Blog of Mr. Tweet

This is a guest by Luke Razzell (@weaverluke). Luke is the Director of Weaverluke Solutions, as well as the CEO and User Experience/UI design lead for i-together Ltd. You can find Luke’s original short paper on Twitter here

Twitter has been called “the railroad tracks…of the 21st century.” Andy Murray, Stephen Fry and millions of other people use it. Even Britney Spears - or at least her “people” - have joined the party.

But what’s it actually for?

In trying to answer that question, let’s begin by finding out the opposite—what doesn’t define Twitter’s utility.

Log into twitter.com and you’ll see a prompt: “What are you doing?” However, two years from Twitter’s launch, status updates are just one of myriad ways we are actually using Twitter.

Here are some examples:

• For impromptu, topical, collective-action in the US (during the 2008 Presidential election campaign): “Let’s Use Twitter To Track Robocalls In Real Time”;
• To track notifications of delays on specific lines on the London Underground (very useful for a Londoner, this);
• As a means of getting out of jail, writing a novel and talking to ones plants (presumably not all at the same time).

So is Twitter just about communicating useful information?

Not all the time. People are writing short stories in 140 characters or less, amidst messages detailing their breakfasts for our reference. It’s hard to make a case for the usefulness of such things, at least in a conventional sense.

It seems that practical utility alone isn’t enough to explain Twitter’s appeal.

Me/We

If you can’t define what Twitter is for, how about who Twitter is for? Twitter could be beneficial to:

• Individuals
• Groups
• Objects

Collective applications of Twitter can be quite compelling. Steve Bowbrick (@bowbrick), editor of BBC Radio 4 Blog,

“favorite use of Twitter: the learning blogs and the school trip blog at Fair Field Juniors http://www.fairfield.herts.sch.uk/ fairfieldtrip”.

It must be heartwarming to be able to follow your child’s and their friends’ story of their school trip - live.

Non-individual Twitter identities, such as inanimate objects, are also proving highly popular. @LJRICH writes:

“I follow a few inanimate tweeters, @towerbridge is soothingly zen in its tweets, and @marsphoenix sounds pretty easy-going.”

Interestingly, when public institutions such as the British (@downingstreet 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s office) and @r4today (Radio 4’s flagship news program, Today) start tweeting, the Twitterati (a name for people who spend too much time on Twitter)  seem to feel honour-bound to ferret out the individual human being behind the official Twitter-persona facade. We are getting used to authentic, human-to-human conversations, and we like it!

What does Twitter and Face-To-Face Interaction Have In Common?

It strikes me that Twitter is uncannily like…socializing!

Consider the aspects of Twitter that are closely analogous to how we socialize face-to-face:

- Every breath you take
Small chunks of text (the 140 character limit for each tweet ensures this point) mimic phrase lengths of natural conversation.

- Talk to her
An message can be directed at a particular user or users with the “@” symbol, while still being visible to all. Just like a conversation held in public.

- A word in your shell-like
A “d” (direct) message is only visible to the intended recipient, as with a conversation held in a private space.

- Oyez, oyez
Standard tweets are addressed to anyone who cares to listen. In Twitterland, we can all stand at the lectern and at the same time all be in the audience. It’s quite mind-bending as an abstract concept, but soon comes to feel quite natural in practice, in my experience at least.

- Dear diary
Speaking to experience: just as some record aspects of their lives for posterity in their diaries, so do Twitter users sometimes use the service as much for its own “memory” as to communicate with other people.

- In your own words
Twitter seems to be inspiring a revival of wordsmithery - a trend birthed by the blogging boom - in this age of Pop Idol and America’s Next Top Model. And this focus on linguistic precision and expressivity is analogous to the immense sophistication we bring to our offline conversations, in terms of tone of voice, body language, choice of vocabulary and syntax and so on.

