Avoid Getting an Unwanted Surprise on Twitter

You have come across an application on Twitter that will find your level of smartness with a click. You connect it to your Twitter account (using OAuth) and then you suddenly realize that that app has published your score to Twitter as well using your own account.

Such Twitter apps may be rare but they do exist and may sometimes embarrass you.

For instance, a popular directory would automatically change your Twitter profile as soon as you added yourself to that directory. More recently, we saw another Twitter app that would automatically tweet on your behalf and it nearly went viral.

How to Avoid Surprises on Twitter

If you would like to prevent apps from fiddling with your Twitter stream without asking, the easiest solution would be to not use them at all. That’s however an extreme approach as you’ll then miss a whole lot of other apps that are both nice and useful.

The solution is however simple. When you add an app to your Twitter account, you’ll see an authorization page where you can either allow or deny the app access to your Twitter data.

Read the language carefully. If it read something like “the app would like to access and update your data on Twitter,” you are granting the app permission to post to your Twitter stream. Majority of the Twitter apps won’t misuse that privilege but some may.

Therefore, if you are trying out a new app on Twitter that you have never heard of before, it may be a good idea to authorize only the ones that require read-only access to your Twitter data as seen in the screenshot below

Source: Digital Inspiration
Author: Amit Agarwal

Which Social Network Is Right For You?

 

Between Twitter, Facebook, and Google's new social networking tool, Buzz, it's hard to turn a corner without running into another social network. But how do you know which networking tool fits you best? We're here—with big charts and all—to help.
Last week Google Buzz made us ask ourselves what we wanted out of social networking. To answer that question, we charted what we liked and disliked about setup, privacy, usability, and other aspects of Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook. Here's the result.
This chart doesn't cover everything about every network out there. MySpace is (seemingly) on the decline or, at best, re-purposing itself. LinkedIn is really a business contact pool, FourSquare a geo-location game, and other networks generally too niche to be compared in the same aspects and categories.
For the simple read, here's the full chart of our Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook comparison. We color-coded each answer to give a context of where it stood, in comparison to what we know is possible and what a smart user would like to see. Red means that you can't rely on this network for this feature. Yellow indicates that the network offers it or makes due, but could definitely be better. Green means something works, and can be considered a selling point.

There's a lot of text there already to parse through, but it's obviously segmented and specific to each function. Having dug into the settings of each network and debated it with my fellow editors, I'll try to offer up a concise take on how I'd explain each network to someone completely new to any of them. I hope it might spur some thought about which network you're using now, too, and why.

Facebook

 

Facebook's strongest feature, as it stands now, is that it's relatively easy to figure out who your "friends" are. You can pull them from your webmail address book, sure, but you have to check off those you want to be a friend with, and they have to reciprocate. After that, you start seeing their status updates, photos, and other activities on Facebook.com, right when you log in. Simple enough, right? Not exactly.
You can't, or at least shouldn't, create two separate Facebook accounts for personal friends and work contacts/co-workers/casual acquaintances, all of whom are likely to hit you up on Facebook sooner or later. So it's up to the user to create groups of friends and set what those different friends can see. Also, your Facebook identity is tied to certain "networks"—an employer, a school, a location—that you have to remember to set controls for, too. Dig around and you'll almost certainly find the very fine-grain controls you might need. But then, every few months, Facebook changes up their offerings, for better or worse, and it's up to the user to notice and re-learn how to decide what's private, to whom, and, in a much more worrisome way, what's being made public and search-able on the web.
Facebook does have a pretty great iPhone app, and offers a good amount of access to third-party clients like Brizzly and TweetDeck. But they're still limited in some ways meant to drive you to the web site, and their non-iPhone mobile apps and sites are tough to love.

