Do You Make The Twitter Grade?

Tweet Grader is a free tool by HubSpot that gives you the opportunity to check the power of your Twitter profile compared to other Twitter users. Your score is based on an algorithm of certain criteria predetermined by Hubspot. To see your TweetGrade, just enter your Twitter name and press Grade to see your score.

You will see your Twitter Rank, Follower Count, who you Follow, and your Grade along with a short bio of your account. If your score is low, take this opportunity to check these things for accuracy and make some adjustments until your score is in a more comfortable range.

Under your bio, you’ll see your Follower History. If you click the link there, it will show you a chart of your Follow and Following history.

Use the “Tools” tab for more neat features like seeing a list of you top Tweeters!

What’s Your TweetEffect?

TweetEffect is a neat tool to tell you which Twitter updates made people follow or leave you. All you have to do is enter your Twitter username and select “Tell Me About My Effects”.

When it’s done retrieving your results from Twitter, you’ll see a short summary of your activity.

How Far Do Your Tweets Reach?

TweetReach- shows how many people have viewed your tweets, how many have retweeted, and who your highest exposure is from. Just like the other tools, simply enter your Twitter username and Search.

The report will generate a tally of how many accounts your last Tweet reached. The bottom half of that report will show a week in review chart of your Tweet History, over how many days and how many contributors. The pie chart is a handy visual that displays how many replies and retweets you received form what you shared.

If you scroll down a little, you’ll see the report for your “Top Contributors”, “Most Retweeted Tweets”, all Contributors, and your Tweet Timeline. This report will allow you to see where you fall short and thank those who are contributing to your Twitter success. I can see that my report could use some diversity so I’ll be working on getting my content shared by more contributors.

What Do Your Twitter Analytics Tell You?

Twitalyzer is a probably the most important tool in this article. It’s designed to give you insight on your Twitter Ananlytics that are easy to read and follow. To get started, just enter your Twitter username and Twitalyze!

The first page you will see is an overview of your activity with some metrics giving you an idea of where you fall in the Twitter world of users. I’m a fairly recent Twitter user so my scores will likely be much lower than yours if you have been using Twitter ongoing.

If you click on “Check Out Our Metrics Dashboard”, you’ll see a dashboard full of different metrics that will help you determine where you need to focus more energy and allows you to see what’s working well.

As you can see in the image below, the dashboard metrics are showing me what the Potential Reach is and the number of people I am Effectively Reaching as well as my Klout scores. Those will give me a guideline to where I could focus more energy and time.

With these 4 tools, you are sure to be TwitterTastic in no time! Don’t just put information out in cyberspace, track where it goes, who sees it and is anyone even listening to what you’re saying? If so, great! Use the Twitalyzer tool to help you gauge your progress and if not, use the tools to help you improve in areas that are scoring low and one day you’ll be glad you did!

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Explore Pokki

Navigate to the Pokki website and sign up for an account. Once you log in, you are free to explore the options available for social shortcuts. Choose from “social sites”, “useful utilities”, “”productivity” (including the popular Pomodoro Timer) and more.

When you hover over any of the site icon, it will give you detailed information about the shortcut and the features it offers. The screenshots will help you see how efficient they will be compared to logging into the sites directly.

Choose Your Sites

Tweeki

This shortcut is a great mini version of Twitter. Since the shortcut is right in your taskbar, it’s easy to take a quick look at what’s going on in your Twitter feed or to post a Tweet yourself. Click the Tweeki Download button on the Pokki page and follow the prompts to access you twitter profile.

The icon automatically loads onto your taskbar for easy access. To open it, click on the Twitter bird icon and log into your account.

Upon logging in, you will see that it looks like a mobile version of Twitter with all of the necessary features of the full size site. The first tab is the Trends tab where you can see what the most popular topics are.

The feed is the next section, which will likely be the one you will keep open on your desktop. You have the full feed visible and have a place at the bottom to add your own tweet or re-tweet something of interest right from the shortcut.

The mentions, direct message, and search features are all there as well. Everything you know and love about Twitter right on your desktop! This Twitter shortcut is best for the simplicity that other social media managers don’t offer and with a 100% user rating, I’d say many others agree!

Facebook

The Facebook shortcut gives you a very streamlined look at your news feed and notifications in an easy to see and use interface. The icon in the taskbar will display a number if you have notifications so you can take a quick peek and also catch up on any current happenings in the news feed.

To install it, go to the social Pokki page and click on the Facebook Download to install the shortcut. It will now appear in your taskbar along with any other shortcuts you downloaded. Click on the icon to open and log in and you’re ready to roll!

Gmail

If you have one or more Gmail accounts, you will find this shortcut extremely useful! You can now access all of your Gmail accounts with the click of a button right from your desktop! Never wonder if you have email messages waiting in your inbox again- any waiting messages will be displayed next to the icon,

To get started, go to the Gmail page in Pokki and download the shortcut. When you sign in, click on the arrow next to your account name. A drop down menu will give you the option to sign into more accounts and sign out of individual or all accounts. You can also switch between accounts by clicking on the name of the account you want to access.

YouTube

If your business or hobby revolves around YouTube video’s, you may like this shortcut for keeping tabs on your competitor’s content or for finding future ideas. Just like the other shortcuts, navigate to the Pokki YouTube page and download the YouTube shortcut. The play button for the YouTube shortcut will be placed directly on your taskbar upon download for easy access.

All the features you need are available in the shortcut version so you can search and watch video’s from each category or by entering keywords in the search bar. The only thing I would like to see added to this shortcut is the ability to log into your own YouTube account to create and view your content as well as track the analytics. Hopefully that’s a feature that will come in the future.

I love having these shortcuts on my desktop for easy and quick viewing. The one click access means I can get in and get out without interfering with my productivity. Let us know which shortcuts you downloaded and how they are working out for you!

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 3 Reasons Why You Should Embed A Tweet

Let’s walk through several reasons why you would want to embed a tweet into a post or article.