- The fuzz factor
Physical-world social networks are naturally “fuzzy” in two key ways: in how we define our relationships within our social networks, and in the boundaries we draw around those networks. Our associations and feelings about any given person are far richer and more complex than the labels “friend”, “colleague” or “partner” can encompass; and someone who is a member of your running club might become one of your group of drinking buddies in the course of a Saturday afternoon.

Twitter “gets” this social network fuzziness by allowing people not in our explicit “friend” network to impinge on our attention through @ messages (if we enable this feature)—pretty close to the way “toe dipping” chit-chat we use to get to know people face-to-face.

Imitating Real Life

When you recommend a film to a friend, you don’t then proceed to recount the whole script to them (or at least, if you do, you are a very strange individual). Similarly, on Twitter, one points to interesting stuff - often adding a hyperlink added to the description - rather than reproducing it whole.

For example, @jlojlo writes: “Working at a startup sounds fun | Venture-backed startup seeks pet-loving Accounting Manager http://twurl.nl/hpik3j”.

In my experience, great social technology is transparent to our innate ways of being, and at the same time amplifies and extends them beyond the limitations of the temporal, physical world. Twitter is a great service because it does all that so effectively—imitating but also transforming how we communicate and socialize with one another.

What do YOU think?

• What do you think Twitter is for?
• Does it imitate the way we communicate face-to-face?
• Would you put it differently?

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. If you’d like to read a version with more quotes, links, pictures and two extra sections at the end (”Where is Twitter” and “But does it scale?”), just click on through to weaverluke.com.

The Swine Flu (Wikipedia) has been trending on Twitter for several days now. In fact, Twitter is where I first heard about Swine Flu. You can head to PandemicFlu.Gov for a comprehensive resources of U.S. government information being compiled about the outbreak.

For those that are unaware, CNN best summarizes Swine Flu as,

Swine influenza, or flu, is a contagious respiratory disease that affects pigs.

When the flu spreads person-to-person, instead of from animals to humans, it can continue to mutate, making it harder to treat or fight, because people have no natural immunity.

Symptoms include fever, runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Common seasonal flu kills 250,000 to 500,000 people every year worldwide, far more than the current outbreak of swine flu.

But there is no vaccine for the new disease, and little natural immunity, an expert said.

The Swine Flu was declared a health emergency of international concern on April 25th and propose some serious economic costs if a pandemic ensues.

Tracking Swine Flu Across The Web

Across the web, numerous sites, services, and companies are providing ways for users to keep track of Swine Flu developments. Facebook has put together a series of Swine Flu charts that maps the spread of discussions surrounding the epidemic. Google also has a service that estimates Flu activity across the U.S. known as  Flu Trends. There’s also a Google Maps timeline mashup of the wine Flu Outbreak and a Swine Flu Google Maps and Twitter mashup.

@HealthMap and @Veratech are keeping users updated with swine flu alerts on Twitter. Collecta has built a Swine Flu In Real Time search service that pulls from Twitter, Flickr and other resources. Here’s a Q&A on Swine Flu.   Be sure you stop and get Swine Flu Fun Facts too.

Twitter Reactions

On Twitter Search, the Swine Flu is tweeted about almost 20 times every 10 seconds! The reactions have been intense! If you’ve been using Twitter to stay updated on the epidemic, you may have been misinformed on numerous occasions. In fact, Twitter has caused some controversy over Swine Flu updates. The situation has led many to question once more, whether Twitter is as reliable for news as we think.

What do you think about all of this?

• Has Twitter affected your reaction to Swine Flu?
• Have you become more or less informed of Swine Flu through Twitter?
• Were you ever misinformed about Swine Flu because of Twitter?
• Has Twitter become a less or more reliable news source for you?

We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and great stories!

This is a guest posting by Robert Scoble (@scobleizer). He recently joined Rackspace to help develop Building 43, positioned to be a content and social networking site.  He’s previously worked for FastCompany.TV and Microsoft. You can find him around numerous social networking sites. See original post on Scobleizer here

Yesterday I was lucky enough to visit Zappos and get a tour and talk with some of their executives, including Tony Hsieh, CEO.

