @NealWiser). Neal is also the Cofounder and Co-host of the Addicted to Social Media podcast.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Twitter’s Black Friday Signals an Exit Strategy

The difference between marketing methods of old and social media marketing is that customers have a say. The success of a social media campaign is dependent not upon how much money is spent, but upon the people being marketed to. If the message works and they like the product, the masses will Tweet it to the rest of the masses. If it doesn’t, the campaign might not even get past the initial push, and will likely spiral into oblivion.

It’s All about the People

There’s one factor that you can’t control, and that’s people. Knowing that, you have to make the most of what you can control, which are the tools at your disposal. In this case, we’ll be talking Twitter, but it also works for Twitter, Facebook, Email Marketing, and video.

So how can you use Twitter for a product launch? Well, there are the obvious methods, such as using the TweetMeme plugin on your blog and product pages. People love to click these because it’s so simple, and I’m really amazed when I find a blog that doesn’t use it.

Forcing Your Hand

Another option is to create your own banner, with a built in link pointing to your launch page. Again, this works well because people can simply click and go…there’s no work involved. My friend Mike and I implemented this recently for our launch and within just a few days have noticed a huge difference in the buzz around our product.

But just creating the banner might not be enough. If you want to create a contest or track the amount of ReTweets, you’ll need a hashtag or custom URL. We created both, so that we could track each message that we create. This is an example of setting a control, so that you can not only track the results, but split-test what works best. If one hash tag isn’t working well, you can try another. If one of your URL’s isn’t seeing the amount of on-page action that you’d like, you can adjust your copy to fix it.

Real Time Tracking

Once you have your campaign in place, and you’ve set the parameters, you need to find a way to track the activity. This is where Twitter Search comes in quite handy.

However, since I’m not a huge fan of Twitter’s interface, I prefer to use clients like Tweet Deck or Seesmic to create custom searches. Of course, I’ll create a panel for my hashtag and possibly my URL, but I don’t stop there.

The next step is to set up a Google Alert, using those same queries, so that you can catch any instances that Twitter Search might miss. This also allows you to capture the activity of sites like Topsy, which republish popular Tweets. Although Twitter Search will capture most of your action, Google Alerts will pick up the stragglers for you.

Real Time Display

Lastly, if you really want to take advantage of Twitter to capture the buzz and hype around your product launch, then it’s time to show the world what everyone is saying. You can do this easily by creating a custom search (they call them groups) in Tweetizen and then embedding the results on sales and contest pages.

This does a number of things for you:

• It provides social proof
• It creates scarcity, which is a great way to capture a buyer’s attention
• It creates a sense of belonging when people see their name in the results

I’ve seen a number of products use this recently, and even as someone that’s used to seeing this sort of thing, I was impressed by the sense of belief I had when viewing the results.

The Total Package

If you implement these techniques in your launch, you’ll have a set of controls that you can test and manipulate, which will help you know very quickly if your launch is going to be a hit. If you don’t see the activity you were hoping for, then you can either adjust your campaign or scrap it for another.

If you pull it off, and the launch builds momentum, then you might get lucky enough to make the Twitter Trends list or get featured on a social media blog, like Mashable.

The great thing about strategies like this, is that you don’t need any cash to get started, yet you can compete with anyone on the Web. Now that’s power.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



How to Use Twitter for a Product Launch

I recently got myself a brand new twitter account! Yeah I can hear the gasps already, ‘How could I abandon my followers like that’? Well before we get judgmental and call me a Twitter traitor, let me tell you about my old account and what prompted my move.

The Twitter Trap

I joined twitter for the first time about a year ago, at the time I was just getting into social media – a relative newbie. I was however savvy enough to know that the info was out there for me to find, so I set out to learn how to use twitter properly. I started learning how to get followers as well as who to follow myself, I read about how to tweet, when to tweet and what to tweet. I joined all the ‘popular’ twitter services, Twollow, Twitter Grader (and many others), I tried out TweetDeck and Twhirl. I was steeped in Twitter culture and my account was growing by leaps and bounds. Before I knew it I had 5000+ followers and was following over 4500 people. My twitter client was always on and I was tweeting 20, 30 or more times a day, I was talking to all sorts of people about all sorts of stuff. And despite all of this I was finding that I was not really satisfied with the whole twitter experience. Where were the deep connections that all the ‘experts’ were talking about where was the ‘value’, why was I doing this anyway? Sound familiar?

