sweetshwiga:

I’m thinking that I want to join twitter just so I can follow Conan O’Brien. Yes, I am that obsessed. F U Leno.

Re-sparked my Twitter usage.

For you that don’t know, Pownce was a microblogging service that let you send short status updates, send links, send files (photos, audio files, etc.), and events. I’m a fairly avid Twitter user and enjoy Twitter quite a bit. But the biggest problem I have with Twitter’s current setup is that sharing information (picture, audio, events, etc.) not only have to be done with an external service, but also eat up that precious 140 character content.

Pownce now rings of genius to me. Pownce came out roughly a year after Twitter and added some great features like links and more that don’t take up the space provided by the text area. Pownce should have caught more steam, they just had a hard time in development and others to gain any influence which now makes me sad. But this model solves the one issue I have with Twitter’s current service. Here’s how they could solve it.

Links

Links on Twitter are a big problem. The biggest issue is that you have to use a service like bit.ly (or j.mp) to shorten the urls or else you can’t make a comment on the link at all. The full link needs to be seen. So what should Twitter do? When a link is added to an update, the link doesn’t register against your character count. Then Twitter automatically recognizes it (like it already does) and attaches the link to the post. This way the full link…not the short-url…is posted and shared links are more secure.

Photos/Audio/Files

In Twitter you have to use services like TwitPic, Posterous, or yFrog to post pictures. These photos are also plagued by the fact that a link has to be supplied eating up that 140 character limit. Also there tends to be a bit of loss of context in that each use a comment/reply system that are either disconnected from Twitter (so not may people use it) or is wonky at best. Twitter should supply it’s own photo hosting service (but this might not be a good idea with their 3000 tweet storage limit). But most of the argument would be nullified simply by dealing with the previous link issue. When the link doesn’t take up the 140 character space you can still use these 3rd party services but with greater flexibility. Then Twitter just has to operate like Brizzly does and decode those links so the pictures/audio/files/etc are posted directly into people’s streams.

Honestly, Twitter could keep much more people around and have a much better user experience if they would simply pull links out of the character count. People can still use their favorite photo service, music service, or other 3rd party service without worrying about dealing with an overly complicated interface. But I wish the guys at Twitter would realize that the Project ReTweet, while nice, is only going to complicate things and it’s not what users really want. What they want is 140 characters to make their case. Links should not be a part of that limitation.

Just my opinion. Hope you like.

There are a number people I know that are just starting Twitter-ing and often ask me how to cut through the noise and get to the meat of utilizing the service. So I’ve compiled a list of items to get you started in your venture.

Desktop

Twhirl is a great client to get you going in the Twitterverse. It’s small and fluid, it integrates replies and direct messages into your stream, and offers many features. Other tools like TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop clutter your screenspace and don’t feel as fluid. Another great client is DestroyTwitter. Also check out my earlier post on the best Twitter Desktop Clients.

Mobile

Mobile is hard because everyone has a different phone. For the iPhone (I don’t have one, but) TwitterFon is popular amoungst my friends although many say purchasing Tweetie is worth the price. For Blackberry fanatics, I use UberTwitter almost exclusively now. It has everything I need in a mobile client and is pretty fast. For Windows Mobile phones Twikini seems to be a popular choice. You also can use the mobile site or text message all your updates.

@Replies Notification

Early on Twitter had a track feature that you could put in your username and anytime someone mentioned your username you’d get an email or text with the message. This was a great feature but was turned off a while back. I can get my replies in relative real time using Notify.me. By adding the rss feed for a Twitter search “http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=@<USERNAME>” and replacing <USERNAME> with your username, and setting the delivery method, you’ll get alerts every time someone responds to you.

Mutli-site Integration

So you want your Tweets to go to multiple sites, maybe Facebook, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Plurk, MySpace, FriendFeed, Brightkite, and more? Well Facebook can do this automatically with the Twitter app. But Ping.fm allows you update all your services at once (Twhirl has Ping.fm integration). This way all your social networking services are updated you your latest status.

Blog Integration

You’ll want to tell your followers when you’ve updated your blog. There are a number of ways to do this. Many of them (ie Twitterfeed) require a time interval between checking your feed, so your post can be there for hours and hours before your friends are notified. My solution (of course if you are using Tumblr just have Tumblr update your friends) is using Notify.me, you can have Notify.me hit your Ping.fm account and the world knows you’ve posted. If you want a prefix on your post then you can use this Yahoo!Pipe I create: Feed Title Prefixer. This way you can prefix something like: “New Blog Post:” to your Twitter update. This makes it near instantaneous (longest it’s been is about 20 mins, but often within minutes).

For integrating Twitter into your blog (as opposed to above) a great service is called TwitterRemote. It logs your Twitter visitors, if they are logged into TwitterRemote. It’s just now picking up steam, but is looking at good growth. Also, Twitter offers some great widgets that you can put on your blog that lists your latest Tweets.

Better Follower Emails

Twitter’s notification of people following you are terrible. Topify fixes this. Simply put they take your emails, find out information about the user following you and then fills a nice email with this information.  You’ll be able to spot a Twitter Spammer a mile away. If you can’t find any invites let me know or @Topify know they’re very accomodating.

Twitter Tools

There are some great tools on Twitter as well. TwitterBacks can help you get an awesome background. @TrackThis can track packages for you. @Questions will answer any question you may have. @Sngtwt allows you to post a song to Twitter. @TwitPic provides a service for posting images, I prefer Posterous though…you can post more than one image in a single posting and it’s super easy. @Woot will tell you their latest item for sale (One Sale, One Day). @AmazonMP3 has the daily cheap mp3 deals for you.

There’s much much more and this only scratches the surface. But it’s a good way to get you started. Let me know if you have other tools that are much better!