Twitter

 

What's easy to like about Twitter is the simplicity. You get an account, you see a suggested list of famous users that you can feel free to ignore, and then you're asked to write 140 characters about something, anything. It will be made public, search-able, and able to be re-broadcast by other users, unless you've decided to lock your entire account and require your permission to view it. You can follow other people, block the occasional jerk from following you, reply to others' posts, message other users privately (if you both follow each other), and, over time, you'll learn about third-party apps and context tricks that make the service make more sense. I started using Twitter one day into my first SXSW, and I had it mostly figured within one or two over-eager days.
That simplicity, and reliance on third-party sites and apps for picture posting, link shortening, and the like can be confusing to newcomers that aren't into digging around, for sure. And the speed and volume of the main stream can be overwhelming and off-putting. But Twitter has grown slowly into a network that adapts to users' needs, whether by force or through user innovation. If you don't like how noisy and fast your main feed is, creating a list of high-priority friends and thinkers will do the trick. As you figure out what you like and don't like about Twitter, you'll be able to find third-party apps and interfaces that cater to those interests. We'd love to see expanded features here or there (for discovering who's following you, and perhaps hiding certain posts from all but a few close followers, for example), but Twitter is a pretty novel solution for those who like to share short updates with the web at large.

Buzz

 

Whatever we write about Buzz will be slightly inaccurate in a week's time, most likely. Buzz is brand new, and already it announced an apology and upcoming "fixes." From what we've seen, though, it seems like it wants to be the solution that FriendFeed never was to tracking your friends and contacts' multi-varied interests. Some friends change their IM status to say what's up, while others post on Flickr, Twitter, their own blog, and other places. Rather than making you head to each site, or make those friends become endless self-promoters, Buzz aims to connect you to everything your friends are doing from a place you're already familiar with—your Gmail and Google contacts.
And that, of course, is where the uproar started. Buzz showed up, suddenly, inside Gmail, and when asking users to sign up, assumed too much that they'd like to turn their email contacts into people they "follow," and maybe make that following status public. If Google could reassure Buzz users that what they did on the network was only among their followers they've individually approved, it would be more appealing. The service also needs a dedicated home, instead of being spread across mobile sites, Gmail, Google Maps, and elsewhere, and gain better controls for how much "buzz" flies at you. But it's promising, still, because it's not a public-type Twitter, or a walled-off Facebook, but something else entirely.

Courtesy: Life Hacker

Ollie the bluebird/Twitterrific

Twitter Clients – Web Apps or Desktops Apps? Which is Better?

Twitter is a beast, in my opinion, that needs to be tamed!  If you are to follow any amount of people on Twitter and actually keep up with them, you’ll need to use some sort of Twitter client in order to organize the chatter and get anything out of it all.

In the past, I have written articles on several different web apps including Tweetfunnel and HootSuite.  Notice that both of those are web apps, meaning that you don’t install them on your computer but run them directly from the Internet from your web browser.  There is another whole category of Twitter clients that you install on your PC, including Tweetdeck, Twhirl and Seesmic.
Therein lies the debate!  Which type of Twitter client do you prefer — the web app or the desktop app?  Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of each and see where we land!

The web app Twitter client

There are many reasons someone may choose to use a web app as their Twitter client of choice.

1. Running another application takes up more system resources so a web-based app could help to conserve system resources.
2. It can be easier to not have to switch between another program and your browser windows.
3. No download is necessary and version control is taken care of for you.
4. Perhaps you will find more options in the web-based alternatives.

Using web-based applications in general have certain advantages such as having access on any Internet connected computer with a web browser, not worrying about installing and updating, and hard drive space is no longer an issue.  It almost seems everything is moving toward the “cloud” doesn’t it?

Currently my web app of choice is still HootSuite because it’s easy to use, easy to track stats, and the Hootlet bookmarklet makes sharing links easy.  However, there are some reasons why I find myself using a desktop app also.

The desktop app Twitter client

Desktop apps do have their benefits.  One of most used Twitter clients is Tweetdeck and that is a desktop app.  So, why do people still choose to use desktop apps in light of the benefits of web apps?

1. Refreshing some of the web-based clients can become cumbersome.
2. Many desktop clients make being notified of tweets quite simple.
3. It’s easy having the program running in the tray ready for access.
4. Sometimes issues can be resolved by the user by reopening or reinstalling a program whereas if the webapp goes down, you’re out of luck.

Aside from the typical power apps such as Seesmic and Tweetdeck, there are the browser plugins such as Echofon and Chromed Bird.

I prefer to use this type of app because I get notifications directly in my browser window.

Courtesy: Make Use
Author: Tim Lenahan

Twitter Addons for Firefox Browser

Twitter is the most powerful microblogging service and so is Firefox among browser category. Without jumping to other sites, twitter extensions listed below allow you to post tweets, pictures, follow or unfollow friends, filter spam tweets, and much more.
Below is the list of 33 twitter addons for firefox browser that enhance twitter functionality for twitter addicts.

Photo Credit [katsurada]

List of Twitter Tools for Firefox Browser

1) Power Twitter 1.38 – It is a powerful firefox addon that allows you to share pictures on twitter via TwitPic. You can also view the original link behind the short URL, which makes you identify the content. If anybody shares only short link URL with you, then Power Twitter firefox plugin automatically translate the link into page titles. Also allow @mentions of friends on profile pages, link shrinking, facebook status updates and more.

2) Yoono – It is all-in-one firefox addon for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, MySpace, Flickr, AIM, MSN and GTalk that makes your online social life very simple. Yoono  plugin one installed can be accessed on the sidebar of your firefox browser window allowing you to get all your friend updates, update your status and share links, images and video across Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and more. With its ‘Discovery’ widget, you can discover new websites, products, and videos and then share them with your friends online.

3) TwitrPix Express- Allows you to upload and share photo or images from any web site on Twitter without leaving the site you are on. All you have to do is just right-click on the image you want to share and select “Share using TwitrPix.” Enter your Twitter credentials and click Share. A link to the image and your tweet (status message) will be posted on Twitter. A “view image” button will appear if you want to see the photo you just tweeted. TwitrPix Express also provides you with an option to tag images.

4) TwitterBar- Allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. Just type your tweet in the address bar and click the TwitterBar icon to send it to Twitter. The URL of any webpage can be sent directly just by clicking the TwitterBar icon in the address bar. If you want to know how many characters are left for the tweet, the simply hover your mouse over the TwitterBar icon.

5) Shareaholic – A favorite firefox plugin for social networking addicts. Shareaholic allows you to share links, e-mail, tweet, videos, blogs, and images with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, WordPress, and more.

6) Echofon- Powerful firefox addon that notifies you of your friend tweets on Twitter and allow you to view updates in a timeline and post your own tweets. Echofon allow you to access multiple Twitter accounts, get unread count in Firefox status bar, handles all the standard Twitter tasks such as direct messages and mentions, Syncs unread tweets with your iPhone and combine sequence tweets easily.

7) monkeyfly – Once you finished installing MonkeyFly, go to your Twitter page and click on the red plus sign next to “Home.” You’ll be able to add the following columns to your Twitter page: Mentions of @You, direct messages to you, your favorites, your tweets, your lists, and if you click on your “Saved Searches” you’ll be able to monitor the latest from Twitter. Apart from this you have following functionalities available which otherwise is not available with native twitter service.

• Profile – By hovering the cursor over a twitter’s profile photo, you can view the latest tweets and profile information. 
• Photo – Using your TwitPic account, you can easily tweet a photo to your followers. The photo will then be displayed as a shortened URL in your status field.
• TinyText – Using MonkeyFly’s URL shortener, you will have more room (more than 140 character limit) to write tweet.

8) Search Cloudlet – Tag cloud allows you to find relevant content quickly by showing you all the keywords. The most important websites are shown with bigger font. Search Cloudlet inserts smart tag clouds into Twitter interface to help you search faster. Just click keywords on the cloud to narrow down your tweet search. Once you install Search Cloudlet, you can view tag clouds on your Twitter home-page, search page, profile page, favorites and even into public timeline. Context-sensitive clouds like Author Clouds, Recipient Clouds and Hashtag Clouds also gets added. The plugin also provide tag cloud for Google and Yahoo.

