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Great tools, apps, and services built around Twitter

May 29, 2009 • 2:39 pm 0

Tweetbacks – (yes another one) Twitter backgrounds

Tweetbacks (we did the same name earlier today, entirely different product) is a gallery of Twitter backgrounds for you to download and utilize.  You can also upload backgrounds if you have done something amazing, or even if it isn’t.

There was some cool ones to see and the site is ad driven on the right.   Each background can have a rating, but since the site is new many didn’t have them yet.  There is a link for the free customizable ones, but it was very limited in depth compared to the others we have (see the Profile Customization Tools category).

They do have a RSS feed to subscribe when new backgrounds are loaded into the site to keep you up to date also.

Filed under: Profile Customization Tools , ,

May 29, 2009 • 9:57 am 1

Tweetbacks – tracking tweets about a blog post

Tweetbacks is in beta (not to be confused with Tweetbacks the other site)  at the time of this writing.  The creator explains it like this:

They work kind of like trackbacks, but instead of listing blogs linking to a specific post, it lists Tweets about a specific post.  It currently finds mentions of the URL through the top 5 most popular URL shorteners on Twitter: Tinyurl, Bit.ly, Is.gd, Twurl, and SnipURL

A great way to show off people sharing your content and allowing readers to find other Twitterers that may share a common interest also.  Dan also has other Twitter tools that we have highlited like Retweet Mapper which follows along the idea of this tool.

Filed under: Add-on Tools ,

May 29, 2009 • 8:11 am 1

TweetGenius – a Blackberry Twitter client (not free)

TweetGenius for Blackberry touts itself as Twitter made easy on the Blackberry devices.  It sounds promising from their own description and they have some serious competition that is free.

We integrated a revolutionary UI with fantastic user-orientated features like the ability to compose a new tweet, start a new search, and view tracked items from any screen in the application. Shortcuts? Please. Basically every key on the keyboard is a shortcut! What about sending pictures and GPS location? Done and done.

There was no trial so I had to go with screenshots.  It looks to take advantage of the screen real estate a normal Blackberry offers, which is a good thing.  Keyboard shortcuts are a plus with no touch screen interaction.  The price shows as $4.99 right now with a normal price coming of $9.99    I will not be surprised to see them in the Blackberry App Store soon.

Try it out and let us know, I didn’t immediately jump up and down about it, yet I didn’t give it a full run either.

Filed under: Blackberry , ,

May 28, 2009 • 2:04 pm 2

TwitMapr – locate users in your area and put yourself on the map

TwitMapr is a simple Google mashup that shows the location of Twitterers so you can easily find and add people in particular areas.  While other sites do this also, they just took the twist of showing it as pinpoints on a map.  You can also enter your own name to be added to the map itself.  Not much else to see or do.

Filed under: Location services , , ,

May 28, 2009 • 10:45 am 2

Twittas – your collection of fun Twitter tools

Twittas has quite the collections of fun Twitter tools to play with.  I went in and tested most of the following.  Seeing the projection of when you hit 1,000,000 followers is eye opening.  So here is the list:

  • firsttweet – self explanatory, see what the first tweet was from anyone
  • wastedtime – see how much time you waste tweeting
  • twittercar – see how fast you tweet
  • 1millionfollowers – how long till you hit the magic million (and hundred thousand)
  • firstfollowers – who were your first followers
  • popefollow – see if you have more followers than the Pope
  • first – who did you follow first on Twitter
  • mapfriends – see those you follow on a map
  • twebuddies – see you who interact with most
  • mapfollowers – see those that follow you on a map
  • longerthancelebs – see how long you have been on Twitter and how much longer than what celebrities

The site is ad driven all over, but it isn’t a big deal to do what you want and ignore them as necessary.

Filed under: Add-on Tools, Games , ,

May 28, 2009 • 8:00 am 9

Mixero – the new Twitter client to beat (with 50 invite codes)

Mixero didn’t just come running out of the gates based on Adobe Air, it came out with a plan to beat the other clients.  I will have a screencast available also showing off what you can do.  The slogan of Mixero is Reducing the Noise and they are well on their way.

  • Channels
  • Filters
  • groups
  • true read/unread marks
  • avatar mode
  • link expansion
  • preview
  • URL shortener
  • a coming iPhone app (maybe Blackberry too please?)
  • it goes on…

The middle column (all screenshots here) became important after learning the client interface.  It can become a hub of what is recently updated as well as channels, groups and individuals.  Basically a quick view of who updated and how many times.

Channels can be built around a keyword and even limited to certain users

Groups are easily created with type ahead ability to make adding users quick

You are able to preview not only pictures, but also YouTube videos right in the client interface.  This gives you the ability to safely view linked pictures as well as move quickly through tweets.  With the groups and channels you can streamline your experience further.