I didn’t really understand what the problems were until I decided to engage in a retrospective of my Twitter experience. For those who don’t know this is a software development concept where you look back and try to identify problems to see what can be improved (as well as identifying things that went well so that you can keep doing them). I identified several problems and I believe these don’t just apply to me but to many people who join twitter and get caught-up in the excitement before they really know what’s what.

The Issues (Almost Everyone Faces)

• Mass following people. I don’t mean mass following spammer-style, but following dozens of people a day is still mass following. You don’t really know who you’re following, there is no time to find out, and you don’t know why you’re following them, you just know you need to follow people, all the experts say so.
• Following people for no other reason than to get a follow-back.
• Following everyone that anyone recommends.
• Not filtering your own list of followers. Who else is being followed by several hundred bots and spammers (don’t be shy raise your hand, you know it’s pretty much all of you)?
• Spamming your followers twitter stream with anything and everything you can find. What you’re doing, what you’re reading, what other people are doing and reading, all day long…
• Retweeting not because you like the content, but because you need something to tweet and if someone else retweeted it, then it must be great.
• Relying completely on a twitter client (TweetDeck) because there is no other way to keep a handle on your account
• Making at best superficial connections with your followers, and at worst no connection at all.

This is where I was and this is where I think many people are. Your twitter account is bloated with thousands of useless followers, people you never engage with, people who you don’t really care about and who don’t really care about you. You never see 99% percent of your stream since you get hundreds of tweets per hour despite the fact you’re on twitter all the time.

What Others Were Doing

Then I heard about a new trend where some people would try to ‘restart’ their account by un-following everyone they were following. I found that I had an ethical problem with that, it seemed somewhat duplicitous to un-follow people like that, after all you were both playing the game (follow me and I’ll follow you), but you decide to change the rules without telling everyone else. And what’s the point anyway, all you get is hours of effort wasted un-following everyone, but the people following you care about you just as little as they did before. This is where I had a revelation. Rather than ‘restarting’ your current account, why not phase it out and get yourself a new one. You give all your followers the opportunity to keep following you on your new account as you slowly abandon your old account over the course of a few weeks. You get to keep the followers who actually care about you and you get the benefit of a clean new account.

The Brand New Account

So we’re back at the start of this post, I’ve got myself a brand new twitter account. These days, I am not a social media newbie any more, in fact I am pretty savvy. I’ve read all the experts and have drawn my own conclusions I know how to handle a Twitter account (or any social media account for that matter). Does THAT sound like you? Well, here is what you get from a brand new twitter account:

• An opportunity to rebrand any way you like. Choose an account with a handle you actually want to be known by.
• You no longer need to mass follow anyone, you know exactly where that leads. Only follow people you you’re actually interested in following. You can’t make a connection with someone you don’t care about.
• Talking about connections, you finally have the opportunity to make some genuine ones, because you only follow people you actually want to connect with and there is few enough of them that you have the time.
• You can tweet what you feel like and what you think is worth tweeting as you no longer need to ‘satisfy’ your ‘fans’. If you tweet great content – fine. If you tweet inane bon mots – also fine. Oh and only retweet content you actually like, you even have time to read it now.
• You can follow your twitter stream on the web! Throw away your twitter client (if you want).
• You can filter your account mercilessly. No more bots or ‘money experts’ following you, give the Twitter ‘block’ feature a real workout.
• Spend 15 minutes in total on twitter per day and still get more value from it than you used to.

At the end of the day what you really want is for people to follow you because they care about what you have to say, not because they expect a follow-back. Sure you won’t get a massive account with 1000s of followers (who knows though, you just might, you may be that interesting). What you will get is an account which is almost a community, an account where you can engage 90% of your followers when you tweet as opposed to 1%. That’s powerful, considering that to engage 90 people you would need to have 100 people following you, whereas with your old account you would have needed to have 9000. I’ll leave it to you to decide which you would rather have.

In the meantime I am enjoying my brand new twitter experience. Feels a little like a breath of fresh air, refreshing, fun and liberating. Send me a tweet if you like and I’ll reply, because I care about what you have to say, and I can keep track of my whole stream, from the web, with no trouble and minimal time investment. Can you?

[image credit: tomsaint]

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Why You Should Start Over On Twitter With A BRAND NEW Account

Twitter can be a great space for building community around your membership-based organization, whether you work for a professional society, trade association or a cause-related nonprofit.