Reason #1

The ability to display tweets from satisfied customers will give you automatic testimonials to display on your website or blog giving credibility to your brand. When prospective customers browse your website, they are looking for reasons you are better or different from someone else offering the same services or products. Actual tweets about your business or service could generate more leads and conversions.

Reason #2

If you built and maintain your website with no developer experience, you may not know how to create ads or Calls To Action (CTA) tabs for generating leads. You can embed tweets as your CTA instead and achieve the same result. You can create an embedded tweet to offer a free info guide or eBook on a topic in exchange for their contact information to build your email list. The prospect walks away with information and is likely to return to your site for more resources.

Reason #3

The main reason we use Twitter is to share content with like-minded people and to learn from what they share. There are a countless number of articles on how to get people to share your content and where to place the social sharing buttons on your page because we all scan articles for that bit of information that someone else might share to increase our knowledge base of that particular subject. In each sub-heading of your post, place an embedded tweet to allow segments of your article to be shared in addition to the entire article. You can get double the exposure from a single article by doing a little extra preparation!

3 Ways To Embed A Tweet

When I first heard about embedding tweets, it looked very complicated. I can read a little code and have taken some Code Academy lessons but I am far from able to change codes in my website. I’m sure many of  you are thinking the same thing so I will show you three easy ways to embed a tweet to your article that don’t require you to know HTML coding.

 1. WordPress Tweet Embed Plugin

WordPress is widely used by beginner and intermediate web developers, so it seems fitting to start with a plugin for your WordPress site. The WordPress Tweet Embed Plugin is the easiest model to embed a tweet. If you can copy and paste, you can use this method. Download and install the plugin as you do any WordPress plugin. When you see a tweet you want to embed, click on the link to open the full article. Copy the URL from the address bar of the web browser and take it to your WordPress dashboard.

Open your New Post page in the Visual tab where you would normally write your post and paste the URL on a separate line from other text.

Click Save Draft and Preview how it will look in your post.

2. Text To HTML Editor Tool

We are going to get a little more fancy now using tools that do all the hard work for you. If you want to create a customized embedded tweet, this is a great option! If you don’t want to interrupt your article with an actual tweet box, use this code option to place a small “Tweet This” link anywhere you want to allow sharing of specific text.

Open the Text Editor Tool and type in what you want the embedded tweet to say. Click URL Encode to produce the line of code you will enter into your next step.

Open a New Post page and enter this line of code into your HTML tab:

Copy the line of code in the Encode box and paste it where the red “Your Tweet Here” is. Click on the Visual tab or Preview to see how it will look. You can add text before the code to be tweeted with it (highlighted in yellow) as a subliminal hint that this is tweetable material.

Alternatively, you can also make a block quote that appears in a separate box like a customized tweet. In your HTML tab, highlight the text and code link that you want to create the block quote for. Click on the b-quote tab and save your changes. Preview your post to see it appear as a separate box that you can customize to your needs.

The “Tweet This” link is live and shareable right from the article. When the link is clicked, a Twitter window will open allowing the viewer to RT and add any comments to it before sending.

 3. Direct HTML

Similar to the other two methods, we are going to copy and paste to create our embedded tweet. When you find a tweet you want to embed, open it and click on Details and then Embed This Tweet.

A window containing the HTML code and the tweet information will open. Copy the code and paste it into your HTML tab, to the position where you want the tweet to show up. Click Preview to see it displayed in your article.

Once you experiment with options, you will see it’s very easy to do! Give it a try and be proud of yourself for tinkering with code and get your content shared through another avenue. Let us know how it worked out for you!

Image credit: House Sparrow by Big Stock Photo.

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GrabInbox is not the first in the industry to provide such unifying service. Hootsuite and TweetDeck are two popular services that allows you to access different accounts at one place. What I like about GrabInbox is its simple user-interface and the ability to queue and schedule your messages.

1. To get started with GrabInbox, first go to GrabInbox.com and create a new account. This is what you will see after you login.

2. Start by adding an account. Once it is verified, it will bring you through a 3-steps configuration wizard. The first step involve setting your timezone.

3. The second step is setting the notification option. You can configure the type of update (notification, update, messages, mention etc) to appear in your dashboard.

doesn’t allow you to
4. The last step is an interesting one. It analyses your account and come up with a set of timing that is most appropriate to publish your tweets/message. You can change the timing and the max. no of update though. When you queued your tweets/messages, it will based on these settings.

5. At any point of time, you can click on your account on the left pane and see the update on the right pane. This saves you plenty of time switching between different networks.

6. To compose a tweet/message, simply click the “Share your status message” input field and popup box will appear to let you write your message. You have the option of uploading a text file with longer sentences if you plan to tweet more than 140 characters. Once done, you can either Post immediately or add to the Queue where it will publish for you based on the queue setting you have configured earlier.

7. Alternatively, you can schedule your message to publish at a particular time in the future.

8. If you have to visit GrabInbox everytime you want to send/schedule a message, then it is not user-friendly at all. Luckily it also comes with a Chrome extension and a bookmarklets (for all other browsers) where you can compose a message quickly.

This is how it looks like in Chrome browser:

Last, but not least, GrabInbox allows you to view your scheduled and queued messages and there is an Analytics option (seems to only work for Twitter account) where you can view the number of retweets your tweets have generated.

Conclusion

GrabInbox is a useful and easy to use web services to manage your social accounts. It currently supports only Facebook, Facebook Pages, Twitter and LinkedIn. It would be great if there is mobile apps for Android and iOS, but now, we have to live with the Chrome extension or the bookmarklets which you can only post a message/tweet and not to manage your accounts. It is currently free to register and use and there is no limit of the accounts that you can add. There is also no mentions of pricing and/or whether the product is still in beta or is already a stable release. Nevertheless, use and enjoy it while it is still free, though I think it won’t be long before they start charging a fee for the usage.

GrabInbox

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The Basics

Under the Settings in your Twitter page, there is a Design Tab option where you can change the appearance of your Twitter profile. There are two main parts here: custom background and color scheme.

Sign into your Twitter account. Click on your username to get the drop down menu where you will begin. Select Settings, and then Design to view the options available in the Twitter Design tab.