Up until now most of what I knew about Zappos was that they had a lot of people on Twitter (434 of their 1,500 employees are on Twitter with more joining every day).

I thought I was going to Zappos to study how Zappos uses social media and get an interview about that for Building43, the community Rocky and I are building for people who are fanatical about the Internet.

But within 10 minutes of walking in the front door I realized that there’s a lot more to Zappos than that they get Twitter. More on that later, because Tim O’Reilly demonstrates some of Silicon Valley’s worst beliefs about Twitter when his conferences advertise “learn the secrets of building 100,000 + followers.” Zappos does NOT believe that is the goal of Twitter, more on that later in this post. Aside: if you want to attend a Twitter Conference that focuses on real business value and community engagement, come to 140: The Twitter Conference.

Before we even got to the front door tons of employees said “hello.” That’s weird, doesn’t happen at most companies, believe it or not. And the way they greeted each other told me something else was up here.

Then when we got into the front lobby we were warming greeted again, and then as we looked around, we saw this wasn’t going to be a normal visit to a normal company. There was a book store with books free for the taking. There was a popcorn machine. A Dance Dance Revolution machine. A “hall of fame” board for employees who had pushed “reply to all” too quickly. And a video display that showed off how many sales were made yesterday. I had never been in a corporate lobby like this before.

Then I hooked onto a tour given by Zappos’ Mayor, Jerry Tidmor. Oh, yeah, everyone has weird titles. Executives are called “monkeys.” One employee’s title was, simply, “fred.” Causes him a lot of fun when he tries to get a badge at conferences. UPDATE: here’s video of the beginning of that tour.

Along the way Jerry showed us office after office that was decked out with some fun weird theme. I had seen some of this at other places like Google and my new employer, Rackspace, but Zappos gets everyone into it. The lawyers’ offices even hold the Christmas tree (they have Christmas twice a year at Zappos. Why? Why not?).

In one office they set up a bowling alley. That was a lot of fun for the Rackspace employees who were here for discussions.

They are transparent with all their numbers. All employees know how they are doing and so does the public. The numbers are on a white board on the tour for all to see and take pictures of. This picture is of Jerry standing in front of the board with the up-to-date numbers.

During a lunch session with Zappos “monkeys” we asked how they handled a recent layoff. We noted that the employees who were laid off were incredibly positive. The answer: they did it in open with everyone understanding the reasons for it. They did it fast and didn’t drag their feet. So when they did it they had enough cash to give everyone a good severance package. They said if they had waited to see if business conditions would improve they wouldn’t have been able to do that.

Anyway, so what can Silicon Valley learn from Zappos?

1. You don’t need to be in San Francisco to build a great company. Zappos actually started in the same building as Craig’s List. They moved to Las Vegas because it was cheaper and because they saw they could build a better company. The other half of the company is a warehouse in Kentucky. That’s there because that’s where UPS is, so they can take your order in the evening and have it on your doorstep the next day.

2. Focus on culture and build something for long term. Tony’s first company, Link Exchange, was sold because it wasn’t fun anymore, he told me. That’s why he focused so much on culture when he got involved with Zappos. I see so many companies who focus on growth and get exactly what they want: an unfun fast growing company that falls apart later.

3. Get rid of assholes. Zappos has a filtering system before, during, and after hiring to make sure they get rid of people who “don’t fit the culture.” That is the nice way of saying they get rid of assholes and they get rid of them quickly. They even pay candidates $2,000 after they go through training if they can admit they don’t fit into the culture.

4. Get a coach. Zappos has its own coach. His name is Dr. Vic. He meets with every employee. Takes their picture. Learns what they are about and helps them get their career moving. Plus he writes a blog for everyone else’s company.