Here’s a quick eight-step rundown of how to set up a Twitter account for your “.org”. This isn’t the only way, of course. But if you are starting from scratch, this is what we’re finding works the best.

1. Set up a main “umbrella” account for the organization – e.g. @ORGtweets or just @ORG (“ORG” being whatever your acronym is).

Why? So people can find you easily. In the description, put in a nutshell what the organization does. A mission statement in under 140 characters, for example. (Be pithy – people like that. There are lots of other places you can be boring). For the website link field of the profile, create a Twitter landing page on your website which says, “Welcome to the Twitter page for [ORG]! We’re glad you’re here. Here’s what we’re all about. Here are some of the things we tweet about. And here are our team members, should you be interested in following them too.” Then list your staff on Twitter as per #2.

2. Give your staff their own individual accounts – e.g. ORG_Bob, Maggie@ORG, etc. If you have several staffers already on Twitter with their own followers, allow them to use their accounts for tweeting on your behalf, assuming they are willing to do that.

Why? because people want to see individual people representing their organizations. There can be backlash when that doesn’t happen. Presumably each staffer will have their own personality, their own things they like to tweet about personally and professionally, and they will also have their own content that they are responsible for – namely PR, or marketing, or advocacy, or publications, or events. Each person will grow their own followers independently – and can share them under the umbrella account as they go along (see #5.)

3. Use a multiple Twitter account client to manage your accounts.

Why? Because it’s MUCH easier than signing in and out of accounts all day. SplitTweet works great, as do HootSuite and CoTweet (currently in private beta).  All these services allow you to monitor multiple accounts at the same time – so your team can choose to tweet something to their individual accounts and the umbrella account, or just to one at a time.  SplitTweet has a cool “track your brand mentions” feature; CoTweet allows you to tag your replies as being from a particular person, and allows you to assign responses to team members. HootSuite has great analytics and intelligent search for Twitter conversations. All three are always improving and evolving as professional Twitter use grows, and there may be a new multiple account application on the scene by the time this post appears, so just find the one that has the functionality you need.

4. Ask each staffer to follow people who tweet regularly about your industry or cause, as well as actively Tweeting members, donors, or other stakeholders.

Why?  Because Twitter is about conversation – and directed conversation can build community.  Find those other interested Tweeps simply by using Twitter search for your particular industry keywords, your organization name mentions, even competitor or sister organization mentions.  Twitter directories like Twellow , We Follow , and Twibs allow you to find people based on tags or types of business.  Each staffer should find their own relevant people to follow, based on their particular interests or area of expertise.  If you have members, or an email list of any kind, use Twitter’s own import function to import emails and find those members already on Twitter (only do a few at a time).  Look for names you recognize, or clearly active Tweeters (you can tell by the number of updates, friends and followers they have).  You only need to find a few key active stakeholders – others will come with them when they start to interact with you.  Ask those you have a good “real life” relationship with to help you spread the word about your new presence on Twitter.

5. Under the umbrella account, periodically retweet items from your team members as well as from their followers/friends.

Why? To show a coherent stream of content where visitors can immediately see what you’re about and that different people speak for you in different ways. If managed well, you can follow relevant public conversations between team members under the umbrella too – conversations that might draw people in to whatever topic you are discussing. Retweeting good stuff by people who are part of your network gives them an ego boost and shows them that it’s not all about you, that you’re paying attention to what they are talking about, that you’re interested in learning from them too.

6. Got an annual conference or big fundraising event? Use hashtags to enable your registrants and anyone else to find you through your event promotion.

Why?  Because the buzz leading up to and during face-to-face events can bring your organization into focus and can attract new people to your cause. Tweet lots of good stuff about how cool your event will be and use and promote a specific designated hashtag for it. Remember to publicize the hashtag in your other promotional materials too. We’re often asked about whether it’s a good idea to set up a separate Twitter account (as opposed to a hashtag) for a conference – this can work too, but a hashtag is more easily found in search, will trend if you have lots of people Tweeting the event, and allows you to differentiate between annual conferences from year to year – e.g. #Tech09 versus #Tech10.  Also, the staff members who have built a following on Twitter will stay visible and won’t be hidden under a conference account. They will each be enabled to add their own personal takes on the conference, by talking about the particular sessions they are attending and the things they care about from their individual (professional) viewpoints.If you set up a new account for each conference, you are basically starting from zero friends and followers each time – and it takes time to build those networks.