To change the background, simply select “Change Background Image” and browse your files to upload a custom image. Alternatively, you can choose a design from the themes given.

Next, you may want to click on the “Change Design Colors” to change the color of the tweet background, text, links etc.

Customizing the Background

Changing the background is easy, but choosing a background with the right dimension is a challenge. Keep in mind that viewers of your profile may be using anything from mobile devices and tablets to large screen monitors, so the size and position of your logo on the background can determine whether your followers can see it or not.

The Twitter page is fully optimized for 1024px screen, so it would be foolish for us to use a 1024px width background as it will be completely covered by the Tweet section (and it will look awful on a large screen). An ideal size would be 1440px as that gives you extra space of 250px to include your logo and some messages. Of course, this also means that your followers need to be using a screen of 1440px and above to view your full background. You can also go with 1280px background, but you only have about 100px of space to play with.

If you only want to upload a small photo of yourself, do take into consideration that Twitter will align all your images to the left. If your photo is not the correct size, it will be truncated by the Tweets section. As can be seen in the screenshot below, I adjusted the image to 230 x 150 and uploaded it to my profile. Twitter aligned it to the upper left corner of the background. Remember to leave approximately 20 unused pixels at the top of the image to align with the timeline. You may think that the image is cut off but navigating to your profile will display how it will look to viewers.

Color Scheme

Next, you need to customize the text and background colors to match your background image. Click the “Change Design Colors” button. Open a color pallet and drag your mouse around until you find the shade that works with your background. If you’re using FireFox as your web browser, use the ColorZilla add on. It’s designed to read color from any pixel on the screen giving you a hex code that can be entered rather than trying to guess at a color. Be sure to change each tile so all the elements match your new design.

Customizing the color scheme will require some creativity, and that is not something we can teach here. Here are some resources that you can use to spark your creativity.

1. Themeleon

If you want to get your creativity on and have a profile page like nobody else, head over to Themeleon. It’s a free template design site that has over 600,000 design patterns to choose from. It’s endorsed by Twitter and linked directly to your Twitter page so it’s seamless. There are endless possibilities of design and customization in this site where you are sure to make your page far from standard!

2. Free Twitter Designer

This site has the same principal as the Twitter Design Themes with a few more trendy options. The custom images tab allows you to size the image from the control panel without having to go back and forth into an image editing software. The application is easy to use for any experience level.

3. Twitter Backgrounds.com

Choose from hundreds of unique backgrounds made by their in-house PhotoShop experts. The designs include everything from cool patterns to popular musicians and sports teams. One click upload makes it fast and easy to create a profile page that represents you.

4. Twitter Backgrounds Gallery

Here you will find a showcase of inspiration for any Twitter fan to express individuality. The collection is made up of selections and recommendations by other Twitter users. If you need inspiration for your profile, go see what cool things your fellow Tweeters are creating!

Image credit: IconPedia

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Introduction

Feedcal is currently in Public Beta and only works with Facebook and Twitter. The salient features of this web service is that you can simply set it and leave it, as it runs automatically in the background.

Using FeedCal

To start using this service, you just need to sign up on their web site. However, unlike many other web services, the sign up process is not so easy. You will need to fill many fields to get Feedcal working for you. In the very first stage, Feedcal integrates itself with your Google calendar and then it will ask you to authorize it with your social networks, either Facebook, Twitter or both. After connecting your accounts with Feedcal, just click on Sign Up button.

In the last step, it will need some of your basic information such as user name and E-mail address. After successfully integrating it with both calendar and social networks, you’re done. Feedcal will take care of the rest for you. Well, as this service in beta stage, you will not see a user-interface or anything like that but it will automatically filter all the events and sync them with your Google calendar. The service will check for updates on selected social networks after every 5-10 minutes. Just tweet about any event or if any of your friend has tweeted about a social gathering on Twitter or Facebook.

After testing it for a while, we found that the service works as described. Events were added to your existing calendar rather than a new one. It will also automatically update calendar after certain time period and pick up the status update or tweets which mention events. The best part is that we can even update those events just like the normal events created in the Google calendar.

Pricing

There are three plans designed by this web service which varies by social networking services you choose and the duration for checking the updates. Each plan comes with a different price, but the first 1000 users will get any of the account for free. Grab it while it lasts.

Conclusion

After using this web service, we came to a point that it is fairly innovative service to save the time. Because by using this engine, we don’t need to even open our Facebook or Twitter accounts to see the upcoming events. All we need to open the Google calendar and we will have an idea about upcoming or ongoing events. So, what do you think that this web service? Do let us know in the comments below?

Check out Feedcal

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Set Up For Twitter

To begin, You must sign into your Twitter account. After you are signed in, point your browser to http://www.twitter.com/devices. Once on the website, enter the required information and click start.

After verification and once your Twitter account is linked with your phone number, create a contact using 40404. When creating the contact, for the full integrated effect, name the contact “Twitter”.

All tweets sent from your iPhone associated with the phone number linked with your Twitter account to 40404 will automatically update your Twitter page.

Alternate Option: At the office or away from your computer, but want to take advantage of this workaround? No problem, there is a computer free way to this “hack”. Simply text “Start” to 40404. You will then be asked a series of setup questions, including your username and password. When complete, add 40404 as a contact (with the name “Twitter” of course) and you’re set!

Set Up For Facebook

For setup on Facebook, go to https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=mobile&t .

Add your country and carrier associated with your iPhone 4S.

To activate the service, text the letter “F” to 32665. From there, you should receive a text message from Facebook containing a confirmation code.

Enter the confirmation code on the page “Activate Facebook Texts (Step 2 of 2)”. Check or deselect the other options available on the page accordingly. Then, click “next”.

Facebook will give you a code that can be used for updating your Facebook through text messaging. Enter this code as a contact and save. Again, saving the contact as Facebook will increase the feeling of integration.

Alternate Option: Same as with Twitter, there is a computer free option to this workaround for Facebook. Send the message “Hello” to 32665. You will then be given a mobile-friendly Facebook link that will allow you to finish the set up process in Safari. Then, add Facebook as a contact and you’re ready to go. Even though this process isn’t completely done in text messaging (you will be pointed to Safari), it is still a good alternate process.