9) Friendbar – Displays stream of text and photo updates from Facebook and Twitter right on the firefox browser toolbar and allows you to post status updates and reply from the browser toolbar itself. Friendbar allows you to automatically create a tiny URL for current web page you are viewing, post updates, retweets, direct messages, and replies, right from the Friendbar toolbar. This firefox extension also provides number of options for facebook too.

10) Twitter Glossary – While tweeting, most of the times we use some common words (slang). With Twitter Glossary you can define those words and terms that you regularly use in tweets. Once you add such words to your personal glossary, your twitter followers will be able to view the definition of those words as floating ‘tooltip’ text over the word when you use it in a tweet. So, newer ‘followers’ will not have hard time to understand everything in every tweet.

11) Twitter Search – This twitter search plugin gives you quick access to the real-time Twitter search.

12) TwitGlee – Search Twitter and Google together. Get Real Time Twitter as well as General Google results in a single webpage.

13) Twitzer – Allows you to post tweets of more than the 140 character on Twitter. The short or tiny URLs can be expanded to actual links so that you are sure you are clicking on safe links. It also help you in identifying the content of the webpage.

14) TwitJobSearch – If you want to search jobs TwitJobSearch.com then the plugin can help you.

15) Twitthat – Allows you to post current page to twitter via twitthat.com

16) TwitterEyes – TwitterEyes keeps track of your character usage when posting a status update and makes replacements for you if you want to tweet more than 140 characters.

17) Tweetlol  - This extension provides you with a full-featured Twitter client as a Firefox sidebar pane. You can send status updates, follow or unfollow friend, and everything which is possible in native twitter service.

18) Twitalyzer – This add-on inserts Twitalyzer influence scores collected at www.twitalyzer.com to the Twitter web site (www.twitter.com).

19) TwittyTunes – Allows you to submit the songs to twitter you are currently playing. TwittyTunes only requires FoxyTunes in order to submit currently playing music, but if you only want to submit websites and regular updates FoxyTunes is not required.

20) Twitbin – It keeps all of your Twitter conversations on browser sidebar. Twitbin allows you to send tweets, receive messages, status updates, share links, and more.

21) Kutano  - It allows users to discover other twitterers who are interested in the same web pages you are viewing and help you to connect with them instantly, either through @ replies or through easy-to-follow group discussions that can also be found directly beside the web page. Kutano also displays preview of videos and images that your followers have tweeted about, your twitter timeline, @replies, direct messages and follow/un-follow notifications directly into your browser.

22) Tweecious –  It can be used as twitter backup or to archive your tweets online. Tweecious find tweets with links and post them to your delicious account. This way you’ll never lose the links you posted on Twitter.
23) Clean Tweets – Sometime Tweets will land you up to malware or porn sites. In order to get rid of such tweets, use Clean Tweets firefox extension that eliminates spam and completely removes such spam tweets from your screen. It automatically deletes any tweets from accounts that are less than 24hrs old and anyone tweet that mentions 3 or more (or what you decide) trending topics in it will not show up.

24) TinyTweet – Allow you to quickly tweet by simply highlighting any text in a web page. Once you highlight any text you want to tweet, just hit the “tweet this” button to sent the tweet. The addon uses bit.ly service to shorten the URL.

25) TwitKit TwitKit is a Twitter sidebar for Firefox. TwitKit has a 6-section interface, using tabs to separate content. You can view the Twitter public timeline, your user timeline, a list of your friends and their latest tweets, a list of your followers and their latest tweets, @replies made to you, and stats about your account.

26) InstantTweets – This firefox extension lets you send tweets directly from your address bar by simply clicking the blue bird icon. The bird icon will display BLUE if someone is following you and RED if they are not. Just right click on any Image or site to tweet a link to it on Twitter. InstantTweets also shows you “Characters Remaining Countdown” and shorten the Long URLs automatically.

27) Twitter Line - Twitter lines shows your friend’s time line Twitter on your browser tool bar. The addon also allows you to update your status and add/remove favorites.

