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Great tools, apps, and services built around Twitter

June 30, 2009 • 9:36 am 1

TwitterForBusyPeople – now we are too busy for Twitter?

TwitterForBusyPeople (via @angryjohnny) is actually a great site!  You enter your, or any, Twitter name into the single box on the homepage.  From there it pulls the avatars of who posted in the last hour, in the last today and more than one day ago.

The idea being that many of the people you follow post so much content that they push the occasional poster way off of any page or client that you use.  The idea of Twitter is living in the stream.  Meaning seeing what is there at that time with some keywords available (al la Mixero).  So you might miss items.

You can hover over any avatar and see the latest post from them, plus a small More link will expand the window to show a few more of their recent postings.  If the pop-up has this little icon then it means there is a conversation around this tweet.  You click that to get the conversation.  Great work!

It will pull up to 500 of your friends, so if you follow more than that, then you need filters anyway.

Filed under: Add-on Tools, Web Clients , , ,

June 30, 2009 • 8:15 am 2

Feedtwit – track any RSS feed as a direct message

FeedTwit might be useful for a couple reasons I can see right away.

  1. You have a very specific RSS feed you want to be immediately updated on so getting it as a DM in Twitter would also send you a SMS (if you configured this)
  2. You want some @replies in Twitter to notify you right away, so FeedTwit converts them to direct messages

Now from there, you might end up with too much via DM and SMS.  They do highlight another thing I didn’t think of right away, basically becoming a stalker mode.

Privately follow people on Twitter using their RSS feed.  follow political figures in an account you use for business.  follow your competitors without appearing to endorse them

That is a great way to use the service, if done for good :-)   There is some small Google ads on the bottom of the page, but not much else there.  Since you are registering for their service and using public RSS feeds, you do not need to share your Twitter credentials at all with them.

Filed under: Add-on Tools , ,

June 29, 2009 • 2:17 pm 0

Act.ly – start a Twitter petition

Act.ly allows you to join in, start or view open petitions.  To start a new petition you simply enter the person’s Twitter name and what they should be doing in your opinion.

This makes Twitter ad advocacy tool to reach  thousands.  How well it will work as a true petition that someone will actually stand by, will be seen shorty.  There are over 100 active petitions.  You can see recent ones on the homepage or visit the tab that shows the petitions with the most votes.

Interestingly enough, you can also see if the Twitter account they are asking to do the task has responded.  GoogleMaps did respond to a request to list a country, which shows this site may be on the right path to making a change.

You cannot target anyone that does not have a Twitter account.  This allows them to respond to your request using their Twitter account.  You can even add links to videos and other information to include in the petition comments.

Filed under: Add-on Tools ,

June 29, 2009 • 10:43 am 0

Scoopler – real time search plus more (Flickr, Digg, Delicious)

Scoopler provides more than just a real-time Twitter search since it’s launch in April 2009.  It extends out to other social networks.  The homepage is a simple search box with trends along the bottom.  From their site they talk about how they bring in the data from all over:

We aggregate and organize content being shared on the internet as it happens, like eye-witness reports of breaking news, photos and videos from big events, and links to the hottest memes of the day. We do this by constantly indexing live updates from services including Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious and more.

I tried some sample searches outside of the trends to get a better feel for topics maybe not already in the Scoopler index.  I picked the BET Awards since they were going on while wrting this posting.  It immediately showed videos down the right (that could be broken down to video, images and links) and a live, scrolling Twitter search in the middle that was updating in real-time.

The left column was still showing recent trends.  I would like to see that used for more search results and better screen real estate usage than showing the same from the homepage.  At least make it collapsible.  You are able to pause the live stream if it is moving too fast to keep up, depending on tweet volume.  You can also click to preview and link and share the tweet themselves.

For a longer review, MakeUseOf had a great posting that I found.

Filed under: Search Tools , , , ,

June 29, 2009 • 8:05 am 0

Tweetboard – True Twitter Conversation for your website

TweetBoard is a great addition (from @140Ware) to any website to track conversations. (yet that graphic didn’t turn out right above did it?)

It pulls your Twitter stream in near real-time (max 1 min delay), reformatting tweets into threaded conversations with unlimited nesting. Conversations that spun off the original conversation are also threaded in-line, giving your site visitors full perspective of what’s being discussed.

Having conversation embedded into your website draws visitors to communicate with you and amongst each other.  This makes your site become part of the Twitter community and also the reverse.  Links inside the tweets then bring their followers back to your site to join in.