Launch Siri and Update!

Updating Twitter and Facebook with Siri is seamless after this quick setup process. When you feel a creative message coming on, simply launch Siri by pressing your home button until she appears. From there, tell Siri “Send a text message to [Twitter, Facebook] [your message]”. You will then be asked to confirm the message. With your confirmation, the message is then updated on the respective social networking service.

Things to Remember

This is the best workaround yet for updating your social networking website with Siri. Despite this, there are still a couple of experiences that still remind you that it’s not official or integrated.

For example, not saying “text message” in the command “Send a text message to [Twitter, Facebook]” will either give you the error message of “Sorry, I can’t help you with [Twitter or Facebook]” or it will attempt to launch email. This is a minor inconvenience, but using Siri through this method of updating is a lot quicker than updating directly from the website or application.

We must also remember that Siri is currently in a beta phase, this means that all of the problems are still being worked out. In addition, this also means that Siri isn’t available to third party developers. Once Siri is out of this phase, we can assure you that the social networking websites will be the first in line to offer integration with Siri.

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The Twitter app is available for all iOS devices. It allows you to tweet on the go with your iPhone, as you update your followers on your location, and also to read the latest updates from those you follow on your iPad.

The apps allow you to update and change all of your personal information on your account, including your bio and profile image. You can also find your followers and those you follow from this.

Links to websites open within the app and are both scrollable and clickable. From here you can also do a reply, retweet, copy the link to the tweet, or mail the tweet. Additionally, you can translate the tweet, open the link in Safari, and save it to Read Later in Instapaper. Menu options include Timeline, Messages, Mentions, and Lists.

The Twitter options don’t stop there in iOS5. It’s also integrated into the native iOS 5 apps. You can forward a link to a website directly from Safari. Curiously, though, although this tweet provides you with a great graphic, it doesn’t include the website title or page or article title. If you Tweet from this menu, the only thing appearing on the Tweet is the link. The title or any other info you want included needs to be typed in.

Images in Photos can be tweeted as well. It’s another one of the options including Email Photo, Assign to a Contact, and Print. Again, the information and title isn’t included. However, you can choose to have your location added to aid you in keeping your followers updated to where you are.

To be able to Tweet directly from these apps, you just need to add your username and password one time. This is done through the Settings app. Additionally, you can have your Contacts and Twitter merged so that the Twitter information of your followers will be added to your contacts.

You aren’t confined to using the Twitter app, however. It can still be accessed directly from a URL in Safari if you prefer. Your sign-in information isn’t retained in Safari though and you have to sign in separately each time. iOS 5 makes tweeting much easier and smoother, yet there are still some small advances that could be made by the next update of iOS.

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The working behind the Tweet and Get It plugin is simple. First, you create a high-value product to be given away. Next, you create a Tweet and Get it button which is linked indirectly to your download page. When your visitors click the button, they have to first follow your Twitter account and send a tweet before they are redirected to the download page.

1. Install and activate the Tweet and Get It plugin.

2. Go to “Tweet and Get It -> Make Your button” section. Here’s where you can create download button for your free product.

You have to enter your Twitter account, the tweet you want the visitor to send in exchange for the product and upload the product (or insert in the download URL if the file is not hosted in your server). Lastly, enter the name of the button.

3. Click the “Create your button” button. It will then generate the shortcode for the button. Copy the shortcode and paste it to the product giveaway article. This is what you will see in the front page.

When your reader click the button, he/she will be brought to the Twitter authorization page where they have to grant authorization to the Tweet and Get It app. After that, the following screen will appear and they have to click OK (to send the tweet and follow your Twitter account) to proceed.

Lastly, the download button will appear where they can download your file.

Conclusion

One thing that I like about this Tweet and Get It plugin is that from the start to the end, it only takes you 5 minutes to set it up and there is totally no coding knowledge required. If you are looking to increase your Twitter followers count, this is a very useful plugin that you can consider.

Tweet and Get It

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Introduction

KeepMeOut is an excellent online service which prevents users to visit a specific website according to defined time interval. Using KeepMeOut, you can specify a website which you want to restrict and make a bookmark for it. Using the bookmark will prevent users from visiting the specified website too often, usually according to a set time interval. If you visit the website too much, it will show you a warning message regarding the website.

Usage

KeepMeOut is really simple and easy to use. All you have to do is specify the website, define the time limit (after which you will receive the warning) and click Submit.

You can click on Advanced Settings as well to further customize your preferences and include specific days and timings for applying restrictions.  Set the warning to either everyday or weekdays and define the time frame in which the restrictions will be applied. Click on Submit when you are satisfied with the settings.

After you click Submit, it will redirect you to a page where you will be given a URL to bookmark. You can save it in your browser and use it when you want to visit the specified website.

Now, open Facebook or any other specified website using the bookmark link provided by KeepMeOut and it will show you the warning that you have visited the website once in the time specified. It will also show you the time after which you can open the website again along with  general statistics like average daily visits and past months visits to that website along with the time when it was visited.

If you want to change the settings, click on the Change Settings button.

Conclusion

KeepMeOut is a must try utility especially for those who want to restrict the amount of time spent on specific website. However, there is one drawback, it will only work with the bookmark URL specified by KeepMeOut. Otherwise, if you directly go to the website it will not show any warning. But still, this service can help you become a bit organized and focus on your tasks rather than wasting time on different websites.

KeepMeOut

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With information moving at the speed of Twitter, having access to this sea of information is a must-have for many people. There are several Twitter clients for Android. Below is a breakdown of some of them.

Twitter

The first and most obvious application is the one Twitter made. The Twitter made application is very clean and gives you the basics you need to send and receive updates, DMs and Replies. There aren’t really any extras to speak of.

Twitdroyd

My first Android had Twidroyd (formerly known as Twitdroid) installed on it. Without digging too deep, it looks very simple. Almost as simple as the Twitter made app. However Twitdriod has a lot more to offer. Daily deals, nearby tweets and channels make it a good upgrade from a basic app.