5. Share with others. Zappos gives tours to everyone to share what they’ve learned. You can take the tour too, I highly recommend it if you are in Las Vegas. tours@zappos.com will get you a date and a time. Oh, did I mention they pick you up from the airport? And that they carry your bags? And that they are, well, um, nice?

6. Train, train and train some more. Zappos has a whole department that puts together classes. Your pay goes up the more classes you complete. Plus they have all those free books in the lobby.

7. Enable all employees to be spokespeople. Every single new hire at Zappos is asked to start a Twitter account and post a few times to it during training. After that they don’t care if you keep it up. Why do they do that? They want to rub it in that EVERYONE in the company is a public spokesperson for Zappos, not just the CEO or PR team.

8. Everyone lives by same rules. During the tour we heard of a new hire that was fired during training for not showing up on time and giving some lip. This was a high level technical person that they really could have used. Silicon Valley companies would put up with that kind of behavior. Not at Zappos. Everyone, from executive recruits on down are expected to live to the same rules.

9. The CEO’s office isn’t sacrosanct. Tony encouraged us to throw peanut shells on his office floor. Why? That happens every day, we learned, as tours come through. But it’s a subtle message that Tony isn’t above anyone else in the company and that his door isn’t just open, but that you can come in and mess up his work space.

10. Create a welcoming culture. Every department, as we walked in, said “hi” in a different way. Here’s the casual department who waved these little clappy hands at us. Other departments had other kinds of noise makers. The Fashion department took pictures of us while they played music.

11. Everyone is a VIP. Both internally and externally everyone gets the VIP treatment. This means all sorts of little things all across the company. Vendors, when they come to Zappos, get their bags carried. That wins them accounts. In our case we had our tripods and cameras carried and our every need catered to.

12. Create an atmosphere for both goofiness and brilliance. Every conference room was decked out with personal touches. It gets you in the mood for creative discussions. Here Rackspace employees are meeting with Zappos employees and learning more about Zappos. Notice all the weird touches on the table, the walls. It’s hard to take yourself too seriously there.

13. Root out hubris and kill it. This is mostly a note to myself, but I know lots of San Francisco companies who this could apply to just as well, too.

14. Follow your employee’s and customers’ passion. How did Zappos get into clothing? Their customers and employees were passionate about it.

15. Don’t be religious about what’s working. Having 400 employees on Twitter is clearly working for Zappos but Tony, at one point, told his employees to talk to me about Friendfeed. They are always looking for the next idea. By the way, here’s everyone who is saying something about Zappos on friendfeed. I love this quote from Forrester’s CEO, George Colony (Tony is speaking at the Forrester Conference today): “When asked why he was on Twitter, Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO said: “People relate to people, not companies.”

16. Be religious about taking care of customers. Tony loves telling the story about when they got pizza ordered for them by Zappos help desk (they didn’t know who was calling). Every employee is empowered to take care of customers and get their problems solved.

17. Reward greatness. Every employee can give a $50 bonus to any other employee. Does it get misused? Not often and when it does it’s easy to solve.

18. Remember most policies are to take care of edge cases. They resist writing new policies at Zappos. When they do write a policy, they make sure it really is needed across the company. Usually policies get killed.

Anyway, there is lots of posts like this one about Zappos and why this company is so interesting. I didn’t get it until I went on a tour and saw it for myself. I’m a fan for life. I wish there were more companies like Zappos.

The fact that there isn’t tells us something about us. And I don’t like what I’m learning.

Back to that quote from the O’Reilly Twitter Camp home page: the goal of a good company as they get on Twitter should NOT be to get more followers. It should be to take care of customers and create an emotional attachment to the company through its people. Zappos gets this at a deep level. Boy do I wish more did.

This post, by Robert Scoble originally ran on his personal blog Scobleizer, featuring numerous discussions involving technology, innovation, and development for businesses and personal use. You can subscribe to Scobleizer here or follow @scobleizer on Twitter.