7. Bottom line:  Share great content.

Why?  Because great content sparks word of mouth, and word of mouth (you guessed it!) builds community.  Ask each staffer to take responsibility for sharing links with interesting and useful information relevant to their specific areas of expertise.  Encourage them to engage in conversation with their Twitter networks, respond to things other people are tweeting about, retweet links and tweets from people outside your organization as well as your own; don’t be afraid to actually converse about topics of interest. Find champions within your networks to help you spread the word about specific issues. Use your umbrella account to corral it all in a place where people can find it easily. Community builds around shared interests, but only if you nurture it and feed it, which means listening as well as talking.

8. Bonus: Benchmark and measure!

Why?  So you can see how it’s all going and know when it might be necessary to put in a bit more effort or move up to the next level of awesomeness. Benchmark and measure your progress using whatever metrics make the most sense to you.  Number of followers, organization links retweeted, new registrants to your events, etc.  There are lots of specific Twitter analytics apps out there, but measure engagement in other ways too.  Building community online is all about building community offline.

That should be enough to get you started!  Here are a couple places to find examples of associations and nonprofits on Twitter, as well as three related posts from Twitip that dig a bit deeper into Tweeting for organizational use.  Tweet on!

Associations on Twitter
more associations on Twitter
Nonprofits on Twitter
more on nonprofits using Twitter

TwiTip Resources:
Building an Effective Business Profile on Twitter
Tips for Brands and Nonprofits
How To Handle Multiple Users Within Your Company

[Image by Maggi_94]

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



8 Steps For Building Community On Twitter: Tips For Membership Organizations

Here’s a quick list of 5 that have enhanced my own use of Twitter this year and why:

1. TweetDeck

TweetDeck has become my primary Desktop Twitter client over the last 6 months of the year and has quite literally changed the way that I Tweet on a number of levels.

One of the biggest impacts that it has had is in the way that it builds ‘groups’ into my twitter workflow. This has helped me immensely to manage the noise that is associated with following and being followed by thousands of people.

Groups enable you to select any number of Twitter users to follow in a special window. This means that if you miss their twees in the ‘all tweets’ timeline you are likely to see their tweets in the group you’ve set up.

Also powerful in TweetDeck is the ‘Search’ feature which enables you to track keywords and who is using them right from within your Twitter Client.

I’m also a big user of TwitScoop so having the ability to have it included in a window within the client is handy too.

I guess as I think about it – the reason I like TweetDeck is that it enables me to use a variety of tools that could be accessed by a variety of services – all within the one client. I’m not constantly having to run to a search tool, logging into TwitScoop, checking individuals twitter pages – it’s all happening on my desktop in the one application.

I also love that it can be run quite effectively in a single column view or opened up to a more comprehensive one across the full screen.

The fact that TweetDeck is still only at version 0.20b excites me – there’s obviously a lot more to come!

TweetDeck is my Twitter application of the year!

2. Twitterlator Pro

Another massive change in my use of Twitter mid year was when I started using the iPhone as my primary mobile phone. I’d been looking forward to this for a long time (Australia only got the iPhone with the new 3G version.

Being able to Tweet from the road, local cafe, while waiting for the Train, at the football…. etc was quite a new experience and so I needed an iPhone Twitter client that was up for the job.

I tested them all – starting with the free applications and then progressing to the paid ones. I settled on Twitterlator Pro (itunes url) for a number of reasons.

Perhaps the biggest reason was the ‘replies’ page. Again – my biggest challenge with Twitter is that I am following a lot of people – so to follow the timeline for everyone that I follow is just not practical. When on my iPhone I tend to live more in the ‘replies’ section and Twitterlator Pro has one of the best of these.

I also love that you can manage multiple Twitter accounts from the one application, that you can see Twitpic pictures within messages, that it has a ‘nearby’ feature to find out who is twittering close by – etc. Many of these features can be found within other iPhone Twitter clients but for me Twitterlator Pro simply ‘fits’ with my Twitter workflow.

Note – there is a notable up and coming iPhone Twitter client that could just take the place of Twitterlator Pro.

In the last month or so Tweetsville (itunes url) was launched and while I’m hooked on Twitterlator Pro Tweetsville (website) has been getting more and more of my iPhone Twittering attention because – well, its got most of the features that I use on Twitterlator Pro but just seems more intuitive.

It’s in its early versions so still has room to improve but I suspect will become my #1 iPhone application in 2009 – the only reason I didn’t name it in my main list is because I’ve been using Twitterlator Pro for six months and so it’s really been more useful to me this year than the one month I’ve had with Tweetsville.

