Making Twitter Easier: Thwirl (Part I)

Unlike, Tweetdeck, Thwirl is designed with a minimalist approach in mind. While Tweetdeck can take up a lot of real estate on your desktop, Thwirl is designed to be like a Windows Vista widget.

The interface displayed above shows everything Tweetdeck did, but doesn't display as much, or make the display as big. By default, all the tweets in your subscription stream appear. But you can use the buttons long the bottom to change the display to replies, direct messages (DMs), anything you've marked as a favorite (more about that in a future installment), or followers and those you follow.

To show followers, click the Friends/Followers button at the botton, then click the Followers button at the top. To show those you are following, click the Friends/Followers button, then click the Friends button at the top.

Controlling the API
As with any Twitter application, you must control the calls you make to the API or you'll be shut out until the next hour. To control the API calls in Thwirl, click the wrench button in the upper right corner, then click the Network tab and adjust the sliders.

Upcoming: Thwirl searches and shortening URLs in Thwirl

Making Twitter Easier: Tweetdeck, Part II

You've got Tweetdeck going and everything's pretty good, except you don't know how to send a message or do any of the other supposedly cool stuff I promised. Today, we'll get into some of that.

To display or hide the area for entering Tweets, click the button all the way to the left with the dialog balloon displayed (the one directly next to the reference to Tweetdeck and the version number).

If you want to Tweet, enter your message in the What are you doing? field. To the right you'll see a counter that keeps track of the number of characters you have left.

Shortening a URL
URLs aren't typically short. The base URL for this blog (http://pub-news.blogspot.com/) is 28 characters long, and that's before I include anything that directs you to a specific post. Fortunately, there's a field where you can enter a URL and engage a service to reduce its length. Just enter the URL in the Shorten URL field, then click the Shorten button. For the base URL displayed above, this function reduces the length from 28 character to 19 characters. For longer URLs, the reduction is much more dramatic.

Interacting with People
If you want to send a message to all your followers, just type it in the What are you doing? field and either press Enter or click the conversation balloon butto to the right of the Twitter and Facebook checkboxes.

If you want to reply to an individual person's Tweet, hover your mouse pointer over their picture and click the Reply to button (upper left corner). @theirusername appears in the What are you doing? field. Adding the at sign and the person's name to the Tweet assures it will show up in their Replies area.

Retweeting allows you to forward someone else's tweet to all your followers. To retweet someone else's tweet, hover your mouse pointer over the person's picture and click the button with the right-facing arrow (the lower left button). Retweeting replicates the person's tweet with an RT in front of it. It's an honor to be retweeted. It's also okay to edit someone else's Tweet if it won't fit.

To send a direct message to someone, hover the mouse pointer over their picture and click the envelope. Sending a direct message starts the tweet with D thatpersonsname, which uses up some of your 140 characters. If you send someone a direct message, they're the only one who sees it.

Making Twitter Easier: Tweetdeck, part 1

As cool as Twitter is, it's a pain in the neck when you're working on it from the Twitter web page. You have to reload to see any new message and moving between your feed, the messages that reference you (@yournamehere), and any sent directly to you, is too difficult.

If only there were a tool that would allow you to do all that quickly and easily.

There are several tools like that, two of which are most popular: Tweetdeck and Twhirl.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is a bigger application than Twhirl, but if you don't mind switching among applications, it's worth the monitor space. I have Tweetdeck set up with three columns: one for all messages, one for messages that reference me (@christheauthor), and one for any messages sent to me privately (DMs, or Direct Messages).

The key to using Tweetdeck is the Settings function, which controls how Tweetdeck works for you. Most of the settings are self-explanatory (or will be after you fiddle with them a little). The most important setting is found on the Twitter API tab.

Important: The Twitter API
Twitter has to control how many times you connect to the server, or its performance will suffer and--if things get too busy--it will crash. To prevent that, Twitter limits the number of times you can hit the server in a fixed period of time.

Tweetdeck lists a Remaining API ratio in the upper right hand corner of the window. The API starts at 100/100, and is reduced each time you hit the server. It resets every hour, and if you reach 0 before the hour is up, you can't attach to the server again until the next hour starts.

In the picture below, my API is down to 58/100 with 48 minutes to go before the next hour starts. In other words, I'm likely to get to 0 before then, which means any updates will be delayed until the next hour.

Controlling the API Value
To control the API value, click the setting button (the wrench button), and click the Twitter API tag. The settings listed below generally keep me clear of any API problems when I use Twitter.

Next time: Some other cool things you can do in Tweetdeck.