*Know of any great stories we missed out on? Do share with us in the comments?

This past week we highlighted some great Twitter business uses with Creative Ways Businesses Use Twitter and the amazing Twitter project, Brain-Twitter. However, there were a bunch of great stories about using Twitter that flew under the radar. Here are our top 5 picks:

A CEO’s Journey Into Twitter

What you might not have read this week is the journey of one CEO’s plight into Twitter. Diane Hessan, CEO of Communispace Corp., gave Forbes the scoop on her journey into Twitter after meeting with one of the Queens of Twitter, Laura Fitton, better known as @pistachio on Twitter. Hessan discusses five different stages that she experienced when she first began to use Twitter:

1. Loneliness
2. Finding Some Killer Apps
3. Learning
4. Getting Organized
5. Value

Read “Yes, I’m A CEO Who Really Uses Twitter” for a great story that I’m sure many of you can relate to.

Pizza Hut’s Search For A Twitter Intern

Did you hear about Pizza Hut’s search for a Twitter Intern? It seems Twittering is entering the job market this summer because Pizza Hut is in search of a college student with twittering skills that can help them avoid the YouTube fiasco that Dominos pizza had to deal with.

Google Maps on Twitter

If you’ve ever wondered what the folks from Google are up to on Twitter, take a look at their latest announcement about signing up Google Maps for Twitter . Unfortunately, this isn’t a Google Maps integration with Twitter. Instead,

@GoogleMaps will share information on cool uses and product tips for Google Maps, behind-the-scenes musings from Googlers and general goings-on in the mapping world. We’re also going to use Twitter to listen to the things that you want to suggest and say to us.

Twitter Humor

We leave you with something that is bound to tickle a smile out of you. On the Twitter and humor front, comedian Andy Milonakis has created the “Let Me Twitter Dat” rap video. The video plays on people’s tendency to overshare facts about themselves on Twitter. It’s a catchy video and very funny.

That about wraps up what flew under our radar. What flew under yours?

• What new content did you discover on Twitter this week?
• Did you subscribe to any new blogs because of Twitter this week?
• What were these new blog subscriptions?

We’d also love to hear your feedback on the following:

• What articles did you enjoy on Mr. Tweet this week?
• Anything you hope we never post again?
• Anything you’d like to see more of?

Thank you for all of your support, comments, recommendations, and ReTweets this week! If you missed out some of the fun, check out the awesomesauce recommendations made by Mr. Tweet’s community in What Apps Are You Tweeting With and the hundreds of thoughts about all the recent Twitter media hype.

Also, feel free to tweet links to me (@corvida), or email me at corvida –mrtweet-com for next weeks Tweeting Under The Radar. Have a great weekend folks!

On Tuesday, we asked what apps and twitter clients are you tweeting with and received so many great responses! We appreciate the hundreds of comments and we’ll be expanding the list to include some of the great Twitter clients you recommended. I’ve had a blast trying out your recommendations!

Using Your Brain As A Twitter App

What if you could tweet with just your brain? What if you could type out a message as you’re thinking it? CNN has published a story about Adam Wilson, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, and his supervisor, Justin Williams, whom developed a way to tweet using electrical impulses generated by thought. It’s currently trending on Twitter as the “Brain-Twitter” project.

Wilson wrote the code for the software in a matter of days. By March 31st, Wilson had sent the first tweet using Brain-Twitter.

Now before you get all excited about tweeting with your brain, Wilson and Williams hope to use Brain-Twitter to help those that are paralyzed better communicate. It’s currently not available for purchasing or downloading. According to CNN,

“These are people who have ALS, like Stephen Hawking, or they have a brainstem stroke, or a high spinal-cord injury,” Williams explained. “There is nothing wrong with these people’s brains. It’s a normal person, locked into a lifeless, useless body.” (The British physicist Hawking has ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.)

