Twitter Tools

Twitter Application Review- Twitter for Blackberry

Social Media Advisors, Twitter Applications

As many of you know by now I can be quite the twitter addict. I do find myself spending hours at a time on the site whether it is while I am sitting in front of my computer on a desktop twitter application like Tweetdeck or when I am mobile on my Blackberry 9700.

I’ve tried several types of twitter mobile applications since switching back to a Blackberry, but most of them just did not perform the way I wished. They were slow and not always reliable. I guess that I had became spoiled in the time that I used an iPhone and was able to use Tweetie, now called Twitter for iPhone. It had several functions that I just fell in love with and no matter which application I tried, it just did not perform the way I wanted.

Then came along Twitter for Blackberry. This application was built by the creators of Tweetie and so when I saw the release I had to immediately install and give it a test run.

What I love about Twitter for Blackberry

As mentioned, my biggest complaint with other Twitter applications were their sluggishness in performance. Whenever I tried to use applications like Ubertwitter & Openbeak were that they were very slow in response and even locking up my phone at times. This is something that Twitter for Blackberry has seemed to address well and fixed.

The other thing I disliked with some of the other Twitter Applications made for Blackberry devices was that they did not work well with Twitpic. Twitpic is a service that allows you to share pictures quickly and easily into your Twitter stream. Ubertwitter for example, would completely lock up my phone to which I would have to remove the battery & do a hard reset of the phone. Openbeak on the other hand would give me continuous error messages. If it did not receive an error message it still would take a long time (sometimes up to 10 minutes) to upload.

Two other great parts of Twitter for Blackberry is that it allows you to set up custom search terms that you would like to follow as well as save them to view later. Also, just like the web based version of Twitter, you can also create lists of your friends to follow directly from your mobile phone. What is even greater about this mobile application, is that it will sync perfectly with your web version of Twitter. That means that if I add someone to a list, or create a new search term, it will save it onto my computer or vice versa. I am not 100% sure, but I do not believe these features was available on any other mobile Twitter applications for a Blackerry. At least at the times I used the other Twitter apps for a Blackberry I do not know of any app with this ability.

The last option that I really enjoy is the ability to reply all when you are wanting to send a tweet to multiple people at a time. It works just as your reply all button works for email and automatically selects all the members to reply to at once. So if someone mentions you and 3 of your friends, you can click the reply all and send something back to all 4 instantly. If you don’t want it to go to everyone, simply remove the person you do not want & send away.

What can be improved on Twitter for Blackberry?

One thing I really wish that Twitter for Blackberry would allow me to do is manage more than one account from within. I currently have 2 accounts: my personal (jb140) & my business (210consulting) that I like to tweet specific things from. Sometimes there are some things I may want to make known to our clients & friends of our business account about a new class we are teaching, but since I can only manage one account right now, I can’t do that from inside Twitter for Blackberry. My guess though, is that this update will come before too long. The reason I guess this is that the people who created Twitter for Blackberry already gave this option to their iPhone Twitter application.

The next thing I would like to see changed is the ability to do either style of a retweet. At this time, you can only do the web version of a retweet. I prefer using the RT version instead and would prefer to be able to use that instead. Right now I have to manually copy & paste the text to accomplish that and it is a major pain.

Lastly, there is sometimes a glitch within the software where it will hide my text when replying to more than one person with one tweet. Then I have to guess what I am typing and hope my fingers were on the correct keys. This sounds like a small glitch inside the software that will hopefully get resolved in the next update.

Final Thoughts:

In conclusion, I would suggest to anyone that has a Blackberry to definitely give Twitter for Blackberry a try. It is reliable, fast working & had a few great features/upgrades over other mobile apps I have tried before. I think it is by far the best of the mobile applications that I have tried so far. I know that I have had people mention a few others to try, so if you have a Blackberry & are using some other mobile application for Twitter, please share with us and I will definitely give them a test run.

Photo Credit

Twitter Application Review- TwitPickr

Social Media Advisors, Twitter Applications

Twitter Applications– Hundreds of them exist if not thousands. We all know we want an application to do specific things so we search for something to help us. So, last night I decided I was going to go through a post I wrote last week titled 125 Twitter Applications to Make Using Twitter Easier to Use and start looking for different twitter application that I never used and see if it would enhance my overall twitter experience.