28) Read All Tweets – It displays only unread tweets in the order beginning from oldest.  If you are atwitter addict and do not want to miss out a single tweet on Twitter time-line, then this extension is the best. It also show replies from users you don’t follow and notifies about new DMs.

29) Bccth.is - Use the Bccth.is button to easily tweet from any page you’re on. Your tweet will be automatically populated with the title and URL of the page you are currently viewing. Also select followers and send them a private message in addition to your tweet.

30) Twitter ToolBar – Allow you to tweet the same message more than once on Twitter, so it is easy to re-tweet your own content again and again. Menu offers links to important Twitter pages, replies to you, and its search page.

31) Twiference Sidebar - Twiference Sidebar searches Twitter every time page changed with the keys extracted from the url. It assembles the results then displays the number of detected pages in the status bar and the tweets in the sidebar.

32) CloudBerry TweetFox - CloudBerry Twitter plug-in for Firefox lets you post excerpts from the websites you visit with a click of the button and attach a short URL to the source page.

33) Twicsy - Realtime Twitter Picture Search Engine – Real time image search of Twitpic, yFrog, flickr photos and more

Courtesy: Binary Head 

How to Use Twitter During Office Hours

Some organizations have this policy that social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. are a waste of time and therefore ban their staff from using such sites during office hours.

Then you also have companies that have no such rules in place and allow unrestricted access to the web as long as the employees are able to deliver what’s expected.

A. When Twitter is Not Allowed in Office

If you are working for a company that falls in the first category (no social media please), its better that you install a Twitter mobile app on your cell phone and not use the office computer at all for tweeting. After all, your boss will get a web usage report at the month-end and he will easily figure out which sites have you been visiting secretly during office hours.

If you don’t have a data-plan on your phone and cannot resist that urge to tweet ever 10 minutes, you may use tools like Posterous or Nutshell that allow anyone to send and receive tweets through regular office email.

There’s another option that will come handy if the twitter.com website itself has been blocked by your office firewall. You can use Twitter indirectly through third-party sites like Brizzly or Dabr.

These sites offer a fresh interface to your Twitter account with all the regular features (retweets, @replies, etc.) but the more interesting part is that they will work even if Twitter domain is inaccessible from your office computer. You can track up to 5 accounts with Brizzly.

Your Twitter friends’ timeline feed is protected by a password but you may still subscribe to it with a simple hack involving FeedBurner.

You can then follow tweets from your friends using Outlook or any other newsreader. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the friend’s feed directly with FeedDemon provided that access to Twitter is open in your office.

If you are allowed to use IM clients in Office, you can add twitter@twitter.com as a buddy in Google Talk and send tweets through IM. TweetSwitch is another free service that lets you send and receive tweets through popular instant messaging clients including AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype and GTalk.

B. Use Twitter Without Letting Anyone Know

Now let’s look at the second category – you are very much allowed to use Twitter at work but you still don’t want to give your boss an impression that you are a Twitter addict.

In that case, here’s what you can do to possibly hide your Twitter addiction from boss and colleagues.

You can probably find a gazillion desktop apps for Twitter but if you are looking for something that doesn’t scream to the world that its a Twitter client, try Quitter.

Quitter is a simple twitter client that runs through the command prompt or the DOS window. With Quitter, you can read and reply to tweets, follow /unfollow people or even manage your direct messages. All you need is a Windows computer and no one in the office will ever have a clue that you are engrossed in Twitter.

If you are a Microsoft Office user, Spreadtweet is another interesting option for you. This is a proper Twitter client but in the guise of a spreadsheet so your boss will think that you’re working on an Excel sheet while you are up there tweeting your heart out!

With SpreadTweet, you can send and receive updates, @replies and direct messages all inside an application that looks like a clone of Excel 2007.

The other great option for Microsoft Office users in TwInbox – you probably have Outlook open on your screen all the time and this free Outlook add-in will simply turn your Outlook into a powerful Twitter client.

