Twitter for Dummies – Part 3: The parts that makes Twitter work
In part 1 of this series, I described what I use Twitter for. In part 2, I highlighted Twitter as a social networking tool.
In this post, we will go slightly more technical: looking at the parts in the engine that make Twitter really useful.
Twitter.com
The core of it all is the blue box, twitter.com. This is where all the Tweets and Twitter profiles are stored, and the engine with which everything connects.
The Twitter website
When you first sign up to Twitter, you connect via the web interface, Twitter’s main web page. It lets you modify your profile and settings, search for Tweets, add followers, browse through the updates or “Tweets” from all your followers, and send out Tweets yourself.
The usability of the webinterface is not the best, IMHO, e.g. the tweets from those you follow are not refeshed automatically, it is difficult to distinguish between “your Tweet updates” and “those of your social community”, etc.. But it lets you perform the basic functions: read what’s going on, and broadcast Tweets yourself.
Desktop tools
Most people use desktop tools (similar to what Skype has) such as Thwirl, Tweetdeck, or Seesmic. Each is a small Adobe Air application, which updates automatically the Tweets your community is broadcasting. They let you filter for “all tweets”, “replies only”, “direct messages”, and let you search for Twitterers or Tweets. I hardly ever use the webinterface, but always have a window open with Seesmic and Twhirl.
Input processors
There are additional ‘input’ tools, to ease posting stuff on Twitter. The most popular are:
- URL shorteners convert the links you want to use in your Tweets to a real short URL. Some, like bit.ly, which I use the most, also give you statistics for amount of clicks each of your links gets.
- TwitPic allows you to upload a picture and generates a link to the picture, which you can include in your Tweet. This is the tool Janis Krums used to post the famous picture of the plane in the Hudson river, by the way.
- Twitvid.io does the same for video
- twtpoll lets you post a small poll
There are hundreds of input tools. Twtbase is a great repository listing most of the add-on applications. You can post audio, include a link to longer updates if you feel too limited with Twitter’s 140 characters, schedule tweets, etc…
Using your mobile
Another way to interact with Twitter, is via your mobile phone. Many PDAs like the iPhone or Blackberry have a small application to read and write Tweets via an Internet link. You can also use your mobile’s SMS service to send or receive tweets via twitter.com directly. Or, if you prefer, use Email on your mobile to tweet, pictures and video as attachments, which get automatically converted into links via TwitPic or Twitvid.io.
This makes Twitter truly mobile.
Reusing content
A more sophisticated way of using Twitter is to take the RSS feed from your blog (or website) and tweet the titles and links to new blogposts automatically. Twitterfeed is the best known tool for this. Twitterfeed updates will through URL shorteners before being posted onto Twitter.
On the output site: search and query tools.
Between 10,000 to 15,000 Tweets are published per minutes, making Twitter a great data repository. You might not be interested in seeing how many people tweeted about the weather today, but searching for specific tags like #aid or #blogging or #michaeljackson would be more useful.
There are many query tools dependent on what exactly you search for, the depth of the search, and even more importantly, how it is presented to you.
Most of the search and query are also listed in Twtbase. My favourite query tools ar Twazzup and TwitterFall, which not only refresh queries automatically but also show pictures related to your query, the top users, related links, etc… Try also Twicsy to search for tweeted images.
Last but not least: reusing content from Twitter.
Dozens of tools let you take your (or anyone else’s) twitter updates, and republish them on an other website or blog automatically. You can also republish the Twitter content onto other social media services, such as Facebook, Friendfeed or Identi.ca…
If you are both a blogger and a twitterer, it is fashionable to include a widget to display your Twitter’s updates onto your blog or website. This interchanges readers from your blog with your Twitter account.
Interesting links:
- 17 Twitter Desktop applications
- Twtbase, the most extensive Twitter application database.
- 27 Twitter tools to help you find and manage followers
- Top 21 Twitter Applications
- 100 most popular Twitter applications
- An extensive list of Twitter tools for students
Stay tuned for Twitter for Dummies – part 4: The Geeky Art For Nerdy Tweets.
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Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, blogger, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order. (
Thanks for the tip. Seeing the small numbers in Google analytics, i was thinking about removing the retweet button.
BTW, considering the enormous amount of you follow i follow crowd in the twitter, would people care to click those links
I don’t know if your retweet button shortens the URL with bit.ly, but -as described in this post- that could give you a black and white figure on the traffic the tweets give.
I do, on my links and have been astonished by the amount of traffic each tweet gives.
It is true there is a “scratch mine, I’ll scratch yours” mentality in the following in Twitter, but not so much in retweeting. At least not in the social community I have created around each of my Twitter accounts.
And maybe that is key in all of it: ensure the quality of your followers. Maybe one tip: I *never* autofollow. This means that “my” social community would never follow me, simply because I would follow back.
I’d like to say they follow my tweets, because they like the content
Hope that helps a bit,
Peter
I have just discovered your site via ICT-KM, and it will keep me busy for hours…. I have been blogging for a few months now, we are one of the NGOs who want to use social media more and are still finding out how best to do that (ILEIA, see http://www.leisa.info). So your site is full of useful stuff (so far I’d only found social media for marketing your business).. thanks and keep up the good work!
Karen
While these sites may be free for us, the end user, google and yahoo take the numbers we provide for them, and they scan the content we enter on their services, and use it as fodder to sell their profitable products, such as adwords.
It is in their interest to keep these sites working well, as the critical mass we provide is the very product they can leverage to advertisers.
That being said, Michael Keizer is correct- if the service is mission critical, buy the pro account, and get on the line with their support if needed.
Do you know of an alternative to Pipes?
@Hank:
Don’t think there is any pro-account formula for Yahoo Pipes unfortunately. The only alternative I found is http://pipes.deri.org/ but looks even more of a hackers tool, and I don’t know how well it performs.
I think I will make my own…
Peter.
i just love to Twitter everyday with my friends. Twitter is much better than blogging in my opinion and it is very addictive too.
. ..
thank you for this good information
nice post . Very helpful information. Thank you.
Hi, this blog post is very well-written and appears extremely useful. But I was just wondering if you could clear something up? You mention Newsgator as a product, but the link to their website shows Newsgator is a company with a lot of products – it isn’t clear which tool or product you used to amalgamate feeds and produce script. Could you explain this step in some more detail?
If you post here please email me to let me know
Many thanks
Jez
Hi Jez,
You are totally correct. Newsgator changed their services end August. The online aggregator functions they used to have is no longer available.
If you are looking for a feed aggregator or RSS-to-script function, have a look at this post:
http://www.blogtips.org/free-rss-tools/
best,
Peter
i think the problem is solved now..
Yahoo Pipes went back up after almost 3 weeks of intermittent problems. There are still problems saving new or modified Pipes, though. That problem exists since at least 2 months….
Peter, thank you for including us in your review. I am happy you like the Dlvr.it service. Stay tuned. LOTS of good things coming. Including many more outputs – Facebook coming very soon.
Also, thanks for the feedback on the stats. In order to “provide interesting statistics,” mash the data and provide some real intelligence we use the Dlvr.it short URL. It makes the data consistent and allows us to do some interesting analysis – lots of things going on in the lab now.
Stay tuned…
Best,
Bill Flitter
Founder, dlvr.it
comprehensive post! Another tools for RSS to twitter is hootsuite, I havent tried it out.. but it gives the feature.
I just discovered Hootsuite’s RSS-to-Twitter function. Will try it out, and update the post.
Thanks for the reminder.
Peter
I agree I think social media is really more important for better communicating with your supporters and building a strong foundation and network of people interested in your cause.
These tips are great. Thanks for sharing.
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