[feedomit][/feedomit]

Channels are a list of recent tweets from companies, universities, sites, news and other sources. This makes it easy to keep track of the latest information easier.

TweetCaster for Twitter

Tweetcaster is another basic yet easy to use Twitter application for Android. You can search, see your @replies, DMs and the other essentials. Whats cool about searching in Tweetcaster is when you type in a search term, you can choose to search Twitter as a whole, people with that word in their name or nearby tweets.

Another more advanced feature is being able to post to multiple accounts at once. This is super handy if you tweet for multiple accounts with similar topics.

Tweetdeck

It wouldn’t be right to talk about Twitter apps and not mention Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is a powerhouse in the Twitter desktop application world. While Tweetdeck for Android does not offer the full host of features as the desktop, it is no slouch. You have access to your Facebook, Foursquare, Google Buzz and multiple Twitter accounts.

Another great feature adopted from the desktop is the use of columns. Columns makes it easier to see feeds that matter to you. You can set up several different columns and simply swipe to the one you want.

Seesmic

We have talked about Seesmic a couple times here on Make Tech Easier. It is a great competitor to desktop and web applications. The Seesmic Android app gives you a few special features. The first is being able to see Facebook Pages, both your own and pages you like. It also lets you use Salesforce Chatter. Of the apps on here, this is the only one I noticed offering this as an optional account.

Hootsuite

Of the group, Hootsuite is my personal favorite. The reason isn’t because it can add multiple Twitter accounts or Facebook or Foursquare. It is because I can schedule tweets. Scheduling updates is very handy and helps create the illusion that you are more active on Twitter than you really are.

Conclusion

A basic user can pick any of these Twitter Android applications and they will have what they need. The more specific your needs, the more you may want to try an application for a while and see how it works for you. My top two choices on this list are Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. They are user friendly and because you have an account with each, no matter where you sign in to that account, they are all more-or-less in sync.

Now it’s your turn. Which is your favorite Android social media app of choice?

image credit: Johan Larsson

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What you could really use is “Storify” – a web service that merges the most popular information sites and a story-writing interface. Not only will you save time on the research, but you will also form and publish your stories quickly.

Introduction

Storify is a web service currently in its beta. It lets you write stories on any topic and then quickly publish. The site offers an intuitive interface that lets you find and import various types of media and data from Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, and other websites. Your story is then published under a public URL that you can share with your friends. Visiting stats of the story are recorded and displayed to show how popular a story is.

Usage

You can sign into Storify using your existing Twitter account. With your Twitter account linked to the site, you then have to provide your email address.

You will see an interface with the Twitter feed on the left and your story pane on the right. The left pane is for your resource material. The right pane is where you enter the story’s title and description, select its image thumbnail, and drag sources.

To find sources, focus on the left pane. Select a site available from the sidebar. Enter your search query and the type of results you want. For example, if you have chosen Google as a source you will need to specify whether you are looking for web results or images. The results will load up in the same pane.

You can drag your desired results to the right and make them a part of your story. You can switch between different sources and add various types of data to your story: tweets, Facebook pages, URLs, videos, images, etc.

When you have a sufficient number of sources you will be able to change the story’s thumbnail image in the right pane. The image options will actually be thumbnails retrieved from the sources you added.

If you feel like you need to add your own comments between the stories, you can click on the ‘T’ icon.

This icon presents a text box where you can write text with bold, italics, strikethrough, underlined, and hyperlinks.

You can add as many text boxes as you want, even on top of one another.

With your story complete, you can either save it as a draft for future editing or publish it right away through the buttons located on top.

Your story is published on a unique URL and displayed exactly the way you ordered your sources and text.

Links at the bottom of the page allow you to quickly share the story on Twitter, like it on Facebook, and obtain its embeddable code that can be easily used on your own site or blog.

To share the direct URL of the story, just copy it from your browser’s address bar.

Visits to the story page are recorded and displayed as a sign of the story’s popularity.

Conclusion

Storify offers a unique and user-friendly way of telling a story and sharing chunks of information from social media sites. Its clean interface and ease-of-use will surely be appreciated by all its users. The next time you are looking to create a mosaic of information from the web, remember to pay a visit to Storify. It will definitely pay off.

You can visit Storify’s homepage over here.

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Being determined and focused in what we are doing online is what makes you different to what I like to call “casual users”. Especially on Twitter it is getting more and more important to create a consistency of great content to build trust and interest amongst your followers.

The key is not to flood them with too many updates at once, and to neither spend hours on Twitter when you should rather be doing something else.

So let me therefore introduce you to Buffer, a new Twitter tool I have started to use recently. It will allow you to have tweets well spread out over the day, yet without overwhelming your followers with too many updates at once. Something which happened to me quite often.

What does Buffer do?

You simply put tweets in your Buffer, say for example 4 or 5 at once when browsing news. The app then spreads out and schedules these tweets for you over the day. That’s it.

Step 1: Put Tweets in your Buffer

I feel that throwing a few tweets in your Buffer is super simple. After creating your account you can start putting tweets into your Buffer right there.

Or make it even simpler still and install the right browser extension for you (Firefox, Chrome, Safari). If you like an article click the icon – Like this:

Step 2: Edit tweets or write your own

What I also particularly appreciate is the opportunity to use the browser extensions to write any tweet I want to go into the Buffer. You can use it to edit the suggested tweet too of course.

Step 3: Set up the right timing

It is quite convenient that by default Buffer gives you twitter peak times at which your tweets go out. However, if you wish to change the daily tweeting times from Buffer, feel free to add more, change or delete some. Here are my tweeting times:

Step 4: Track your Buffered tweets

What finally comes in very handy is Buffer’s integrated analytics feature. Once your buffered tweets are tweeted, click on “analytics” and see what impact you have made. You can track clicks on your links, retweets,  avatars of who retweeted you and the reach of your tweets.

Is Buffer right for you?

