Twitter for Dummies (13 page)
Read Twitter for Dummies Online
Authors: Laura Fitton,Michael Gruen,Leslie Poston
Tags: #Internet, #Computers, #Web Page Design, #General
Your Profile page appears.
2. Click the Mentions tab in the right sidebar (which is marked with
@username
).
Your Mentions page appears.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the orange RSS button.
You can also click the RSS logo in your browser. This logo is usually all the way to the right in the text field where you enter URLs, but it may differ, depending on which browser you use.
Clicking this button (or logo) automatically prompts you to add the feed to the feed address into Google Reader if you have it set up. If you use an application other than Google Reader, you may have to copy and paste the RSS feed’s URL into your reader.
Desktop clients
You can access Twitter through one of the many downloadable desktop applications that third-party developers have created using Twitter’s API. We cover these desktop clients more thoroughly in Chapter 7. Some of the most popular applications are Twhirl, Twitterrific, and TweetDeck (shown in Figure 4-3).
Figure 4-3:
You can get your Twitter info by using TweetDeck.
Basically, a Twitter client allows you to use Twitter from your desktop without having a browser open. Many of these clients also offer features that Twitter doesn’t, including the ability to thread tweets and track conversations, create groups, filter content, open simultaneous accounts, delete direct messages, and more.
These services work by talking to Twitter to get the information they need. So, they don’t work if Twitter isn’t working; they rely on it to gather and relay the data you see and use.
TwitterFox
A third-party application created for Twitter is TwitterFox (
http://twitterfox.net
), which is a plug-in that you can build onto your Mozilla Firefox Web browser.
Plug-in
just means that the application gets installed right into the browser and runs from there. It won’t run on Safari or Internet Explorer, and you can’t use it if you don’t use Firefox.
Although most plug-ins and add-ons made for Twitter are safe to put on your computer, always be careful any time you install something new. A good way to tell whether an application is okay is to ask your friends on Twitter whether they use it. Most active Twitter users are happy to provide tips and recommendations.
Mozilla approves plug-ins that have been submitted to its developer program. Plug-ins that are proven not to be harmful are endorsed by Mozilla.
Widgets and gadgets
Twitter and other sites offer widgets (or, as Google calls them, gadgets) that let you embed information from a service such as Twitter onto other sites so that you can share Twitter more easily. Sometimes, widgets come in the form of HTML code that you can copy and paste into a MySpace profile or blog template. Other times, they come in the form of an application that you have to install on a social-network platform, such as Facebook. You can use dozens and dozens of official and unofficial widgets for Twitter. Using free widget-building tools, anyone can build a widget using any RSS feed as the content supply, so there’s no telling how many thousands of Twitter widgets actually exist.
Twitter has an official page where you can find the code for an embeddable widget, complete with step-by-step instructions for installing it. Just go to
http://twitter.com/downloads
.
You can find an official Twitter application for Facebook, too, which means that you can make your Twitter updates show up as your Facebook status updates, or you can display a badge of your tweets on your Facebook pro-file. You can find the Twitter application for Facebook at
http://apps.facebook.com/twitter
.
The Google gadget works on Google Desktop, as well as the iGoogle personal home page product. You can install the Google gadget by clicking the download button at
http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/twitter.html
.
Putting Twitter on your site
You might want to go a bit beyond run-of-the-mill widgets if you’re hoping to put Twitter on another Web page seamlessly. If you have technical expertise or access to a good Web developer, you can build your own widget or plug-in for your site that uses the Open Twitter API. You can find details on building a widget at
http://apiwiki.twitter.com
.
If you’re not a computer programmer or developer, you probably won’t ever touch the Twitter API directly, but you will be using it — without even knowing it — every time you use a third-party application. We mention Laura’s startup project
www.oneforty.com
a handful of times in this book because its mission is to help those new to Twitter find the very best and most useful applications, services, and tools within the Twitter ecosystem. When it launches, please let us know whether it’s helpful to you.
Going Mobile: The Key to Happiness
In our opinion, the key to Twitter happiness is mobility. You should be able to use Twitter anywhere, anytime, and any way that you want, including on your phone. You can get this mobility via SMS (which we talk about in the “Text messages (SMS delivery)” section, earlier in this chapter) or on the Twitter Mobile Web site at
http://m.twitter.com
. Twitter Mobile is missing a few of the regular, Web-based Twitter site’s features (for example, you can’t see your favorites or a list of your followers), but you can use it pretty much as you do the normal site.
If you have a higher-end phone, such as the iPhone or BlackBerry, you can try out a few downloadable Twitter apps. Apple’s iPhone has a nice interface for Twitter, and you can find several options in the iTunes App Store that you can download to make Twitter on the go even easier. Some of these apps (such as Twinkle and TwitterFon) are free, some (such as Tweetie, which you can see in action in Figures 4-4 and 4-5) cost a few bucks, and some (such as Twitterrific) have both free and paid versions.
BlackBerry users have fewer applications at their disposal, including the extremely popular TwitterBerry (shown in Figure 4-6). BlackBerry users also have a challenge — the device’s specialized browser can’t display all the content on Twitter, such as photos and some links.
If you have a Windows Mobile phone, we recommend an application called ceTwit if you don’t have a touch screen. If you do have a touch screen, look into an iPhone-like interface client called PocketTwit (made by Google Labs).
The open-API difference
Twitter’s open API fuels its flexibility, and that flexibility is a big part of what keeps Twitter users loyal through all its growing pains. The API is so customizable that you can create a completely new service for Twitter on a whim, based on what you want to do with it — which is a big plus, especially if you plan to mold Twitter to fit a specific company goal or make it a big part of a marketing campaign or promotion. If you can’t find an existing application that works with Twitter to make it do exactly what you need, you can either make one yourself or hire someone to do it. Full customization is rare on the Web, but with Twitter, you can mold it to work anywhere you need it to: at work, at home, or even while rock climbing.
Everyone pretty much swears by the apps they love the best, and no user group is more enthusiastic than the iPhone crowd, whose debates over Twitterfon (free), Tweetie ($2.99), and Twittelator Pro ($4.99), among others, can keep a conversation going through several pints of beer at a tweetup.
Figure 4-4:
You can read your tweet stream with the Tweetie iPhone application.
These mobile Twitter apps barely scratch the surface of what you can find out there, and new ones are created fairly regularly. There’s no real consensus on which is the best. Try out a few to see which ones you prefer. Again, once
www.oneforty.com
launches, we hope to have much better answers to your perennial Which app is best for. . . ? questions.
Figure 4-5:
You can post new tweets by using Tweetie.
Figure 4-6:
Twitter-Berry, a Twitter BlackBerry application.