3. TwitterBar

I almost overlooked this application when planning this list – simply because it’s become such a part of my Twitter workflow that it has almost become invisible.

TwitterBar is a Firefox Add-on that allows me to share links on twitter from the address bar of Firefox.

As I’m surfing – if I find a site that I like and want to share all I do is simply add a few words that I want to include with the link to the address bar (before or after the URL) and then click a tiny little grey button to the right of the address bar. Doing this posts the URL and my message to Twitter.

If I’m not sure if I have enough characters left I hover the cursor over this little grey button and it tells me how many I have left.

There are other tools for sharing URLS on Twitter and I’ve tested many of them – but this little add-on is quick, easy, quick and unobtrusive…. and I use it 10-20 times a day!

4. TwitterFeed

I know some on Twitter don’t like tools that automatically post links from blogs – but…. well I’m a blogger and my Twittering centers around blogging. Add to that that most of my followers are online when I’m asleep because I live in Australian and I needed a tool that would do what TwitterFeed does.

In short – TwitterFeed checks the RSS feeds to my blogs every hour (you can change this frequency) and if something new has appeared in the feed it takes the link and tweets it for me. It allows me to customize the tweets so I can add a little message (“New from TwiTip:” for example) so followers know what the link is.

There are options for what is shown (you can show the title, title and description and description only) and you can even filter your tweets by keywords (so that only some links get posted).

TwitterFeed offers you a range of URL shortening services – I use Tweetburner (twurl) which allows me to go to Tweetburner and check what links are being clicked on most (handy to know as a blogger interested in tracking what posts are connecting with readers most).

Again – there are other tools out there including some good WordPress plugins that do it from your blog – but I use TwitterFeed because…. well it works (99% of the time).

5. TwitScoop

This is another tool that I’m constantly looking at (more than I realize). As mentioned above – I use it largely because it is built into TweetDeck but do use the actual site too.

There are a number of things that I use it for including:

1. It’s my newspaper in the morning – one of the first things I do in the morning is to check TwitScoop to see what is ‘hot’. I’m amazed how much news I find through it over my morning coffee.

2. As a blogger is is a fantastic tool for watching for hot trends and topics that are being discussion right now. A number of times I’ve been able to break stories simply by watching what is ‘buzzing now’.

3. Conferences – it’s also quite useful when you’re at a conference, listening to a speaker or tracking a live event to see what people are saying about it.

Other tools that I’ve been using:

There must be hundreds of Twitter Applications and Tools available now so the above 5 just scratch the surface. I’d love to hear your own Top 5 list in comments below.

Before you do – here’s a few others that I use from time to time.

• TweetBurner – as mentioned above, I use this to shorten urls and track what gets clicked on (TwitClicks is another of these).
• Twhirl – I used this a lot at the start of the year and still do on occassion – but TweetDeck has taken it over.
• Tweetlater – I only use it occassionally but it is useful if you need to set a Tweet to go off later.
• MrTweet – everyone’s been raving about this new service lately – it recommends people for you to follow based upon your network.
• TweetBeep – free twitter alerts for keywords
• TweetScan – another alerts tool
• TweetStats – interesting stats on your twitter useage

OK – so it’s over to you – what are your Top 5 Twitter Applications and Tools for 2008?

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



5 Twitter Applications and Tools that Made Me a Better Twitter User in 2008

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]

Tweetdeck is an Adobe Air desktop application used to access Twitter. Tweetdeck is available for the Windows and MAC operating systems. It is made of panes that allow you to take the enormous amount of information contained within Twitter and break it down into parts that are more easily managed.

Default Panes:

• All Tweets – All the people that you are following.
• Replies – All @ messages sent to your username
• Direct Messages – All personal d messages sent to your username

More panes can be added by using Tweetdeck’s features, such as Groups, and can be rearranged by moving them to the left or the right.

Integrated Features:

Search – The search used by Tweetdeck is http://search.twitter.com Followers or all twitter users can be searched and the results open up in a new pane. I frequently run a search on WordPress to discover new resources, help individuals who are having problems, and locate work.

Twitscoop – Twitscoop reports the hot trends on Twitter in a tag cloud format and also lists the top 10 keywords. While writing this some of the top tags are iowa penn, quaker oatmeal (I have no idea what that’s about), and nzelection.