They are running a quick automatic approval to use the service.  Visit the site to see if it is still available.  let them know we sent you :-)

Filed under: Add-on Tools , , ,

June 26, 2009 • 1:44 pm 1

Tweepular – a follower management tool

Tweepular calls itself the Ultimate follower management tool.  I know one thing, their interface is way too bright.  The list of what they attempt to do (and succeed) is quite long.  You can expect all of the standard follower management portions:

  • do you follow them, them you or both
  • full background and latest tweets about followers
  • auto-follow capability
  • sort functions
  • rankings
  • recommendations

You must use your Twitter account to log in, as expected.  Then you are presented with a blazingly bright UI, which they even state is a feature.

I logged in to take a tour.  It does exactly what it says.  There is even a section coming to show who recently unfollowed you.  I will say that the ability to sort your followers in numerous ways really rocked

  • # of followers
  • date added
  • tweepularity
  • last updated
  • ascending
  • descending

This gives you a quick snapshot and ways to bulk follow and unfollow.  I am not sure how Tweeularity was built, but there was a listing done and for some reason Carson Daily was in second right behind the guy that developed the site, at #1 of course.  LOL

Filed under: Follower Management , ,

June 26, 2009 • 8:24 am 1

Twoquick – search Twitter and Google at one time

TwoQuick (from the makers of Trendmetr we highlighted yesterday) has another tool that will take any search terms and build a clean 2-column response.  The left side is Google and the right Twitter.

The Google side is the just the search term highlighted in the results with the appropriate links.  The Twitter side is the person’s avatar, length of time since tweeted and the tweet itself.

That is just how simple it is.  This site is ad supported across the top by Google ads, but no bid deal there.  A quick search tool for you to use.

Filed under: Search Tools , ,

June 25, 2009 • 2:50 pm 1

Trendmetr- visualize how often a term is mentioned

Trendmetr watches for search terms against Twitter, instead of watching for trends based on what is being published in hashtags and the like.

Three default trends appear on the screen, all of which are editable.  You can easily add more meters (yet how to do it took a second to figure out) by clicking the + sign at the top of the page next to the logo.  Honestly I at first thought it was part of the logo and couldn’t find it.

The trends, much like visualizer bars, go up and down with each refresh and show an approximate decibel value and number of mentions.  You can click to search against Twitter or Twoquick (Google and Twitter search service from the same makers) for more information on the trend.

A quick tool with a clean and easy to understand result.

Filed under: Graphing Tools, Search Tools , , ,

June 25, 2009 • 12:01 pm 0

Twitcaps – a realtime image search and browser

Twitcaps scans all of Twitter for images and let’s you search, browse or capture them.

From the Twitcaps interface, you may capture an image for later use, re-tweet the image on your own Twitter feed, or share the image on any number of social linking services.

Twitcaps currently supports ~7 of the image serving services to Twitter, which was most of the main ones anyone uses.  All of the standard Twitter search terms apply when looking for images and you can then capture them and retweet them in your timeline (it will then use Twitpic to do this).  Floating your mouse over any image pops up the tweet itself and who sent it.  If they add in the ability to follow that person, that would be a bonus.

Recent trends are shown in the upper right, giving you a quick view on events as they take place.  This becomes a unique way to see everything pictorial around an event, instead of all the commentary mingled in.

You can authenticate to view friends current caps or browse the public stream via RSS.  Basically this is a viewing window into the world of Twitter images.

Filed under: Add-on Tools, Search Tools , , ,

June 25, 2009 • 8:13 am 0

Paratweet – the live event Twitter management tool

Paratweet is the live event Twitter management tool.  It allows you to moderate tweets that would appear on the screen when a panel or other presentation is going on.  Many times you see some very unfortunate things fly across the screen that prove to be embarrassing or troll-ish.

I have worked with moderated software for other chat based events before, so the idea excited me when seeing it for Twitter.  You basically purchase a plan (yes this is not a free service) and create your event.  By utilizing any hastag you want, you can instruct the audience or general public to use it to sends tweets.  From there the moderator panel captures those tweets and allows you to push them to the viewing screen.

Paratweet management screen

Paratweet management screen

As you can see, the ability to control what hashtag and what gets published is quite simple.  As well as the ability to quickly remove or approve tweets as they come in.

The Live Viewer is an Adobe Air based application that then gets the live feed for the event.  The display is controlled by a secret code you established in the event panel.  Giving you security in who sees and controls the event itself.

So the next question is how much? They have a pricing grid that shows when you sign up as follows:

  • Good – six months – one event at a time + some features for $299
  • Great – six months – three events at a time +more features for $599
  • Greatest – under development
  • Introductory – one year – matches Great plan – for $999 (saving $200)

So while it is hefty, you have to see how many events you will have as well as can you reuse it in 6 months.  You could try other services that just scroll live streams based on tags, like Tweetgrid, but you stand the chance of having non-moderated content coming through.  The other benefit is the ability to just weed out questions from the stream and pass those along.

I wish they had a sample site or demo you could try, but it looked quite promising.

Filed under: Add-on Tools, Search Tools, Twitter Clients , ,

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