One of the ‘problems’ that some Twitter users face is that they want to Tweet something but they don’t want it to actually go live on Twitter until some point in the future. Today I want to look at a tool that will help people with that problem – it’s called Twuffer.
Twuffer is still in beta – so use it with a little caution – but it looks like a fairly useful solution for those wanting to set Tweets to go off later.
OK – some Twitter purists are already scrolling down the page to tell me why future tweeting is evil and goes against everything that Twitter stands for…. I know I know – Twitter is about telling people what you’re doing ‘now’ – it’s about conversation in real time….
You’re right – but there are times where I’ve found myself wanting (and even needing) to set Tweets to go of in the future. This is particularly the case for me as an Aussie, living in a different time zone to that of most of my followers (most of whom are in the USA and asleep when I’m awake and awake when I’m asleep).
While I do most of my Tweeting in real time – there are occasions when I’ve found myself wishing I could Tweet something later.
For example when launching a product or service and you want to highlight it but you’re asleep, on a plane, on a date, scared you’ll forget to do it.
Another time is when you have something that isn’t time sensitive that you really want to say but realize you’ve already tweeted 72 times in the last hour and perhaps your followers need a break.
I don’t recommend doing all (or most) of your Tweeting with services like this because it tends to kill some of the interaction/conversational aspect of Twitter – but it can be useful at times to have a tool at your finger tips that enables you to do it.
Whatever the reason, if you want to set a Tweet to go off later, Twuffer might be the tool for you.
To use it is relatively simple. Head to Twuffer.com – enter your Twitter username and password (that will put some off I’m sure) and you’ll be taken to a settings panel like this:
You’re given the opportunity to set your timezone, date format, time format and whether or not you want your tweets appearing on the Twuffer homepage and then you’re set. Hit Save and you’re taken to your dashboard:
The dashboard is very simple and intuitive. You have tabs to see your queued tweets, those that you’ve sent and your settings.
You also have a field to type your tweets and then a couple of drop down menus where you can select the future time and date that you want your tweet to go live.
You can see I’ve already entered three Tweets on Twuffer and at the time of this screenshot was waiting for those tweets to go live.
If you enter a tweet (or more than one) you can see them in the ‘Queued’ area:
In this area you have the ability to delete any queued tweets to stop them going live.
When you enter tweets they get loaded up ready to tweet all with an Ajax interface which is all very smooth and pleasing to the eye.
Overall the service is simple and easy to use. The only negative that I can see with it is, as you can see in one of my queued tweets above, that you can only set tweets to go off on the hour. If you need a tweet to go off at 2.30pm or 4.02am you need to pick a time on the hour on either side of your desired time.
Another small gripe that I have is that if you enter a tweet and then hit ’set status’ straight away (forgetting to set a future time and date) it goes live immediately. Perhaps a warning message ‘did you mean to send this right now’ might be helpful.
Does it work?
OK – so you can see that I set three tweets to go off at 2pm my time in the ‘last picture’. Did they actually go live?
The answer to that is YES…. but…. they actually went live on Twitter at 1.30pm – half an hour early.
So perhaps accuracy isn’t perfect – the tweets were made at around 1.10pm so they did go out in the future – just not quite when I wanted them to. Perhaps if your future tweet absolutely has to go out at a specific point in time, you’d better set the alarm clock to wake you up or remind you to do it manually – but if you don’t mind so much about an exact time Twuffer could be for you!
Some Alternatives to Test
- FutureTweets (we’ve written about this here)
- TweetLater
@Livecrunch
Tuffer is not bad app at all, yes it can be evil but for example if you do have breaking story and don’t want to release it until some time tuffer can be great.
If you live in Australia most of the time is “When you go to bed, Americans wake up” or vice versa. So when you ask some question that you would like to know about from American audience you can set your question to be asked later.
Question Like: Who do you like more Obama or McCain?
So yes Tuffer can be evil yet good too!
Great review!
@ayb
EasyTweets can schedule tweets in the future, as well as:
- import RSS feeds
- tweet to multiple accounts (up to 100)
- read full Twitter timelines, replies, direct messages
- search Twitter continuously for keywords of interest
- send SMS and email alerts based on brand mentions
http://easytweets.com
@bloggingmom67
I’ve used http://futuretweets.com/, not twuffer. I was happy with how futuretweets worked.
I can’t say I’d use it much because I agree that twittering should be sort of off the cuff, but I could see some uses, especially for the time zone issue that livecrunch mentioned. Or if you just want to hit a bunch of people at different times of the day, you could tweet once and then schedule.
I’d use it sparingly, though.
Anyone have an opinion on whether future tweets or twuffer are better?
@BrandCentral
A good – and fair – review. I’ve used Twuffer to cue up tweets about new blog posts as they are released (I write most of my blog posts the day or night before they go live) and then “live tweet” during the day when I’m in the office. It seems like a fair (and not so evil) way to use the service.
I agree that the “tweet on the hour” scheduling restriction is a drag. To compensate, I set my blog posts to launch about ten minutes before the hour and then set the Twuff-tweet accordingly.
