I recently took my twitter activity to a whole new level. I have had a twitter account for a couple of years and never really used it much. I simply used it to follow a couple of friends whom I knew and worked with in a former life. Shout out to @slack @danielmorrison @jonpott @pablohart and @schaapy. Recently I found a more useful way to use twitter and I actually started tweeting.
I have found a few tools and resources which have made my twitter experience much better. This post is my mini-review of what I use, have used and would consider using. These are in no particular order.
Tweetdeck
Definitely the coolest application I use for twitter. This app pulls in all of my follower’s tweets, and allows me to group the people I am following. So now all the local (Grand Rapids) people’s tweets are in one column and all the News/media outlets are in another, while the folks who talk about SEO/SEM are in yet another. This app also makes it extremely easy to retweet, to reply, to direct message and to follow new people. You can also set up a search as a column or have one of your columns set to list the current trends on twitter. An app close to this is twirl. I have not used twirl as much as I have tweetdeck due to my initial love with tweekdeck.
Twuffer
This has become an invaluable application for enterprise or corporate use of twitter. Most of my colleagues work a 9-5 and do not have the time or the craziness to tweet for themselves or for a client on the weekend. So they use this application to schedule tweets in the future. I have no idea why anyone would use this on a personal level unless they had 50 tips they want to tweet one tip at a time. But for ‘normal’ humans like myself I cannot see a use for this currently. However my clients use this heavily as they can keep their brand in front of their client on the weekends and during the evenings when their users are more likely to be on twitter.
Twitter Search
It may seem like a simple function. But search.twitter.com is the best network building tool out there. Twitter bought this program and re-branded it theirs but has not yet put a link to “search” from their twitter.com pages. Which is why it gets mentioned here as a separate twitter application.
I find it useful to do an advanced search where I can search through a user’s updates, or for keyterms, or between two dates. But most importantly I can search geographically which allows me to build a local network. For example, “lunch near:49501 within:10mi” will give me all the people locally who are discussing lunch (good idea for a restaurant client!)
Twitterrific
I use this as a standard iphone twitter application. I could not find a more simple to use, full featured iphone twitter app. I use the free version which is ad supported. It allows me to retweet, reply, direct message and follow new people etc.
Twitterrific can also be used on a mac, but I prefer other applications. This simple user interface does well on the iphone.
Twitscoop
I mostly use this because of tweetdeck. But this webapp has enabled me to see what is trending (get the scoop) on twitter, and what people are saying about it as well as how long a topic has been trending/discussed en mass.
If something is hot on twitter right now or there is a real popular hashtag this application will typically tell me or give me enough info in one page load as to what is going on. If you start here, make sure to use the Twitterchat application mentioned below to participate in one of these trending topics.
Tweeter on Facebook
This application helped me cross post for a day or two. It keeps your facebook status inline with your twitter status. I disabled it because I realize my networks (and the applications’ expectations) were different for each network. I decided to keep these two networks separate for now but I have been having second thoughts on that. I am thinking about value added posting to my facebook account like I do with my twitter account. For those of you who don’t know what I mean by value added, I am talking about tweets with links included versus a tweet that says “walking my dog” or “Going to bed, nighty night”
Who Should I follow
Not a typical application but a great utility for building a deeper network. This web-based application uses information from your twitter account (people you currently follow) and suggests who else you might be interested in following.
It has a few quirks like recommending people I am already following but this is a minor sin when I’m trying to build a bigger network.
Tweetchat
I found this app thanks to @sugarjones.This is an incredible webapp for watching a “room” or a conversation via hashtags. It auto updates every 5 seconds so you can watch the entire conversation. You can also tweet from this application which will put the hashtag in for you. This makes participation in a live conversation much more simple and prevents distraction from other tweets from people not in the conversation.
There are a ton of applications using Twitter’s API out there, but I don’t have the time or desire to review each one. These are just a few of the twitter applications I have been exposed to. Please add more or suggest applications you use in the comments. I would love to expand my repertoire.