So, I looked through my list and decided that I was going to give TwitPickr a try. It is a twitter application that allows you to transfer your photos from your Twitpic account directly into your flickr account. At first when I started testing this program, I thought it was going to be something I would use regularly as I love taking photos while out & about & could easily transfer them online without needing to go back to my Blackberry later. So after playing with the application for the last day, here are the highlights & low points of this application:

TwitPickr’s Highlights:

I really liked the way it will bring in your photos into your Flickr account quickly. Basically once you click the upload button it will show them in your photo stream on Flickr instantly. There is no waiting for 20 minutes for the photos to process which is nice. I also like the way that it will pull in the photos at a good quality size of 640 x 480 (the max size twitpic compresses the pictures to. The other nice feature is that the quality of the photo does not appear to be compressed or diminished either.

Another really nice feature of this Twitter Application is that you can edit the titles of the photo before placing them onto Flickr right on the transfer screen of TwitPickr. This saves me needing to go back after on Flickr & rename them there. That way I can choose the photos I want to send, title them, and upload quickly & effectively with this Photo Sharing Twitter Application.

Concerns with TwitPickr:

While this seems like it could be a really stellar Twitter Application, there are a few components I didn’t care for. The first and biggest issue I had with TwitPickr is that anyone & everyone can snag anybody else’s photos and publish into their Flickr account without even asking. Since it does not require you to log into either your twitpic or twitter account for authorization, you could just type in any twitter ID and grab their photos. With permission, I entered my business partner Jason’s Twitter ID and easily added one of his photos into my Flickr account.

The reason this concerns me is that I may not care to have my photos shared by others & used by them & this is just opening a door for copyright issues. Also, once the photo gets onto Flickr, you can run into some problems with proving who is the rightful owner of the photo. With major concerns over privacy continuing to rise, this throws up big red flags for many consumers and will scare them away from a Twitter Application like TwitPickr. There is a login verification required for the Flickr side at least. My suggestion to fix this component of the TwitPickr Twitter Application? Integrate in some sort of twitter login authorization so that photos cannot be snagged by others so easily.

My second issue with this Twitter Application is that it does not seem to allow you to access your pictures beyond page one of your photos. I searched the entire page looking for the ability to access older photos. I even tried changing the URL to get it to pull older photos with zero luck. So if you are like me & take a lot of pictures when you are at conferences to share through twitpic, you can’t use this Twitter Application to share all the photos on Flickr and will be forced to connect the phone to the computer and do it the old fashioned way. When situations like this arise, it completely defeats the use of this Twitter Application. If the developers can make the ability to share older photos in addition to the most current 20, it would be a major improvement to TwitPickr.

The last thing I noticed was a bug or glitch that sometimes made it difficult to get my photos to load to Flickr. The first few times I used this twitter application it made me repeat a step multiple times. Not sure if it was not connecting with my Flickr Account or if it was timing out the connection or what the issue was. I do know it was frustrating to have to re-title photos over & over when you are doing a batch of 10-15 at a time.

Summary of Twitter Application TwitPickr:

While I see this Twitter application really becoming something I could use on a regular basis, I think that before that happens I would need to see some major changes. The biggest concern to me is the lack of privacy control on the twitpic end. This is an issue that needs immediate addressing in my book. The simplicity of TwitPickr is attractive and wonderful for the novice computer user, but the glitches & bugs will keep most away I fear.

Overall, if I were to rate this Twitter Application on a scale of 1-10, I would probably only give it a 4.5. However this score could be majorly increased to a 8 or 9 with just a few minor tweaks to this Twitter application.

If you have any questions about this post or just want to connect, find me on twitter, I am @JB140

Twitter Applications- 125 Tools To Make Twitter Easier To Use

Social Media Advisors, Twitter Applications

Twitter Applications- A Motherload List to make Twitter easier. If you are anything like me, there was a time & place when your friends all said “Oh, you need to use Twitter!” and you finally visited Twitter.com and registered an account. You finished your registration, added celebrities like @aplusk and friends in your database. You sent the infamous “Just trying out Twitter” as your first tweet and then set in complete confusion for the next 6 months trying to understand it.

Your friends & celebrities filled your wall with constant stream that was always moving and you had no way of making sense of how to use twitter. After complete frustration set in, you threw in the towel & said that Twitter was not for you.

This is a very typical story of so many that have started on twitter. When you use the basic web version of twitter, it is very difficult to understand how it all works & how to optimize your account. Whenever I am working with a client who does not understand or enjoy using Twitter, it is normally because they are not trying out any of the various Twitter applications that exist. After an hour of online consulting on these applications, it makes things much clearer. Because of this, I decided it was time to put together a motherload list of Twitter Applications.

This list of Twitter Applications may not be every single application that exists, so if I miss some, please share in the comments below and I will make sure to update the list. These are however some of the most popular & best applications I have ever found. So without further ado, here is my motherload list of Twitter Applications: