Displaying articles with tag twitteriffic

Tracking Tweets

Posted by joe, Thu Sep 27 20:20:00 UTC 2007

Today, Twitter announced an interesting new feature: you can now track any text that appears in a Twitter update.

Using this, you can track three interesting things:

  • Topics: Want to know every time someone posts about your company? You can track something like "Parakey" or "WhyGoSolo" — or even a multi-word company like track Revolution Health. One downside: tracking something like "sushi" or "Iraq" is bound to result in too much traffic to read.
  • Direct messages: You can also track any time your username (or someone else's) appears: track @josephgrossberg
  • Links: This one is a little more flawed, but you can track when anyone posts with a particular tinyurl in it. For example, I did track http://tinyurl.com/yv9mp9 for this site. The problem is, if they use urltea or another service, or they link to a page within your site, you won't get notified.

Like all Twitter features, this one is available on your phone or IM

The interface is very simple:

  • track [whatever] and untrack [whatever] to start or stop tracking something.
  • If you want to stop tracking everything, send track off.
  • To see what you're currently following, send track or stats.

Alas, this last part doesn't work with Twitterrific yet; you need to be on Twitter.com to see the message.

1 comment | Filed Under: API News Tips & Tricks Twitter.com | Tags: twitteriffic

Two Twitterrific Tips

Posted by joe, Tue Sep 25 18:32:00 UTC 2007

Iconfactory's Twitterrific is my favorite way to update Twitter, and I learned two cool keyboard shortcuts today from Doug (Twitter: marchdoe).

One shortcoming of Twitter is having to spell people's usernames correctly. I often get ones directed to "jgrossberg", "joegrossberg", "joe", etc. (It's josephgrossberg, guys.)

I see these misspelled replies when I read through my friends' updates, but direct messages won't reach my inbox. Also, if one of their friends sees a message like "@jgrossberg: That is a cool link!", they won't find my account under jgrossberg.

Fortunately, Twitterrific's interface provides a simple way around this, through its keyboard shortcuts:

  • Click on a particular person's update and press ⌘2 to reply to them. It will automatically insert the "@josephgrossberg" at the beginning of your message. (Why "2"? We think because that is the key that has the "@" symbol on it.)
  • Similarly, doing ⌘D will help you send a direct message, by prepending a "d josephgrossberg".

Of course, I could have learned this by reading all the way down to the bottom of the Twitterrific web page ... but who wants to do that? ;)

0 comments | Filed Under: Clients Tips & Tricks | Tags: twitteriffic

The Easiest Way to Direct Message Someone

Posted by joe, Sun Sep 23 10:29:00 UTC 2007

Let's say you want to send me (Twitter: josephgrossberg) a direct message, perhaps something you don't want all your friends to see, like "@josephgrossberg I hate my boss."

You could go to Twitter.com and click on the "direct message" link, choose my username, type your message and then submit the form.

However, there's an easier way to do it. Simply use your favorite client to send a message with the format: d [username] [message], e.g. "d josephgrossberg I hate my boss".

However, there are some caveats:

  • The person must be following your Twitter updates. (I assume this is an anti-spam measure.)
  • You cannot send a direct message to yourself. (This is because, technically, you don't "follow" yourself.)
  • Many (all?) clients, such as Twitteriffic, will not give you an error message if you try to direct message someone who doesn't follow you. It will appear to have worked. You only see that error message if you're posting from Twitter.com.

0 comments | Filed Under: API Clients Tips & Tricks | Tags: twitteriffic