Posts Tagged "Twitter"
Aug14

Battle of the Twitter Apps

Posted at 5:14 PM • No Comments

I’ve been using Twittelator Pro for probably about three years now. I try out other Twitter apps that seem promising only to quickly be back using Twittelator Pro again. I’ve always said that Twittelator Pro is the best full-featured Twitter app out for the iPhone. I jumped from the free version to the pro version ($4.99) based on my early usage of it and a recommendation from a friend. It was well worth the $5 for the pro version. Both versions are packed with a lot of great features that any hardcore Twitter user could need, but it does have a few flaws, which one of my biggest is that the app doesn’t load more tweets prior to the most current 200.

After a good night of sleep, some Twitter users wake up and want to see what’s been happening on their feed for the past 8 hours. Open up Twittelator Pro and it loads the last 200 tweets. For some people that follow more people than others, one could have a lot more than 200 tweets from people that they’re following since they went to bed or even during a long, busy day at work. Normally I would go to my computer and open up Twitter’s website and scroll back through all of the tweets that I missed. That is just a pain though. It would be so much easier to just load more than the last 200 tweets so one can get caught up on everything.

Twittelator Pro Icon VS Tweetbot Icon

Along comes Tweetbot from Tapbots, makers of Calcbot, Weightbot, Pastebot, & Convertbot. Tapbots makes some great looking & functioning apps and this includes their latest app, Tweetbot. It was billed as a great replacement for the official Twitter iPhone app (formally Tweetie). Seeing how Tapbots already made some great apps, I decided to buy Tweetbot when it first came out and give it a good work out. Normally, I don’t buy Twitter apps, but since Tapbots has great apps, I thought it was a no-brainer. Currently, the price is $2.99 from the App Store.

After trying out Tweetbot, I did find it lacking some (what I thought) basic features and functionality that I was used to in Twittelator Pro, but it was only the first version of the app and the developers already had updates planned out. So I went back to my favorite, Twittelator Pro and patiently waited for updates to Tweetbot.

A few more updates to Tweetbot and I was very happy with the way it was progressing, but still disappointed that some functionality was not there in the app that was used to in Twittelator Pro. Another update and now Tweetbot had notifications and I was quick to get in on that, due to the limited amount available at the time. The notifications worked great, but I was still using Boxcar to get notifications from Twitter.

Recently, I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with Twittelator Pro and its inability to load more than 200 tweets after a long period of time not opening the app. I know there is the feature there, but it doesn’t work. And what’s the point of having a feature listed if it doesn’t work? I decided to use Tweetbot to catch up on tweets I missed from my friend feed and eventually just kept opening it up to view tweets on a regular basis.

The design of the app is just as nice as any of the previous apps from Tapbots. No complaint there. And I can even report spammers to Twitter in the app and TweetBot removes the spam tweet from my @mentions. It’s nice when it you can report spammers, but for some reason, that function is not working in Tweetbot. I believe that it’s probably someone on Twitter’s side that is causing it, but I have tweeted to several of Tapbots Twitter accounts with no reply from them. That’s just bad customer service and puts a big frown on my face. Andrew Stone, the developer of Twittelator, has also not replied to a few of my recent tweets to him in regard to a few issues I’ve noticed in Twittelator Pro (another big frown on my face).

After just playing with this feature again in Twittelator Pro, it just doesn’t work smoothly for me. It seems to load only a few tweets more at a time (maybe about 20-50). ARGH. That’s a lot of tapping the “More” button to load more tweets. With Tweetbot, it’s about 2 taps and I have all of my missing tweets I want to read.

For the past 2 weeks I’ve been using Tweetbot 98% of the time now and will continue to use it for now. Sometimes people jump from app to app to app to app until they find one that works the best for them. I’m usually pretty loyal to people and companies that treat me well. Both app developers have done so in the past, but sometimes just a simple little thing can cause a change. I’ll continue to have both on my iPhone, but don’t know who will eventually come out as my primary Twitter app.

Pros & Cons of both Apps

    Tweetbot – Pros
  • Loads more (200+) tweets more effectively.
  • In-app web browser has back, forward, stop buttons.
  • Notifications in app
  • Removes spam tweet from @mentions after reporting spammer
    Tweetbot – Cons
  • No ability to use TwitLonger
  • Unable to RT tweets from users set as private
    Twittelator – Pros
  • Displays images in the tweet
  • UI for tweets – contains reply/RT, view conversation, view user
  • Easy to display user’s RTs, RTs to user, RTs by user on refresh
  • Ability to use TwitLonger
  • Able to RT tweets from users set as private
  • Webdings & emoji built into the app
    Twittelator – Cons
  • Unable to load more tweets than the max 200 tweets.
  • Does not remove spam tweet from @mentions after reporting spammer
May22

13 Quick Twitter Tips

Posted at 8:58 AM • No Comments

I’ve been on Twitter for over three years now and I’ve compiled a short list of 13 (it’s a lucky number) quick Twitter tips that’s I’ve collected over that period of time. Read, enjoy, follow, disregard. Do whatever you wish with them.