What’s really interesting is the way that Williams thinks Twitter may be an invaluable solution for the communication needs of paralyzed patients,

“Their first interest is in being able to communicate in a normal fashion, and at a distance.”

Twitter is simpler than e-mail, he said.

“If I am locked in and I want to e-mail someone, the format is all wrong. You have to be able to select recipients and group them, copy, paste, send. … We don’t think about that much as normal people, but it can become unmanageable. Twitter takes care of all those things. They just have to get [the message] to a location where people can come and find it,”

What Do You Think About Brain-Twitter?

We’d like to know what you think of Brain-Twitter.

• Would you want something like this for personal use?
• Do you think this is frivolous or unnecessary?
• What other uses do you see for Brain-Twitter?

I think it’s a really amazing and unique way to use Twitter in the medical field. The Albion and Poke have introduced a unique way for businesses to use Twitter with BakerTweet, but Brain-Twitter can help to make Twitter a lot more accessible to completely new audiences.

Let’s discuss it in the comments!

* Thanks all for the 200 incredibly thoughtful/funny/candid responses. You folks never fail to surprise us (in an excellent way. Hope everyone enjoys this wide range of comments that only MrTweet readers (i.e. YOU) can come out with!

We asked the question last Sunday - “What did YOU feel about the Ashton/Oprah/CNN hype?”. Responses flooded in - we received 107 in the first hour alone, and almost 200 in total. We carefully read through all of them to understand how our readers (which represented a very broad cross-section of the Twitter user base) felt about the intense coverage that was happening both in the media and within Twitter.

Ego Stroking Contest
While the responses spanned across negative to positive, the predominant sentiment seems to be that it was one big ego-stroking contest. Debra called it a “race for number of followers“. Susannah went one step further, commenting that they felt that the common Twitterers were degraded, and treated as “all little knick knacks being set up on a tacky, mirrored shelf in some celebs bathroom“. Gail takes the cake for extreme creativity in this category, calling the celebs “self absorbed bloated ticks living off their brain dead fans“. Furthermore, as Gráinne (and others) noted, they “never said anything huge interesting anyway“.

Awareness for Important Issues
It was certainly not all negative though, with quite a few readers mentioning the positive impact of this intense media coverage shed light on issues they did not know about. Hopeful shared that she “learned about so many new things, including the Malaria No More Cause from Ashton and Demi” and Morgen learned about “modern day slavery” from Demi as well.

Why should Charity be Conditional?
But even the charitable aspects of this did not escape the skeptical gaze of several commenters. LadyHawke called it “Total self absorption disguised in altruism“, while Kaa wondered out loud on why it has to be conditional if they really cared about charity, and Samantha is irritated that celebs tend to broadcast their “good deeds” all over the place.

Ashton Killed The Whale
Another group of comments centered around what these intense mainstream coverage would do to Twitter. Again, it was predominantly negative, with users complaining about the strain it was placing on the Twitter servers. Dee noted that there has been nothing but problems since this past Friday from the mikey worm, copycats to fail whales, delays in tweets and lost tweets. LuckyMizM had a sharp observation - Ashton said during his campaign that he thought someone was hacking his account because his tweets weren’t showing up. Turns out that the reason was because Twitter was overcapacity (probably with folks trying to help him win)

Massive Influx of New Peeps
Other users also feared that this coverage damaged the core service by bringing in lots of people who do not understand Twitter. Dani felt that it “just created an influx of idiots on Twitter and TONS of spammers“, while Lakerin also observed that he had lots of “new commercial followers that are clumsily hawking their wares“. On a more personal level, Darren worried that Twitter was being overtaken by the mainstream, and hence becoming unpopular to early adopter geek types like himself.

Ending On A Nice Note…
Lots of negativity no doubt, but we at MrTweet (being the nice friendly people we are) wants to end this note by highlighting a few more lighthearted and positive comments. Lori notes that celebrities are just having fun like the rest of us, and they should not be condemned because of that. Our final highlight comes from Aaron, who seem delighted that Twitter is getting all this press because his circle of contacts is finally getting round to using Twitter!

