The Blog of Rudy Amid

As Twitter’s usage increased recently (scalability issues notwithstanding), so has the invention of new applications to make the Twitter experience more enjoyable. These are the tools for Twitter that I’ve used, as I discovered them, in chronological order:

1. Twhirl
   Hands down, one of the best user interface client for Twitter. It gives me the ability to see my public timeline, send direct or @reply messages easily. It doesn’t have the ability to view all of archives since there’s a bandwidth limitation with the back-end Twitter API. It’s based on Adobe AIR engine, complete with transparent window. Both client and engine are updated regularly.
2. Jott
   Jott is a neat and unique way to post my tweets. I use it with my cell phone and dictate the words I want to post. I tried doing some tweets when I was in Disney World, and it worked pretty well. Accuracy is only as good as the clarity of my voice over the phone. It can also go to multiple destinations like to my tumblr site, or email.
3. Twitter Feed
   As a way to promote my blog, I use Twitter Feed to automatically announce new blog posts on Twitter. The site uses my RSS feed to figure out what’s new, and it’s configurable how many blog posts to tweet and how often it should scan per day. Some people are against seeing automatic blog announcements, but in my opinion, if it’s done sparingly, it’s OK to do it. Actually, if my headline is catchy enough, people will click on the announced link. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve clicked on a few of my follower’s Twitter Feed’s announcements.
4. Twitter Verse
   This is just a useful site to see what the Twitter “universe” has said recently. It’s sort of a trend discovery tool. Some of the words are NSFW, so be warned. The tweets are searchable all the way back to April 2007.
5. Friend Feed
   FriendFeed is probably the most important discovery I’ve ever made. It’s not built specifically for Twitter, but it enables me to keep track of specific Twitter folks more closely like Robert Scoble and Darren Rowse. It also aggregates recent news from the social media sites that they use, such as StumbleUpon, Digg, or Del.i.cio.us. It’s a great way to discover new sites. The key is to follow the right people in Friend Feed, otherwise it’s just another information overload.
6. Mosio
   I was looking for a way to data-mine Twitter and came across a site that promised to give me answers. Mosio is a cell phone messenger service, sending my text messages to their network, and also Twitter. When I tried it, most of the answers came from their network. It may not be that useful for the Twitter experience, but at least the interface is there, so I’m giving it an honorable mention.
7. Twitter Fox
   @Epiblogger recommended this to me. I like that it doesn’t take too much real estate on my desktop - only on bottom right corner of the Firefox browser. It’s also discreet by popping up new tweets. However, I’ve grown accustomed to Twhirl UI so much, it’s difficult to adapt to Twitter Fox’s UI. It is a lightweight app, so I may just it on my additional laptops in the house.
8. Tweet Scan
   It’s a search engine for Twitter. Very simple interface and quite fast.
9. Tweet Clouds
   Another fun site to find out what my favorite Twitter folks are saying. Check out my Tweet Cloud - it shows who I’ve been @replying to, and the most frequently words that I used.
10. Twubble
    This is a great app made by @crazybob, a Google engineer. It’s a nice way to find new people to follow, based on the existing people I’ve been following. Definitely a unique way to search. Catchy name too. Too bad Bob’s too late to register the domain name for it.
11. TwitterMail
    I use it to post on Twitter via email. The interface will also work with cell phone text messages by sending to a random email address supplied by the site. The @reply functionality is kind of quirky, but I can turn this off via the preference page.
12. Twitter Local
    @Jfhscribbles introduced this to me via his tumblr page. It’s a great way to find local Twitters by using my city or zip code. I found a few that I’ve followed in the Los Angeles/OC area.
13. Twist
    It’s another trend discovery site, but it’s limited to the last few days, so it’s for current topics . Type in a word or two, it will show the line chart of how many tweets use the word(s). It’s useful to determine if the topic I want to discuss is in Twitter recently.

Which one do you use?

Photo Credit: seydoggy

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