All in all, a nice service that’s easy to use … and free!
Mike Bawden
Brand Central Station
@54degrees
I have times where I read my feeds and share stuff I like. But sometimes it can be “too much” and feels like spamming twitter in that particular timeframe. So this app looks great to help me out of this
@youngitaanblog
nice review Darren.
@ThunderPig
I like the idea!!!
Might provide useful when you plan on being somewhere out of cell tower range as well.
I live in the mountains of western North Carolina, and there are more places without cell coverage than have it for those of us who don’t live on, or near pavement. Shoot, my home is out of cell range.
@jeaston1
Darren and community:
Services like this are great for specific types of activity (announcements, etc) but one should be mindful that Twitter is about building relationships so people will comment, RT, and engage you should you post something interesting. Nothing turns people off quicker than non-responsive twitterers. This fact underscores the need to be mindful of how you use these services.
John Easton
http://www.customerflypaper.com/about
@krishnat
This is really cool. I am learning a lot on how to use Twitter from here. Just another tool Twuffer today. Kudos to Darren for starting the blog and sharing all the twitter tips and tools here
@AnetteEjsing
Very cool. But doesn’t it potentially become too overwhelming? Let’s say that we all set our tweets to send out three times a day. Then the total volume of tweets triples and we are all less likely to read each other’s tweets. If, for example, I follow 500 people, and everybody schedules his or her tweets to go out three times, then I will get a number of tweets that equals following 1500 people. No?
Anette
@oldrick
More good information! I get lots of benefit from following you on Twitter!
thanks,
Richard
http://www.lifechoicemeditation.com
@dewaldp
Nice review of my competition.
However, three things I can tell you about TweetLater.com is that it:
a) publishes tweets at the time you scheduled them,
b) you can add and manage as many Twitter accounts as you want for free, and
c) it’s not a one-trick pony, it offers a lot more than just tweet scheduling.
@bloggingmom67
Anette,
Good point. That would be crazy. Although I’d doubt everyone would do it. I know I wouldn’t follow someone for very long who scheduled everything … seems like it would get stale.
Sort of like on a blog, I schedule on occassion on my blog — if I’ll be on vacation or something. But mainly I don’t.
@johnhaydon
Another cool use for this is when (for some crazy reason) you need a WordPress post to be published on Twitter as soon as it’s published – and you’re asleep or on vacation. You would schedule the wordpress post and the twuffer post for the same time.
@remarkablogger
There are already tools that do this, and more, so I don’t see what really differentiates this one. Am I missing something?
@spanishonly
I’ve been using TweetLater for a while now. This may looks fancier, but TweetLater (or other websites, for that matter) have worked really well. So no, it doesn’t really add something to the dozen websites that does the same.
@joshuadelung
John Easton, you are quite right.
@hectorhenry17
The future its not shore juts imagine if you program the software to send a future message in tweet and that you die, you will bee a talking ghost.
Take care good pots.
@thefluffanutta
I’ve used TwitResponse.com to schedule my tweets in the past – a simple but effective service by @ShannonCole.
@kashifboy
Twuffer seems like a decent effort but I am too lazy to enter my account details of twitter on some site that is still in beta . Any thoughts on this one please ?
@janeaustenworld
Our group uses twitter to tweet books or quotes. There’s nothing worse than seeing a wall of tweets from one source (I just awoke to one this morning). Twuffer and sites like it help you to portion out your tweets throughout the day, lessening the impact.
As people find more uses for Twitter other than to talk about me, my product, and I, services like Twuffer will become invaluable.
@ask47
My contribution to the good/evil debate is this: we live in asynchronous times. We have since
the pony express(writing was invented). We are fully acclimated to a multimedia environment in which communications are sent in the past, arrive at some point in the future, and persist online indefinitely. It almost feels hard-wired; linguistically, this may be true. Scheduling tweets is like posting in a “future now”… you fully grasp and welcome the notion that while you are going to be doing something else at the time the tweet rolls out, a virtual instance of yourself is being technologically incorporated by proxy on a server somewhere. We seem to be very comfortable with this, and that is why future-tweeting is here to stay.Yet, imagine the complications that arise as our asynchronous lifestyles get more and more so, in spite of the fact that, in the real world (sorry, I mean IRL), we all exist synchronously; we are all more or less susbject to the same timelines, time zones, and calendars.
RT @SchrodingersCat I’m still alive
Can we believe him if he twuffered that?
@srpatterson
I am a big fan of TweetLater as it does the scheduled tweeting but also has a number of additional features like autofollow for example.
I would like to use it. But is is save to give your twitter password to some third party? I theory they can simply take over your twitter account by changing the password. Any thoughts on this one please ?
@csatch
I’ve just tried Twuffer for the first time. It is very easy to use. But one annoying thing is that you can’t edit tweets once you’ve clicked ’set status’. I made a mistake on one update and now I have to wait until it goes live and then delete it from my Twitter acc to re publish it
@csatch
Further to my comment above: I found the ‘delete’ button (red cross) on the queued tweets page, so no way to edit comments but at least it can be deleted and rescheduled, so not such a negative point after all, my mistake!