In case you have similar habits to me, wanting to share the great content you read on the web, give Buffer a try. It will make it super simple to create a consistency on Twitter and you will send out tweets without overwhelming your followers.

A pitfall of the app is that there is currently no mobile version available, but was announced to be under development already.

I hope you like Buffer. Let me know you views below.

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If you are not trying to market something and using Twitter to be social, the 140 character limit can be a pain sometimes. Tweetdeck has added a feature called Deck.ly. The long and the sort of it (pun intended), is you can create longer tweets through Tweetdeck.

How Deck.ly works

Here is a rundown on how Deck.ly will work. The pictures were taken of the Tweetdeck desktop application. Below there are other options which work in a similar way.

As you are typing and using up your allotted 140 characters, you will see a notification like this.

You can continue to keep typing and post your update like normal.

When you send your update, you will see a tag at the end of your tweet saying Read More. If the people viewing your update are using Tweetdeck, they will see the same thing.

If they are viewing your update from a different application or a site like Twitter, there will be a Deck.ly link at the end.

When they click on that link, they will see a pop-up or a new page showing the longer message. In this page, there is an option to post a comment and see other people’s comments.

Where is Deck.ly?

There are several ways to use Deck.ly. Below are the 3 options you have to choose from. All of which will have the same end result:

Desktop Application

The first method, as you would expect, is within the Tweetdeck desktop application. As long as you have the most recent version, you do not need to do anything special to use Deck.ly.

All you will need to do to use Deck.ly is type more than 140 characters into the status bar. Once you reach 141 characters you will see an option box for Long Update.

When this box is selected, the tweet will not be cut off or split up into several tweets. As mentioned earlier, you will see a Read More tag or a Deck.ly link instead.

Chrome

The Google Chrome extension is a great option for those of you who don’t want to want to install anything on their computer. The Chrome extension works in the same way as the desktop application. Type everything you’d like to say, then the Long update option will automatically appear.

Android

The Tweetdeck for Android application works like the Google Chrome web application does. There is nothing you need to do to activate Deck.ly. You will be able to type and type and type then post your update.

Conclusion

Using Tweetdeck by way of the desktop application or the Google Chrome web application is very user friendly. Adding in a longer tweeting option is great for those posts that I want to RT but there isn’t enough room with hashtags, giving credit and adding in a comment.

As for Tweetdeck for Android, I do not use it regularly. The reason I prefer other applications is Tweetdeck for Android does not allow scheduled tweets. If it offered that feature I would use all three versions religiously.

What are your reasons for needing more than 140 characters?

image credit: jm3

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Flexamail is an email sevice, yet it is not the email service that you use to check for mail everyday. Sound confusing? To make it more explicit, Flexamail is a web service that can send your Web content, Twitter or Facebook update to your personal inbox. All you need to do is to send an email to the respective Flexamail email account and it will automate the process for you.

Signing up

Flexamail is a personalize service, so you will need to sign up an account with them. You will need to sign up with your primary email address (or the email that you will be regularly accessing. My advise, don’t use your office email). This email address will be the primary tool you use to communicate with Flexamail.

Using Flexamail

There are several ways that you can make good use of Flexamail. You can:

• Access popular sites like Twitter and Facebook all from your email without needing a proxy
• Avoid pesky firewalls getting in your way, access websites and services regardless to your office or country’s firewall settings
• Post, share and track any type of files and images online
• Password protect those files you don’t want made public
• Securely backup your files online
• Save money on your cellphone plan with an email only data plan
• Publish a photo from your iPhone or Blackberry without needing to open an app
• Stay organized with sortable, sharable, drag and drop lists

To be able to access your Twitter and Facebook account, you will first need to give permission to Flexamail to access your account.

To receive update for your Twitter or Facebook account, all you have to do is to send a blank email (from the email address that you signed up Flexamail with) to twitter@flexamail.com or facebook@flexamail.com respectively.

It will then reply you with a mail consisting all the updates in your Twitter/Facebook account.

Similarly, you can send email to facebookwall@flexamail.com to post to your Facebook wall, tweet@flexamail.com to send a tweet, and many other Twitter related services.

Surfing the Web

To surf the web with Flexamail, you can send an email to www@flexamail.com and insert the Website URL as the subject of the email. You will then receive an email of the website you wish to view.

Need to perform a search on Google? No worry, just send a mail to google@flexamail.com with the search terms as the subject.

You can also add your favorite sites (up to 4) to Flexamail and get it to retrieve content from those sites with the email favs@flexamail.com

Other services

Other services provide by Flexamail include uploading and storing your files (including encrypted files) and images and also creating a to-do list. More features will also be added in the near future.

Conclusion

Flexamail will be slow and redundant if you have full access to the web. But if you are in an office environment where (almost) everything online is blocked, except for your email address, then Flexamail will be a good way to continue to keep in touch with the Web.

Flexamail

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1.TweetDeck

Twitter has a fairly barren interface. Even its newer version lacks many features that would be commonly found in other similar applications. Therefore, on my desktop I interact with Twitter exclusively through TweetDeck. This Adobe AIR application has a vast feature list, including the ability to post photos and videos and it displays all your other social networks. While there are many Twitter clients out there, TweetDeck is mentioned here because it is highly configurable and is available for almost every single platform: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone, Google Chrome and more.

2. TwitPic

TwitPic allows you to post and share photos on Twitter. Photos can be shared through your smartphone or through the TwitPic website. Upload a photo to Twitpic and it will update your Twitter’s stream with a link to your photo.

3. Twitstra

Need a notification system when someone mentions you in their tweets? Try Twitstra. To sign up for this service, visit the Twitstra website, provide them with your email and authorise it to access your Twitter account. That is all it takes. You never have to visit the website or tweak any other settings. Every time someone mentions you on Twitter, you will receive an email with the tweet. If at some point in the future, you become swamped with emails from Twitstra or you just feel as though the service is no longer useful for you, simply remove it from the list of services you have authorised to access your Twitter account.

4. Twittermail

If you do not have access to Twitter at work, Twittermail will help satisfy your Twitter needs. What this service does is provide you with a “twittermail.com” email address, which allows you to post to your Twitter account by sending a regular email. Since you can send emails to this address from any email client, you will not be restricted by any corporate social media restrictions.

