Social Media Advisors

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

Social Media Plugins- SexyBookmarks

Social Media Advisors, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tutorials

We are starting another series of posts today on the various plugins that are our personal favorites on our WordPress blog. Jason & I get asked often what are the best social media plugins for social media, so we thought this series might be helpful to many of you. The first plugin that is going to be discussed today is probably the one we get ask about the most often.

People are constantly using our chat with us function in our side bar to ask, “What is that social media plugin at the bottom of your posts? The one with all the little icons for various social media platforms.” The name of that plugin is SexyBookmarks by Shareaholic. The reason I really like this social media plugin is that it adds the slightest bit of animation to the bottom of each post. When you hover over any of the icons at the bottom of a post, they slide up and down making them stand out. Also, it has a great amount of customization.

With offering close to 90 different sharing services, you can enable just about any possible network sharing you wish. There are many that I have never even heard of! You can select all, the most popular, or customize to which services you want to show up to your audience. Some of my favorites other than your standard social networking sites include: Posterous, RSS, Google Reader, Gmail, FriendFeed, & Ping.fm.

Social Media Plugin- The technical side of installation SexyBookmarks

Like most of your plugins for WordPress, you can add this one onto your posts automatically by visiting the plugin library at WordPress and searching for SexyBookmarks. Or, if you prefer to install things via FTP, you can download SexyBookmarks here.

Once you install SexyBookmarks & activate the plugin, you will then need to visit your settings section of your dashboard and customize the plugin. This is where you choose which pages or posts you want SexyBookmarks to show up on, which services you want to activate, the title you want displayed, whether you want the links to be no followed, and if you want a specific URL shortener used for tracking.

In some instances you might be require to fix the “spritgen.” To do this, simply login to your site via FTP, locate the file within your plugin folder and then find the spritegen file. Right click on it and select to change permissions. Set them to 777 and save. Once you do this, your file will now be activated & ready to be used.

SexyBookmarks needs to fix:

The one thing that really annoys me when I am setting up this plugin for a client is that the most popular list is really not the most popular sites for here in the USA. The one that really blows my mind is that Facebook, the social media 800 LB gorilla is not chosen when you click most popular. I wish that they could at least add Facebook and a few others onto that list.

Summary of Social Media Plugin SexyBookmarks

There really isn’t anything else with the social media plugin that I would want to change. I think it is a great plugin that is powerful, looks great, and performs wonderfully. Now that I have shared with you how it works and what it does, feel free to go to the bottom of this post and test it out! Use any of the buttons below to share this post on your favorite social media platform. Of course, once you do, make sure you leave a comment telling us which one you used!