All right, it took us a while to read through and digest 200 comments, and we hope you enjoyed this summary of what people like YOU felt over this incident. Sorry to those we did not manage to highlight - but keep the comments rolling in!

Don’t get us wrong, we love using Twitter from the web! Twitter’s web client is quick, easy, and as portable as any app can get. However the website leaves much to be desired, especially for those who are just getting into Twitter. Many popular features, tools, and add-ons have yet to be easily integrated into the Twitter website. Yesterday we asked how are you upgrading your Twitter experience on the web? Today we want to hear about the Twitter clients that you are using.

Why You Need A Twitter Client

Why do you even need a Twitter client you ask? You don’t need one. However, they’re another great way to upgrade your Twitter experience. They allow you to do more with Twitter inside of one window. That means less tabs open in FireFox for you.

There are a ton of Twitter clients floating around. Most clients feature integration with image sharing sites, link shorteners, Google Maps, Twitter Search and even Facebook integration. They do a lot! These clients help you to better manage Twitter and usually integrate a nice selection of Twitter tools and add-ons. A search for a Twitter client on Google or even Twitter Search will yield hundreds of results, with plenty more being tweeted about every minute!

Where To Begin

For those still swimming in this huge sea of options, finding the right Twitter application be overwhelming when you first begin to use Twitter. Here are some Twitter clients that we enjoyed using at one time or another:

Windows Twitter Clients

• Sobees
• TweetDeck
• Seesmic Desktop
• Twhirl
• Skimmer

Reviews: Sobees Creates A More Social Desktop | VentureBeat - TweetDeck Versus Seesmic Desktop | Mashable - Skimmer Brings a Sleek New Look to Social Browsing | ReadWriteWeb

Mac Twitter Clients

• Twitterific
• Nambu
• Tweetie for Mac (new!)

Reviews: Mac Twitter Apps Showdown: TweetDeck, Nambu, Tweetie for Mac - Nambu: A Better Twitter Client Than TweetDeck?

Mobile Twitter Clients

• Tweetie (iPhone)
• Gravity (Nokia S60)
• Tiny Twitter (Nokia, Blackberry, Windows Mobile)
• Twikini ( Windows Mobile)
• Twidroid (Android)
• Slandr (Mobile Web)

Reviews: Gravity Twitter App for S60 | The Nokia Blog - iPhone app Tweetie gets drafts, Instapaper, farts, and more | ArsTechnica - The Best Android Twitter Client | AndroidandMe

Personalize Your Twitter Experience

We’re all about personalization here at Mr. Tweet, which is why we’ve listed so many great Twitter clients for you. All of these Twitter clients have something very unique about them: their design.  When it comes to applications, user interface designs can make or break your user experience. Sobees allows for a more flexible layout, while Tweetdeck really gets good when you utilize the columns and groups feature.

Read the reviews and explore which clients might be a better fit for the way you like to use Twitter.

• What are your favorite Twitter clients? Why?
• What features do you hope to see in your favorite Twitter clients in the future?
• How is your Twitter experience on the web versus using a Twitter client?

If you’ve been looking for a new way to enhance your Twitter web experience, we have the perfect tool for you today! We’re talking about Greasemonkey, a popular Firefox add-on that allows the use of small bits of Javascript to customize a webpage. Thanks to Greasemonkey, my Twitter experience from the web looks more like this:

We’ve had numerous questions about how to enhance the web experience of Twitter. Little gold nuggets such as Greasemonkey scripts can sometimes go by largely unoticed. However, if you’re a Firefox user Greasemonkey scripts are one of the best ways to enhance your experience.

So what are some of the awesomesauce scripts that we’re using?