5. Twitterfeed

The fastest way to disseminate your posts is to link your blogs RSS feed to Twitter using Twitterfeed. Every time a new post appears on your RSS feed, Twitterfeed will pick it up and post it on your Twitter account.

6. LinkBunch

LinkBunch is not really a Twitter specific tool, however Twitter’s character limitation on tweets means that it is difficult to share links (with a “s”. Plenty of links, I mean). LinkBunch solves this problem by allowing you to share a bunch of links by posting only one URL on Twitter.

7. SecretTweet

If you ever have the urge to post on Twitter without the rest of the world knowing it was you, use SecretTweet. Your anonymous tweet will appear on the @secrettweet account.

8. TweetScan

It is no secret that Twitter’s default search engine is quite poor. If you are looking for a specific term in the twitterverse, you are better off using TweetScan to find the particular tweet. You can search through all tweets, tweets by a particular user or search for people generally.

9. WhatTheTrend

Twitter hashtags are a great feature for grouping tweets on similar subjects together. However, if the hashtag contains jargon that you do not understand you may miss out on the joke. What The Trend solves this problem by creating a user-editable database of trend meanings.

What other ways do you use Twitter for?

Image credit: shawncampbell

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Because of the digital trend toward the social aspect of the web, it is natural there would be applications to help you search and track information on the social web. 48ers is one of those.

On a Personal basis

For the everyday Joe, there are a few benefits to a social search engine like 48ers. One of the most popular reasons for using this type of search is for researching a product you’d like to purchase. You can enter in a product name and see what people are currently saying about that product.

Sure you can go onto Twitter and search there or ask the people who follow you what they think, then head over to Facebook and post a question there, then mozy on over to Google Buzz and do the same thing.

It is much easier to do it all in one search. Plus you will be searching other sites along with the 3 big name sites.

From Business point of view

Businesses are using social search engines for much more than being social. It is life or death these days to know what people are saying about you. More so than when you were the popular kid in high school.

Being able to search multiple sites at the same time is a real time saver for businesses taking social media and their online presence seriously. Tracking a hastag for an event, a brand, product or anything else is much easier when you can search multiple sites simultaneously.

What makes 48ers cool

If you are one of the 80% of the Googlers out there, you will see a striking similarity to your favorite search engine. The simplicity makes it feel like home when you are searching the social web.

In the left sidebar, you will see the sites 48ers is pulling results from. If you would like to filter your results you can do so by clicking on the site you want to see the results from. When filtering the results, you can only see one site at a time.

I really like how they have a “Useful Searches” section in the sidebar. There are some searches in there that are kind of “ah-ha moment” searches. I mean, they make complete sense when you see them, yet you didn’t think to search for.

What site is the result from?

When you perform a search for any term, you can see the logo of the social site at the beginning of each result in the list. Results from social bookmarking sites don’t always show a logo because they aren’t from a social site like Twitter.

Overall, there isn’t a lot to show with a search engine. Even though there is a lot of potential uses for a social search engine, everyone will use it differently. Play around a little and try different search types. Use the filters, try the suggested searches to see what you come up with.

The social web is not an exact science even though many people claim to know it all. Spend the time getting to know the basics and the rest of the time searching for and talking to people with similar interests. That’s what the whole social thing is all about.

What do you use social search engines for?

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Frid.ge is a private social site offering a lot of what you are used to without the prying eyes of everyone who have friended or followed you everywhere else on the web. If you are familiar with any other micro blogging sites, Frid.ge most resembles Tumblr.

A little about Frid.ge

Frid.ge is invite only. If you are not looking to air all of your sharing and messages to the whole world, you found the right application. Organizations, businesses and clubs will greatly benefit from the social aspect coupled by privacy of Frid.ge.

Inviting others

Once you get the basic setup completed, you will need to invite others. The great part of using Frid.ge is it’s an invitation only site. If you want to make a forum to complain about work, you can invite everyone who has a beef with your employer. This can be done in a couple ways.

Like a lot of applications out there today, you can have your Gmail contact list scanned for people you may want to invite.

The other way is to send the potential participant an invitation link. This link is specific to your “fridge”.

What Frid.ge does

You create a post or update just like on many other sites. You can use text, a picture or video. When you post an update, you will see it in chronological order. If you are a business working on a project, this is great for keeping the group up-to-date.

More than one group

What I like is you can have more than one group. Each group has a different invite link. That means you can have several segmented groups with similar members in each group.

How to post

Posting can be done in a couple ways. While there isn’t a mobile application for your iPhone or Android, you can email in your post. Each person you invite to participate will have a unique email address to send updates to.

If you have a standard phone, you can send a SMS message to the email address and update while you are on the go.

Your wall

You have your own wall and it will show your recent posts, whereas “my fridge” will show everyone’s updates.

Update notifications

If you aren’t tied to your computer all day and therefore might not have the Frid.ge open all the time to see when new updates are available, you can get it to email you whenever a new update is posted.

Much like Facebook and Twitter, this can be a bit much if you have a lot of active users. I would recommend setting up a folder and a filter or rule to separate the emails you get or you may get overwhelmed.

How you might use Frid.ge

I could see a lot of potential uses for something like this. Right off the top of my head, I see people using this for collaborating on a project, planning an event, inter-company updates, client updates, club events, managers communicating to employees, editors to writers, apartment managers broadcasting information to renters, site owners communicating to loyal readers in place of a newsletter…

What are some uses you might have for a private social network?

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RockMelt is a new web browser, backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, which aims to bridge the gap between social sharing and web surfing. The browser is build around your social circle, feeds, search results and friends.

Request an Invite To Download Rockmelt

Rockmelt has recently entered a public beta but you will need an invitation to download the application. To request a free invite, head over to the RockMelt website and connect your Facebook account.

You will soon receive an email invitation with a link to download RockMelt for free. Once the setup file has been downloaded to your computer, double click to launch the web installer – yes you will need an internet connection to install Rockmelt (just like Google Chrome).

Getting Started with Rockmelt

When you run the browser for the first time, you will be asked to sign in with your Facebook account and grant all the required permissions.

The browser will continuously check your Facebook news feed among other connected sites, hence you should not revoke the permissions later.

Rockmelt completely mimics the look and functionality of Google Chrome. The browser has three main panels – one each to the right, left and top. The right panel is for connected sites, the left panel for social friends while the top panel is for search results and feeds.

Your Facebook Friends Panel in Rockmelt

The left panel of Rockmelt revolves around your Facebook friends, you can create a list of favorite Facebook friends, read their latest status updates and do a lot of other interesting things.

Clicking a friends thumbnail shows you more options – you can start a chat right away without logging in to your Facebook account. The person need not necessarily be using the RockMelt browser, he will receive your chat message on his Facebook profile or any desktop client he might be using.

There are other useful options as well, navigate to the “Recent Activity” tab and you can see the recent links shared by your friend on his profile. You can click through any shared link, image, video and it will open in a new browser tab.

Double click the profile thumbnail to open your friends Facebook profile on a new tab. You may hit the “Write” button to write a message on your friends wall or send a direct message.

You can again “Like” an update or post comment directly from the RockMelt window, it’s very sleek and fun to play around with.

The browser will also show live desktop notifications near windows system tray, whenever there is a new status update from a friend or someone sends you an IM. These desktop notifications can be turned off from the browser’s preferences and you can completely customize which notifications you want to see.

Should you want to take a quick look at your Facebook news feed, simply hit the Facebook icon at the right of the browser window. This will open a small pop up  with all the links, posts, videos and images shared on your Facebook wall.

Adding Connected Sites And Feeds in Rockmelt

Social media is not only about people but also about the websites you visit on a regular basis. If you read a lot of articles on blogs, RSS feeds and watch YouTube videos – RockMelt’s connected sites panel will come in handy.

The connected sites panel is on the right side and lets you do a few important things. First, you can add RSS feeds from blogs, websites and other sources and read them one by one on an overlay window. You may also add your other social networking profiles e.g YouTube channel, Twitter account or Friendfeed lifestream and then read the corresponding updates in their own overlay window.

For example: I added the Maketecheasier RSS feed as one of the sites and now I can read the recent articles in a new overlay window:

Agree this is no alternative of a full featured RSS reader like Feeddemon or Google reader but can be useful if you follow a handful of blogs and want to read the updates directly from the browser’s sidebar. The social sharing options are also tightly integrated, hit the share button next to any feed item and the blog post is shared over your Facebook wall, with your custom comment of course.

Whenever there is a new update on any of your connected sites, a notification is shown in another overlay pop up. This differentiates the connected sites panel with your bookmarks toolbar, which sadly never shows any notification or recent updates.

Using RockMelts Search Bar And Sharing Features

One of the nice things about RockMelt is the ability to preview search results directly from the browser’s search bar. Type a keyword or a phrase and hit the return key to preview Google search results on a browser overlay, as shown below:

You can again use the “Share” button place just right to the address bar to share any webpage on your Facebook wall. The webpage can either be shared as a link or can be sent as a message to selected Facebook friends.

All in all, RockMelt is a must used browser if you do a lot of social sharing and use Facebook as the primary medium for online marketing. It doesn’t get better than this – from surfing websites to sharing links to getting instant notifications, RockMelt will keep you ahead of the curve.

Try out RockMelt today, if you do not have an invite yet – ask some of your Facebook friends because chances are that they have already given RockMelt a try.

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What makes Twimbow different is that it color codes your tweets and let you personalize it to your liking.

Columns

For starters the column layout is different from most other Twitter clients. You will only ever see 3 columns when using Twimbow, but you can access many columns worth of information from these 3 pillars. In the combined columns you have access to information which would normally take up 3 or more columns in other applications.

In the Home Buzz, you can click on the ladder looking icon on the top left of the column. Doing this will drop down all of your Twitter lists and lists you follow.

In the search column, clicking on the magnifying glass will let you select from all of your existing searches. These searches would be additional columns in other apps.

Personal Buzz

Your Personal Buzz column combines your Direct Messages, @ mentions, RTs from and about you, and your favorite saved tweets. If you do not want one of these categories to show up in the column, you can delete it.

Home Buzz

The Home Buzz column is your normal stream of incoming tweets. You can see all of the normal information in this column.

If you are reading your main stream of tweets and see part of a conversation, you have the option of expanding a tweet to see all the tweets making up the thread. This feature is a big time saver if you start reading half way through.

Searching

Searching in Twimbow can be done by the search bar in the top right corner of the window. You can perform 2 types of searches, for a person or a keyword. To toggle between the searches, click on the word Search or People.

When you complete a search, you will see the results in the third column. You can search for numerous terms and people, all will be displayed in the third column. Each new search will appear on top of the last search. Access the previous searches by clicking on the magnifying glass.

Also part of the search is the Monitor. The Monitor is a popup screen displaying a collapsed search window. You can quickly see how many new tweets are in the search. If you want to see the tweets, you can expand the search window.

Sending a tweet

Sending a tweet is pretty straight forward, click the New Post tab and type your 140 characters. The built-in URL shortener is Bit.ly and the pictures are added via Pikchur.

One feature I wasn’t used to is being able to add a song to a tweet. I’ve usually used Blip.fm or share options within Pandora. Being able to type in the artist name and song title then add it right there is very convenient.

In the body of the tweet, you can change the colors of the text to add a little flair and make your tweet stand out from the rest of the stream.

Conclusion

I really like the use of space. It saves time not needing to scroll to the right 8 columns to check on a search term. Being able easily add a song is a cool feature. The tweets I sent using the colors and songs did not show up correctly in Tweetdeck or the new Twitter. I am sure that will be taken care of though.

Right now Twimbow is invite only. Head over to Twimbow, fill in your Twitter username and email and they will send you the invitation code. If they have run out of invite, simply leave a comment here with your Twitter username and we will help you get an invite. Limited slots. First come, first serve.

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