Over the last few years Twitter has became very popular with users but also popular for developers, and a lot of Twitter tools have been developed as a result. The easy to use API makes it incredibly fast to develop applications and that's why there are so many – some good and some not so good.
Here I will discuss 3 of my favorite latest discoveries.
Twi.tt
If you have never logged into a Twitter service using OAuth before it is as simple as two clicks. First click the Sign in with Twitter button and then click Allow when you have been taken to Twitter.
Twi.tt allows you to upload pictures, videos, documents and audio from your computer, link to it via a URL or capture pictures, videos and audio straight from your computer. They are also planning on adding support for emails in a few days.
When creating a poll you have 112 characters for the poll question and there is no limit for the number of poll answers. You also have the option of disallowing repeated votes and not posting your poll to Twitter.
When your poll has been created you will be given a link to it and a link to it will also be posted on your Twitter feed if you did not select the option to not post there.
The profile page that Twi.tt creates for you is almost identical to your Twitter account as it has your background image and your profile image. People also have the option to comment on content that you have posted.
Tweepler
To login in to Tweepler you must enter your Twitter username and password at the top of the site. When you hover over Why? next to the login form you will see that they state your details are encrypted and not stored.
When you log in you are shown a list of people that are following you but you are not following back. These are listed as Unprocessed Followers. If you do not want to add a person you can move them to the ignore bucket by pressing the arrow to the right. If you want to follow a person back you click the arrow to the right of their name.
You will be able to see everyone's username, name, website, location and their bio. But if you click on more details you will get
- Information on the average number of tweets they post per day.
- The total number of tweets they have posted.
- Information on the number of followers they have
- The number of people they are following along with a ratio of following:followers. Their three latest tweets are also displayed.
It is possible to sort users by newest followers, oldest followers, name and username. If you don't want to bother going through all of the Unprocessed followers you can click the Follow All or Ignore All button at the bottom of the page.
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Tweetboard
Tweetboard is still in alpha but you can grab an invite by requesting one on the Tweetboard website by clicking the "Request a free alpha invite!" button. When you click the button it will take you to Twitter where you must send the message that is entered upon load.
When your account has been set up you will be notified. From the Tweetboard you can then grab the javascript snippet of code that will be placed on your website for Tweetboard to function. On certain content management systems and blogs the code may not work as intended to so some tweaking may be needed.
Tweetboard is a really good way of increasing traffic to your website and also a great solution of getting to know what your visitors think of your website.
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If you have a favorite Twitter tool or service then post a comment below and share it with us.
