Twitter for Dummies (23 page)

Twitterrific (
www.twitterrific.com
):
A Twitter client made for the Mac OS X desktop operating system, with mobile versions for Apple’s iPhone or iPod Touch available in the iTunes App Store. Twitterrific is shareware: You can download a free version, but if you choose to support the developers by purchasing the application, you’ll avoid the ads on the regular version, and it costs less than $15. And many people swear by Twitterrific’s interface and customer service. Twitterrific has the standard gorgeous and streamlined interface most often associated with Macs (as shown in Figure 9-8), as well as the ability to manage more than one Twitter account. But, unlike many other Twitter clients, you can’t track other social networks within its interface.

Digsby (
www.digsby.com
):
A Windows-only desktop client that combines together many instant-messaging, e-mail, and social-networking accounts, in addition to Twitter — Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, AIM, and Yahoo!, to name a few. Figure 9-9 shows the Digsby home page. A version is in the works for the Mac operating system, but it has yet to be released as of this writing. The interface is similar to a universal instant-messaging client such as Pidgin (
www.pidgin.im
) or Trillian (
www.ceruleanstudios.com
), but Digsby comes with social networks built in, too.

If you’re not on a Windows PC, you can sign up to be notified when they publish a Mac/Linux version of Digsby by going to
www.digsby.com/signup/maclinux
.

Try out a few of the Twitter desktop clients in the preceding list. But if none of the most popular Twitter clients appeal to you, never fear. You can find many Twitter desktop clients out there to choose from. Use Google or another search engine to search for desktop Twitter client, because more and more emerge every day. Again, we’re building
www.oneforty.com
to make all of this easier.

Another way to see what clients are popular? Simply look at the end of tweets from people you trust to find out what they use — tweets are
source
tagged with the name of the source client or application that sent them.

Mobile clients

The most basic way to use Twitter on a mobile phone, smartphone, or PDA is by text messaging (SMS). You simply have to add your mobile device to your Twitter profile, sending tweets to the 40404 short-code, and consequently having them associated with your username if you enable Phone as a delivery option on your Home screen sidebar.

You can also use SMS as a convenient way to receive tweets on your cellphone because the phone delivery option sends you the tweets of any user for whom you have turned on Notifications. You also receive your direct messages, although not your @replies at the time of writing. But getting so many text messages can be expensive if you don’t subscribe to an unlimited texting plan. Because SMS also costs Twitter money, Twitter might eliminate the SMS service in the future to cut costs or begin charging for SMS to offset those costs. To prepare yourself for that possible situation, you may want to invest in a mobile Twitter client.

You can take the easy road if you have a smartphone or PDA that has a decent Web browser and a data plan from your cell carrier. Visit
http://m.twitter.com
for the mostly-functional mobile version of the site.

Or, download one of the following mobile applications and see how amazing Twitter can be when you take it on the road:

For an iPhone:
You can use the Twitterrific (
www.twitterrific.com
) iPhone app, as well as other apps such as Hahlo (
http://hahlo.com
) and Tweetie (
www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone
). You can find them by searching in the iTunes App Store.

For a BlackBerry:
Your choices are limited, but most BlackBerry users prefer an app called TwitterBerry (
www.orangatame.com/products/twitterberry
).

For a Java-enabled phone:
TinyTwitter (
www.tinytwitter.com
) is an excellent choice out of many options. One of the more stable Java applications for the mobile phone, TinyTwitter gives you all the functions that other mobile Twitter clients do, yet it doesn’t take up a huge amount of space if your phone doesn’t have a lot of room on it for extra applications.

For Windows Mobile–based smartphones and PDAs:
You can find several options out there, but none of them are all that great. Here are several clients for Windows Mobile that you might want to check out:

•
Twobile (
www.infinitumsoftware.com/twobile
):
Users swear by its stability, especially on the often-unstable Windows Mobile operating system. But some users do have issues with the fact that, like the Digsby desktop client (see “Desktop clients,” earlier in this chapter), Twobile doesn’t display avatars, making it more difficult for you to tell at a glance whether your favorite people and companies on Twitter are talking. If you want a stable option that experiences few crashes, Twobile (shown in Figure 9-10) fits that bill, but the list interface has its problems.

•
ceTwit (
www.kosertech.com/blog/?page_id=5
):
A bit better on the design front than Twobile. It does have avatars associated with the tweets that come through, and you can easily use it, especially if you have a touch screen phone. It doesn’t look as pretty as some desktop Twitter clients, but it’s fully functional and reasonably stable. Users have reported, however, that it’s more crash-prone than Twobile.

•
PocketTwit (
http://code.google.com/p/pocketwit
):
A new contender, which comes from Google Labs, for the touch screen Windows Mobile market. Its slick, fully functional interface (shown in Figure 9-11) operates much like most desktop clients and looks gorgeous. It’s still in
beta
(early testing release), so it has some occasional freezes, and you have to be ready to download regular updates. But if you want your mobile client to look and operate just like your desktop client, this one can do the job.

Figure 9-10:
You can use Twobile on your Windows Mobile device.

You can use a site called the Twitter Fan Wiki (
http://twitter.pbwiki.com/apps
) to find out more about Twitter clients, both mobile and desktop. Active Twitter users have written up their favorite Twitter applications and provided links that can point you to the download sites. There are several other directories, but none of them, even the fan wiki, is remaining very current or user-friendly with the fast pace of innovation within the Twitter ecosystem. We sincerely hope to fix that with
www.oneforty.com
. We’ll let you know on
www.TwitterForDummies.com
how that goes.

Figure 9-11:
PocketTwit is a new Windows Mobile device client.

Keeping Your Tweets Short with URL Shorteners

One of the main issues with Twitter is space. The 140-character limit makes it easy to run out of room before you finish what you want to say. Sometimes, you want to show your Twitter network a link to a Web page that you find fascinating or amusing, to a blog post that you wrote or an article about you, or to just about anything on the Web. But those URLs can be quite long, often well over 140 characters themselves.

URL shorteners
are extremely easy Web-based applications that take long URLs from Web sites and make them shorter by turning them into coded small URLs that forward the reader to the original linked page. The URL shortener permanently assigns the link to that shortened URL.

Twitter uses TinyURL (
www.tinyurl.com
) as its default URL shortener. If you enter a whole, unshortened URL in the Update window on your Home screen on Twitter.com, Twitter automatically shrinks that URL to a more manageable size by using TinyURL. You don’t have to do a thing.

If you’re looking to save as many characters as possible, you can use a URL shortener that promises to make your URL fit into the smallest of spaces on Twitter. To use one of these shorteners, copy the URL from the address bar of the Web site that you want to share, and then paste that URL into the input field at the URL shortener site of your choice.

Some URL shorteners offer added services, such as a way to track who’s clicking your link in Twitter, how often it’s being clicked, and other statistics that you can use to gather data on the effectiveness of your (or your client’s) Twitter account:

bit.ly (
http://bit.ly
):
Tracks clicks over time, clicks on other shortened versions of the link, where clicks are coming from, key information from the target page, and retweets of the link (even if they use a differently shortened URL)

BudURL (
http://budurl.com
):
Tracks the IP address of visitors and how many times your link was clicked

You can find many options by doing a Google search for the term
URL shortener
.