12 Seconds – 12 Seconds is an online service for video status updates. It currently can only be searched by username. As it is still in private beta, it is not particularly useful for the majority of Twitter users.

Groups – Groups allows you to organize your followers into managable chunks. This feature is what makes Tweetdeck outshine other Twitter applications. Once you get above 300 individuals in your network it is difficult to keep up with the rapid flow of information.

I currently have three groups; Network, Soccer and Philly. Network includes those who I’ve worked with, had extensive discussions with and those that I want to learn from. Coincidentally, when I took the screenshot, Darren was feeling “easy like Sunday morning”. I am a Soccer/Football fan so this group contains other fans and soccer related news. I have to be very careful with this group when I miss a match and don’t want to know the score. Finally, I live in Philadelphia, PA so I have a Philly group that contains other people who live here and local news. Recently we had a discussion about the proposed city budget and what we could do to stop 11 branches of the library from being permanently closed.

Settings and Preferences – Tweetdeck contains a limited number of settings and preferences.

Refresh – Refresh is a manual update of tweets if you don’t want to wait for the application to update. Doing this too frequently can cause you to exceed the API limit.

Single Column View – This setting allows you to reduce the application to the leftmost pane. I use this to reduce the amount of space the application takes or if I just want to monitor replies to me.

Tweets/Alerts – This is used to set notifications and sounds.

Colors/Fonts – If you don’t like the default black and gray, you can change the color scheme. The application does not currently contain Themes so setting new colors takes some creativity.

Twitter API – This is an important setting. It allows you to set how much of the Twitter API is used for all messages, replies, and direct messages. If you are running Twitter into other programs, such as integrating your status with Facebook or displaying Tweets on your blog, you can easily exceed the rate limit and not get updates for some time. I had a problem with this because of a WordPress plugin I was using. I reduced my API usage to 30% total, uninstalled the plugin, and am slowly increasing my usage.

Issues

While the integrated features, especially Groups, make Tweetdeck an indispensable program for the power user it is not without it’s problems.

Memory Usage – I have had Tweetdeck open for 5 days and it is using over 600MB of memory. I have heard people report 1GB of usage. If you leave your computer and Tweetdeck running all of the time, you will have to restart it periodically.

Groups

1. If you accidentally close the group pane, you will lose that group and it is necessary to recreate it. Once you have a large network, scrolling through all of the users to recreate the group is tedious. This is more of an inconvenience but for some reason I closed one of my groups twice in the last week. This, however, may be a sign of my own incompetence.

2. Additionally, it is best to wait 24 hours of actively running Tweetdeck before creating a group. Why? Because people in your network will not show up in the list until they tweet. It generally takes 24 hours for everyone to say something at least once.

3. Something I only noticed recently is that all users show up in the list for creating a group even if you have unfollowed them. This is frustrating because it increases the number of users to scroll through when creating the group.

Size

Tweetdeck, even with only 3 panes open, is a big program. Even the author says that is best used on a second monitor.

Overall, Tweetdeck is one of the best 3rd party applications for for Twitter access and management. If you haven’t tried it already, give it a go and let me know it if worked out for you.

Download TweetDeck for yourself here.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



TweetDeck [Review]

The tool I’ve chosen for our first group review is a Twitter client called Toro .

Toro (it’s in beta) is described as ‘Toro is a Twitter client that is made to be simple. Toro is currently using an experimental Twitter client library that removes the Twitter API limit.’

It is an AIR application (so you’ll need to install that before you set up Toro).

I’ve only just downloaded it but it is being described in tweets I’ve seen about it as a ‘lighter’ and simpler alternative to TweetDeck. My initial tweets have all worked and I’m seeing regular updates coming in. There is an Unlimited API call on this application which will make it attractive to heavy Twitter users.

Feature wise it all looks fairly standard – there are tabs for ‘Recent’ (those you follow), ‘Public’ (everyone), ‘Friends’ (for your friends profiles – seems to be limited to 180), ‘Replies’ (to see recent replies to you) and ‘Search’ (to search tweets). You can Tweet from the bottom of any of these tabs.

Also interesting is that Toro has an inbuilt ‘feedback’ area where users get two votes for every new version released. They can use those votes to vote on what the next new feature of Toro should be.

I’m looking forward to testing Toro over the next few hours but am also looking forward to your reviews of it in comments below (or feel free to tweet or blog your reviews – just leave a link to them in comments below so we can all read them).

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Toro – A Twitter Tool User 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]