My Twitter Apps

People on Twitter (“Tweeple”) are dealing with a massive phishing scam this weekend. Someone (or something) is sending out direct messages (DMs) telling people to click on a link for a funny blog. If you do click on this, the link leads to a fake website that then steals your Twitter password and name. Don’t Click On It!!!

If you were taken in by this link, be sure to change your password right away.

Many of the newer Twitter applications out there do not say what they are or even have an About page. Beware of these. If you cannot figure out what the application is for on their front page, RUN AWAY! This should also be a heads up to the developers. If you want people to use your application, tell us what it is and why it is useful on the first page!

Twitter does have search available since they bought the site Summarize. To access the Twitter Search, go here . The page allows you to search by topic, and has a list of the current trends at the bottom.

Someone figured out that if you put the # in front of a term, people could find it quickly here. Voila! The hashtag was born. (The term may have originated from somewhere else, I’ll look into that.)

So, when a number of people are at a conference, such as BlogWorld Expo, they try to agree on a single tag and then place it somewhere in their tweets, like this #BWE08. This allows others to find their comments under one search instead of having to do variations on the name of the conference.

Some people have gotten a tad crazy with hashtags (IMHO), tagging everything they think is useful for others. A number of people have put together online parties by using the hashtag so that others can see who is online without following them. Warren Whitlock put such a party together over New Year’s Eve by using the tag, #Happy09.

When you post a note on Twitter, it is called a “Tweet.” The Tweet or post can only be 140 characters, which is why Twitter is referred to as micro-blogging.

People on Twitter are known by the “@” symbol and whatever they call themselves.  If you are curious about someone, you can click on their name and see their profile.

If you feel overwhelmed by the number of Tweets coming at you, you can make some of them Favorites and come back to them later. On the Twitter website, you will see a star in the upper right hand corner of the post. If you click on that, the star turns yellow. You have now made that post a Favorite. To access these posts on the website, look on the right side of the page and you will see a link labeled “Favorites.” Click on that, and it will bring up a list of the Tweets you starred. When you are done reading a tweet, merely click on the star again and it and the note fades away.

If you are using TweetDeck (and I will be doing a review of this application later), you can mouse over the avatar (photo or drawing of the person) and you will see a heart. That is also for making a favorite out of a Tweet. When you click on the heart, the dot next to the person’s name disappears.

When people on Twitter reply to you (by using the @yourname in their post), you cannot see those posts on the website unless you click on the “@Replies” bar on the right side of your Home page. That problem is now solved with Twply.

Twply will forward all your @Replies to your email inbox (the same email that you registered with Twitter). While it does solve one problem, you may end up with a full inbox if you are exceptionally prolific on Twitter.

Update: Twply has just been sold for $1,200 because their servers could not keep up with the number of people using the service. We will keep you updated on this.

Every time I think we have the final list of Twitter applications and services, more show up. My assistant is having a ball going through all of them and finding new ones.

Some, of course, are duplicates of each other, while others are down for maintenance (they claim). It all points to a fun 2009 for this blog. Happy New Year!

TwitterSnooze allows you to put someone (or a bunch of people) on hold. Instead of unfollowing them, you simply make it so you do not get their tweets for a specified period of time.

This may be useful if the people you are following are all at a conference that you are not very interested in. Apart from that, I really do not see any other uses for it.

Two problems with it, however. While you have a person on snooze, the server will store your Twitter password. A lot of people are not happy with this. The other problem is that when you take a person off snooze, they get a note telling them that you have taken them off snooze.  To deal with this, the people at TwitterSnooze have a card you can send to the person.

Lee Lefever has created an excellent video – Twitter in Plain English:

Twitter in Plain English

This blog is for all of those out there who keep hearing about all these wonderful Twitter tools and applications, but do not have the time to: 1) try them all out; or 2) are having problems understanding the technical descriptions of them.

I will be posting reviews from myself as a cybrarian and teacher of social media, AND from one of our team, who knows how to use the Internet and Facebook, but, up until this morning, refused to touch Twitter. The reviews will be written in straightforward, non-technical language.

Please feel free to comment on these reviews, suggest new tools, and new categories.