• Twitter User Classify Script - Ranks Twitter users from Twittercaster to Twitter spammer
• Twitter Search Results in Google Script - Searches Twitter for keyword related Tweets and displays them on the Google search results page
• Twitter Enhancements: ReTweet This - Adds a “retweet” button to your Twitter homepage
• Twitter Display Popular Trends - Places Twitter Trends on your Twitter homepage
• Twitpic Thumbnailer - Displays an inline thumbnail of images for tweets containing Twitpic images
• Twitter Sidebar Replies - Shows replies to the Twitter profiles you visit in the Twitter homepage sidebar
• Twitter Show Followers  - Places a small icon over the avatars of your Twitter followers
• Troy’s Twitter Script - Displays nested replies, custom search tabs, autocomplete of @ usernames, pagination, a ReTweet button, Media Embedding, URL expansion, and tons more!

Greasemonkey scripts are really easy to install and don’t require a restart of Firefox everytime you install one. You can turn them on or off with just one click. You can also find a lot more to play around with at Userscripts.org. Go ahead and give a few of them a try and let us know how well they work for you.

• What other ways are you enhancing your Twitter web experience?
• What Greasemonkey Scripts are you using?
• Did you choose any from our list? Which ones caught your attention?

For the last 2 weeks, it must have felt to many Twitterers that we have stopped world hunger, fixed the banks, and converted Kim Jung II, with the attention of the world spinning around helping Ashton Kutcher reach a million Twitter followers and Oprah tweet for the very first time.

Here at MrTweet, we are wondering how the rest of Twitterverse, folks like YOU feel about all these.

• Do you feel irritated that all this hype is going on, or do you feel that happy that Twitter is getting the recognition it deserves from big time celebrities?

• Do you feel that there is just too much noise going on, or do you feel that it is not affecting you at all?
• Do you feel that the sharing of quality information that was so critical at the early stages is slowly being lost?

Because our goal in life is to add value to YOU, please let us know what YOU think in the comments! (As usual, we will feature the most thoughtful comments)

Note: Please do drop a comment to say hi, introduce yourself, and welcome her! Any ideas on how we can add value to our readers would be much appreciated.

I would like to welcome Corvida to the MrTweet team as the new editor of our blog. We are very excited to have her in the team, as we believe that she will be able to add tremendous value to YOU with her eye for great content, astute observations, and wide network.

We first noticed Corvida’s talents on her own blog Shegeeks.net, where we were impressed by how she developed her own unique content, ideas and style, as opposed to regurgitating what everyone else is talking about.

Despite being very young, she has been noted as one of the most influential women in technology by Fast Magazine, and her work has been featured across major blogs like Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb, and Mashable, etc. Her full bio is below, so make sure you take a look!

The focus on this blog has always been around creating insights which are both useful and practical. This focus have helped this baby blog stand out repeatedly in the Twitterverse, gathering very strong participation (more than 250 comments) and propagation (more than 200 ReTweets) on a regular basis. Based on user feedback, we know you love this focus. Hence, Corvida will be maintaining this focus while bringing on even more great ideas to bring this blog to the next level.

She will be working on interviews with great folks in the Twitterverse, insightful articles, and curating great links into weekly summaries. All in all, she will be dedicated to helping YOU and YOUR business reach your full potential in this brand new media landscape.

You can follow her on Twitter or Friendfeed at @Corvida.

Corvida Raven is the 21 year old mastermind behind Shegeeks.net, highlighting Consumer Web 2.0 App Reviews & Social Web Conversations. She been noted as one of the Most Influential Women in Technology in FastCompany Magazine (Jan. 09), and co-manages projects such as EverythingTwitter.com and TheSocialGeeks Roudtable Podcast with Chris Miller. She’s provided numerous invaluable insights and analysis on web trends, web and mobile applications, and social media around the web.

Corvida has worked as professional blogger and community manager for ReadWriteWeb & The Industry Standard. Her work has been featured on numerous authority blogs including TechCrunch, Mashable, and AllThingsDigital.