  1. Tweet about what motivates you.
  2. Tweet about what you’re doing or what you’ve done today even if you might think it’s insignificant.
  3. Don’t be afraid to express yourself.
  4. Be aware of who is following you. You never know who is following you, so be careful what you tweet.
  5. Have a profile picture bigger than 100×100 pixels. People can’t see a tiny picture of you.
  6. Put some info in the bio of your profile. If you have a blog or other website, include that URL.
  7. Don’t auto follow someone because of guilt or “Team Follow Back”.
  8. Don’t follow boring people.
  9. Don’t tweet advertisements repeatedly.
  10. Don’t tweet all quotes from famous people.
  11. Before you link your Twitter and Facebook sites together, make sure you want your tweets and status update appearing on the other site.
  12. Don’t fill your Twitter feed up with only updates from third party apps like Foursquare, GetGlue, or others.
  13. Don’t be afraid to engage others in conversation.
Apr11

CNN.com Screws Up Tweetie Sale

Posted at 6:05 PM • No Comments

How bad can a news organization screw up? It appears that CNN just has again. For reporting on the story of the sale of Atebits’ Tweetie iPhone app to Twitter, CNN.com gets a screenshot of tweetie.com, which has nothing to do with Tweetie app developer Atebits whose URL is http://www.atebits.com.

Oh, CNN. When will you get competent people that will make sure they get the correct info? How about double checking your stories before publishing them?

CNN #FAIL on reporting Tweetie Sale

I’d like to thank @majorh for tweeting this out & bringing it to my attention.

Apr10

Twitter Buys Tweetie

Posted at 5:51 PM • No Comments

If you haven’t heard yet, Twitter has bought Atebits, the company behind the popular Tweetie iPhone app and Mac desktop application. Twitter plans on making the app their official iPhone app, renaming it “Twitter for iPhone” and making it free (currently $2.99 for the App Store). The story has been making big news around Mac, iPhone, social media, and tech sites since the news broke last night. You can read all of those articles on your own and get the gist of the entire thing.

Tweetie 2 - To be Twitter for iPhone

I haven’t used Tweetie for the iPhone yet, but I have played around with the Mac version. It didn’t like it, although the design of the user interface is nice. I prefer using TweetDeck on the Mac. As for the iPhone, I’ve been using Twittelator Pro for almost 2 years now. I bought the Pro version on a recommendation of a good friend and I was not disappointed. Twittelator Pro was definitely worth the $4.99! I’ve recommended many time over the past 2 years. When Tweetie came out, I didn’t buy it. And when Tweetie 2 came out, I didn’t buy that either. Now that Twitter is going to re-release a new rebranded version of it, I’m willing to at least try it out. I wasn’t going to spend the $2.99 to try it out. I’m quite happy with my Twitterlator Pro. I’ve been very unsatisfied with all other Twitter apps for the iPhone and to blow $2.99 on something I don’t even like using on the Mac just make sense to me. I wasn’t thrilled with TweetDeck for the iPhone, although, as mentioned earlier, I do like it on my desktop.

I think Twitter is making a move to make it’s name more well known and making their own official apps for mobile devices, having already done so for Blackberry devices. I believe it’s a smart move on their part, but I don’t like Tweetie. I am glad that they didn’t buy Twittelator. I wonder what device they’ll do next – Android, Palm, Windows Phone?

This purchase by Twitter is very interesting nonetheless and I’ll be watching for the new Twitter for iPhone app for it’s release to see if it’s popularity continues. And I might even try it out. If you’re like me and wanting to try out Tweetie, just wait.

If you want more info directly from Twitter on all of this, they’ve created a Twitter account (DUH! Of course!) for you to follow called @TwitterMobile.

Nov15

Edit & Delete Twitter Lists

Posted at 8:52 PM • No Comments

So, you want to change a name of a Twitter List that you created or maybe delete it altogether? It’s easy to do, although it’s not too apparent for some people. Here’s how you do it:

1. Log into Twitter’s web site. Go to your Home page or your Profile page. On the right side bar you’ll have your lists. Click on the list you want to edit or delete.

Twitter Lists 2 Twitter Lists 1

2. At the top of this list, just underneath the “Update” button you will see “View list page” (in red box for attention). Click that link.

Twitter Lists 3

3. In the top right, just under the Twitter navigation bar, you’ll see “Edit” and “Delete” listed. Click on either to make your changes.

Twitter Lists 4

Oct10

THE Best iPhone Twitter App is…

Posted at 5:05 PM • One Comment

Twittelator Pro. It’s my choice over all of the other iPhone Twitter Apps. I’ve tried many other Twitter apps for the iPhone and I keep coming back to using Twittelator Pro. It’s the ONLY full-featured Twitter app out there for the iPhone.

twit128

I had tried out the free version when it first came out and I had my first iPhone (3G). I tried that and two other Twitter apps. Twittelator was very ugly and I didn’t understand it so I used the other apps I had. Eventually those other apps got on my nerves. A friend of mine told me to get the latest update of Twittelator Pro and that it had improved since I had first gotten it. She was right. It was improved and I was happy. I’ve used Twittelator Pro ever since. Of course it’s gone through some more improvements to make the app even better than before!
Read the rest of this entry »