Multiple URL shorteners are available for you to automatically shorten URLs after a length you specify.  You are also able to see links in tweets automatically expanded to see where you are headed before clicking.

Overall the UI is clean and customizable and comes with some themes built in.  I was impressed at how I could open different panels, float specific parts and then I encountered the killers.  First was true unread marks.  In other clients when you mark a tweet as read it still shows in the timeline.  In Mixero you can hide all read tweets (easily shown with a click) to only see the new items.  Then I found the other feature.

Avatar mode.  This new feature they put into the beta allows you to reduce the entire interface into pictures that can sit on top of whatever application you are running outside of Mixero.  You then see updates from those (with unread count) and allows you to hover over the avatar and see the recent tweet.  This boosts productivity incredibly by allowing to maximize screen real estate while following the flow.  If it is too much, add some filters to trim it to even more pertinent information.

Whoa, as writing this I found yet another cool part.  Tweets that are part of a thread have a tiny icon that when hovered over allows you to follow the full conversation!  Too cool.  Also when you reply it highlights the tweet you respond to as well as shows it is now a conversation.

So I know what you are looking for, the invite code.  First you need the download link for the client itself and that is right here.

Once you get it loaded, enter your twitter username, password and the following first 50 47 people will get right in with this passcode! (TheSocialGeeks had to get some first)

everythingtwitter

Filed under: Group Management, iPhone, Linux, Mac, PC , ,

May 27, 2009 • 2:13 pm 1

geofollow – location based Twitter directory

On first look, the UI for geofollow is not all that eye pleasing for some reason, but they are spirited in making money.  You are allowed to pay to get yourself or city listed prominently on the site.  That is the first thing I noticed.

At the top you are prompted to log into Twitter and then add yourself to the directory.  They are using OAuth for login I did notice, so a bonus there.  I then found a  nice video demo of how the site is supposed to work for you.

You can search the directory by City, State, Zip, Country, Tag, Name, Twitter Username, Keyword.  So as well as people identify themselves is how easy it is to find them.  From there a step-by-step direction is given to get yourself listed and in the best way.  Apparently the sooner you are listed the higher you will show in their directory.

After you do a search you are able to select everyone shown and even do a bulk follow, which makes for adding people with similar tags easy.

I did a test search for St Louis, MO and while some results did show for people there, I got a heck of a lot of people just named Louis in their Twitter name.  Minor setback.  You should be able to specify exactly what part you are searching, or everything.

Filed under: Location services , ,

May 27, 2009 • 10:38 am 0

Twitster – putting Twitter groups on your website

Twitster is a PHP application for your webserver that allows you to do some cool hashtag or group following and then display it on any website/server that supports PHP.

I have a conference ID set up that we use each year to rebroadcast to everyone that follows it, but this is a new implementation idea to allow people to watch the stream instead of having to be part.  You could even use this just for your own website or project:

# Publish your Twitter community on your own web site.
# Gather and publish tweets from the people and the topics you care about.
# Powering your site’s community with Twitter means little to no work for member participation. (Just tweet!)

The site has demos to watch and the install is a wizard.  That is incredible as most of the tools like this would be a ton of code and steps with loose pages to work with.

To run this you must have PHP 4.x or higher and also MySQL 4.x or greater.

Filed under: Add-on Tools, Development, Group Management , , , ,

May 27, 2009 • 8:16 am 0

Filetwt – file sharing on Twitter

Filetwt (really going for no vowels) allows you to upload a file no more than 20MB and send it out via a tweet.  A simple way to do both public and private tweets with file attachments done for you.  You can also create friend lists for easier bulk sharing notifications.

You need to create a Filetwt account as well as enter your Twitter username and password so it can posts your tweets.  They do not hook together (they really need oAuth working to make life easy and simplify logging in).

I tried to check the Terms page but it gave an error.  I have no idea how long they store your file or make it available.  I have no idea if it is private and only you have access to it if someone could figure out the string to see them.

Filed under: Add-on Tools ,

May 26, 2009 • 2:32 pm 0

StumbleTweets – stumble upon recent links in tweets

StumbleTweets only looks at tweets the last 6 hours that contains links and then sends you right to them.  You can limit what you get by using terms such as TwitPic or Blip.Fm to get only those.

Once it finds them you can esily retweet.  Basically this takes finding the best retweeted and reverses it to links that you can retweet.

They give samples of trending topics on the homepage to quickly get you informed on what is being talked about on Twitter.  My first stumble sent me right to YouTube.

Filed under: Add-on Tools , , , ,

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