You can handle tweets just the way you manage your Inbox and the add-in will even let you tweet email messages with a click. The service is integrated with TwitPic so you can tweet pictures by simply dragging them into Outlook.

There’s more – all standard Outlook features like search, mail archiving, categories, etc. will also become available to your Tweets. This screencast explains TwInbox in detail.

Courtesy: Digital Inspiration
Author: Amit Agrawal

How To Do Interesting Things With Twitter?

Twitter Guide: Learn some interesting tips and tricks for Twitter.

Q: I am a blogger and want to cross-post articles from my blog into Twitter?

A: Go to FeedBlitz, type the address of the feed in the Subscribe box and choose Twitter from the subscription options. The other option is Twitter Feed but that requires you to have an OpenID.

Q: I know that TwitPic allows me to post pictures on Twitter but I want to use my existing Flick account with Twitter.

A: Go to TwitterGram and associate your Flickr name with your Twitter account. Now assign a special tag (say Twitter) and any picture that you post on Flickr with that Tag will automatically get posted in your Twitter account as well.

Q: I just ordered a laptop on eBay and the owner shipped it via UPS. I want to track this package on Twitter.

A: Follow TrackThis on Twitter and send this bot a Direct Message with your Airway Bill Number. You’ll be notified each time your package changes location. Works with FedEx, UPS, DHL and USPS.

Q. I want to add events in my Google Calendar using Twitter?

A: Go to Twittercal, add gCal as your virtual friend on Twitter and add events by simply sending direct messages to your new Twitter friend.

Q: I am a blogger. How can I add “tweet this” links to all my blog post?

A: See detailed instructions on how to add ‘Tweet This’ to Blogger or WordPress blogs. The permalinks are shortened automatically in the tweet.

Q: Oh! I just saw a spam profile on Twitter that is using my picture and tweets. I want to report impersonation on Twitter.

A: Send a message to Twitter spam watch team at @spam with the suspicious user name.

Q: My Twitter friend just sent me a tweet in French. I want to translate his message into English.

A: Follow twanslate and send a direct message with the text you want to get translated along with the language code of the target language (en for English, fr from French, etc.).

Q: I want to use Twitter as a Gmail Notifier.

A: Create a new Twitter account and set the status of updates as “Protected” so that the updates don’t appear in a public timeline. Now subscribe to your Gmail RSS feed using FeedBlitz and become mutual friends.

Q: I want to use Twitter as an alarm clock to remind me that I have to pick my daughter from school in 30 minutes.

A: Follow timer – send a direct message with the reminder time and it will ping you at that time. For instance “d timer 30 pick daughter”.

Q: I want to use Twitter for ego surfing.

A: Go to tweetbeep and set up alerts for certain keywords and web URLs. You’ll get an email notification as soon as someone mentions you or your brand or your blog posts in their tweets.

Q: While I like the default Twitter search engine, I want to know about other alternatives.

A: Try Tweet Scan and Monitter. Unlike Summize, you don’t have to refresh the Monitter page each time there’s a new result matching your search query. And it support multi-column search so may track multiple keywords on the same screen.

Q: I want to conduct a quick and simple poll on Twitter. Is it possible?

A: Go to StrawPoll and create a poll. Your Twitter contacts can participate in the poll by simply sending an @reply message.

Access Facebook and Twitter From Gmail

iGoogle gadgets can be added to Gmail. Since that is not what they are originally made for, they can look a little weird or just not be of any use at all. But these two gadgets works!

The Twitter gadget is actually made for Gmail, and the great thing is that it goes "fullscreen", that is, instead of your email you see tweets! The same goes for Facebook, although it's originally made for
iGoogle. But it also goes fullscreen, you just have to click on "Expand" inside the gadget box.

To install them, just do the following:

1. Go to Settings –> Labs, find "Add any gadget by URL" and activate it.
2. Find a XML gadget for Gmail or iGoogle.
3. Go to Settings –> Gadgets, enter the gadget URL into the text box and click Add.

These are the gadget URLs:
Twitter - http://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml
Facebook - http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/104971404861070329537/facebook.xml