Twitter: How do I get followers? (Part II)

Once you've established your profile on Twitter, the best way to get followers is to find some people to follow and follow them.

You can start with me. To follow me, log into Twitter, then go to http://twitter.com/chrisTheAuthor and click the Follow button under the incredibly handsome man in the Mets hat. Let me know you've followed me, either my sending a Tweet (a message) starting with @christheauthor. I will follow you back.

Ask around and see who else you know is using Twitter. If you have facebook accounts, many people will reference their Twitter accounts there.

Twitter Search
If you click the Find People link at the top of the Twitter page, you can enter peoples' names and click their user name and follow them. As a word for warning, there are, for instance, three pages of Chris Hamiltons on Twitter. Make sure you've got the right one. Then converse with people a little.

Some suggested people to follow
In my experience, these people have excellent insight about Twitter or writing or both, and are worth following:

Penny Sansevieri, http://twitter.com/bookgal

Guy Kawasaki, http://twitter.com/guykawasaki

Paula Krapf, http://twitter.com/paulaatame

Trina (TS) Elliott, http://twitter.com/TS_Elliott

MB Weston (appearing at the Florida Writers Conference), http://twitter.com/mbweston

Then, look at their followers and follow anyone you're interested in.

Not all Twitter accounts are people
You can also follow publishers, news organizations, sports news, and just about anything else. Just get in, experiment, and have some fun with it.

Twitter: How do I get followers? (Part I)

Okay, so you went and signed up at Twitter.com and all you've got is this dopey little picture that looks like o_O, and zero followers. How can you build that into a bunch of followers you can use to grow your online presence?

The first step is to modify your Twitter profile to be personal. Here's a few steps you can take to make your Twitter presence more useful:

Modify your profile

1. In the upper right corner, click Settings.


2. Enter your website or blog in the More Info URL: field.


3. Enter a good one-line bio.


4. Do not click Protect My Updates. This option limits what people can see about you. You're in Twitter to mingle and you can't mingle if people can't see what you're saying.

Create your picture

1. Create a small avatar-like picture for yourself. Your picture is better if it's you, rather than a logo. Again, this is a personal media, so you want people to connect with you. If you can make your picture more personable, you're more likely to connect with people. My avatar is me in a Mets hat, so I can get sympathy after their bullpen blows yet another lead. Note: Your picture should be more or less square and cannot be more than 700k in size.


2. In the Settings section, click the Picture tab.


3. Select your picture and click Save.

Next time, we'll talk about how to start to build followers.

Twitter: The Mortar in Your Social Media Wall (Part I)

You can understand Facebook and blogging. But what about Twitter? What can you do with 140 characters?

Truthfully, you can't do much in 140 characters, if you view it as a single tool that doesn't connect with other tools. Using Twitter on its own is like trying to build a wall out of mortar. You might be able to build a wall, but it's not going to be very high or very stable. Most likely, you're going to wind up with a big gray mound that isn't worth very much.

Mortar is used most effectively with bricks, to knit the bricks together to form a wall. That's how you should use Twitter. Consider your website, your Facebook profile and page, and your blog as the bricks. Twitter will help them stand together is a single useful unit.

Let's say you've got a book tour. You're appearing at three or four local book stores and you're guest writing on three or four different blogs. If you have a group of followers built up (more on that another time), you can post your appearance on your website, then Tweet (create a Twitter post) that links to your website. In your 140 characters, you might say "Shane Black battles his past and the Tampa mafia. Booksigning tonight @ B&N, North Dale Mabry, Tampa." That leaves you 40 characters for your URL. (We'll talk about how to shorten your URL in a subsequent post.

Another use for Twitter is to highlight your blog posts. For instance, when I posted the most recent Google settlement post, I posted "Google to give 63% of revenue to authors who opt in. Good overview of the proposed Google Books settlement..." followed by the URL.

Again, Twitter is best use as a complement with other components. More on how to use Twitter in upcoming posts.

If you're on Twitter...

#queryday is the brainchild of literary agent Colleen Lindsay, of FinePrint Literary Management. About once every other month or so (the date is announced in advance) , writers can monitor discussion between writers and agents online and glean valuable information. Any writer who includes #queryday in their Tweet will have their post appear in the query day stream. Others, including agents and other writers, may or many not answer your Tweet.

To monitor the fun, go to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23queryday, and refresh your browser periodically. To view a synopsis of the discussion, go to Tara Lazar's blog. If you want to participate, you need to bite the bullet and go to Twitter.com and sign up. Your question must be 140 characters or less and must include "#queryday".

You might also want to check out Colleen's blog, The Swivet. You might also want to check out her colleague Janet Reid's blog, as well.