LIS 5313: From the survey: most used 3rd party apps for Twitter
Saturday, December 6th, 2008
Many libraries ( a good 30% surveyed) said they did not use any third party applications to enhance their library’s twitter account. The other 70%, however, did use some sort of application. The most popular, in order of those mentioned most:*
Twhirl
A social software desktop client, based on the Adobe AIR platform.
- Runs on both Windows and Mac OSX…
- connects to multiple accounts (i.e., Friendfeed, Iaconi.ca, seesmic, Twitter)…
- notifications on new messages…
- shortens long URLs…
- posts images to TwitPic…
- search Twitter tweets via TweetScan and Twitter Search.
Twitterfeed (and RSS/OpenID)
Automatically twitters your RSS feed to all your followers on Twitter.
- Signing up is simple; you need an OpenID account and a Twitter account.
- Takes your Blog or RSS or ATOM feed and tweets it to all your followers
- Choose how often you want your feed updated, the title of your posts
- Automated – requires no work once it’s set up
Ping.fm
Updates all your social networks at once.
- posts your message wherever you want
- supports over 30 social networking sites and is adding more regularly (i.e., Facebook, MySpace, WordPress, Tumblr, Flickr, etc.)
- messages can be sent via mobile phone/SMS/MMS, Instant Message/Email, and 3rd party apps/API
Twittermail
Allows you to send tweets from your email inbox
- Give your twitter credentials to TwitterMail.com and they’ll give you your own email address
- Receive all of your tweet replies directly in your inbox.
- Allows you to go over the 140 character limit – TwitterMail will simply write “read more” once you hit the 140-limit.
- Has the ability to delay postings for a specified time
- Converts longer URLs to shorter ones.
TweetDeck
Adobe AIR desktop app takes twitter feeds & breaks them into more manageable bits of info.
- Sleek design
- Allows users to split main feed (All Tweets) into 3 columns: All, direct replies and @replies
- Allows users to group tweets or followers (and create columns to manage the information)
- Automatically updates
Firefox plugins (i.e., Twitterfox)
Firefox application that notifies you of your follower’s tweets
- Adds a tiny icon in the status bar that notifies you when your friends update their status
- Has a text box for you to send your own tweets
TwitPic
Lets you share photos on Twitter
- sned pictures from your phone to your Twitter account
- Tag pictures, send messages with them
Twuffer
Allows coordination of calendar with Twitter account
- type your tweet and then schedule when you want it to post by the day/hour/month
- schedule appointment/milestone reminders
TweetLater
Boasted as “productivity tools for busy Tweeple”
- allows you to set up alerts and track keywords in the publc twitter stream
- schedule and publish tweets that go only to yourself
- schedule tweets to go out when you’re not at your own computer
- sends automated thank you notes to new followers
Twitterlocal
track locations of tweets
- type in a zip code and search within 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 or 20 miles within those tweets
- create RSS or XML feeds to filter out tweets within a certain area
- serach by city, state or zip code
- great for finding active twitterers in your locale
Also mentioned:
- Spaz - opensource Twitter client for Mac, Windows or Linux
- Natsulion - Twitter client for Mac OSX
- Java_Script used to add Twitter to web page
- Applications through Blogger and WordPress blogs
* many of those surveyed gave information they used for personal use/for their iPhones (e.g., Twitterific). The list above includes those used for Library accounts only (not personal accounts).
