Posted: May 16th, 2010 | Author: Paul Crouch | Filed under: General Twitter, Research, Social Media, Twitter Apps, Twitter Users | 1 Comment »
The hardest part of building your Twitter presence is finding your first few relevant friends amongst the millions of Twitterers, but never fear because the Tweasier team is here. The most useful tool I’ve come across to find your audience is Mentionmap; a visual mapping app which presents a users network based on who they @ in a handy spider diagram.
There are plenty of network mapping tools around but most base themselves on who your friends follow not who they @, the problem with that is many people can have thousands of followers but only ever talk to ten of them meaning knowing their whole network is useless. Mentionmap on the other hand highlights who a user @’s most often and who the next user in the network @’s creating a full network twitterers engaged in regular conversation for you to follow.
This is great if your looking to find relevant networks quickly, you only need to know one user tweeting about your area of interest and mentionmap will unlock a full network of twitterers for you to follow and begin tweeting with at will.
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Posted: April 25th, 2010 | Author: Paul Crouch | Filed under: General Twitter, Twitter Tool | Tags: Qik, streaming video, twitter | 2 Comments »
I’ve been perusing the Tweasier archives and noticed a tool that I’m surprised we haven’t mentioned before. That tool is the Qik streaming video platform, which allows users to stream video straight from their smart phone to Twitter.
The set up is simple, just sign up, download the Qik app, and get filming. Every time film starts rolling, a link to your Qik page will be automatically tweeted to your feed and your followers can see your video in real time. Your channel can also be shared via text, Facebook and YouTube and you can live chat with your viewers, making Qik a great way of sharing live video with your followers across every platform, not just Twitter.
Qik is completely free for personal use but paid packages are available if you want to use it commercially and you should check your phone’s data package or it could get expensive. Other than that have fun, you might want to avoid broadcasting your next big night out though.
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Posted: March 19th, 2010 | Author: Paul Crouch | Filed under: General Twitter | Tags: Twitter Explained, Twitter News | No Comments »
Music and film fans will be well aware that this week is South By South West, one of the world’s biggest displays of independent film and music. The festival is also the home to one of the world’s largest conferences for emerging technology. South By South West Interactive has built up an enviable reputation for attracting the brightest stars in emerging technology and in the past has played host to the launch of digital stars including Spotify and Twitter.
This year Twitter’s CEO, Evan Williams, returned to SXSWi to announce the next step in Twitter’s quest for world domination, the Facebook baiting @anywhere.
@anywhere is Twitter’s new system of tweeting directly from any website and remaining permanently logged into Twitter wherever you are online, much like Facebook’s Connect service.
In Twitter’s own words:
“Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo homepage”.
From what we know so far the service is closer to Twitter adapting to the ways we already use it than an entirely new direction for the service. Users have been tweeting links and adding their own comment since Twitter began, @anywhere will simply make it easier for us to do so and making content sharing a little easier.
Twitter are still playing their cards close to their chests on this one but we can expect all to be revealed on April 14th at Chirp, Twitter’s very own conference, and then we’ll get an idea of the full extent of Twitter’s plans.
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Posted: March 9th, 2010 | Author: Paul Crouch | Filed under: Twitter Tool | Tags: Twitter app, Twitter Tool | No Comments »
We always like to see innovative uses for Twitter here at the Tweasier blog so I was quite intrigued to discover Twitter’s first taxi rank, @tweetalondoncab. 
Tweetalondoncab is an experiment by a small group of London cabbies to see if Twitter can help connect them with their punters more quickly and easily.
The service is simple; just follow @tweetalondoncab, they will follow back and when you need a cab just DM them with the time you want the cab, where you want picking up, your destination and mobile number. Available cabbies will contact you, choose one and your carriage awaits.
The twittering cabbies do point out that they can’t guarantee a cab will be free the moment you ask so they encourage you to book in advance and don’t suggest relying on them in a ‘1AM, caught in the rain’ situations but hopefully as their roster grows they’ll be able to guarantee more cars and become a very convenient alternative to blindly searching for your nearest rank (or confusedly following Around Me directions.)
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Posted: February 19th, 2010 | Author: Paul Crouch | Filed under: Twitter Apps, Twitter Tool | Tags: Twitter app, Twitter monitoring, Twitter Tool | No Comments »
I was rooting around on the Internet, as I do, and found a Twitter tool that I am very impressed with. Tweet o’clock is a very simple site that examines when and how often a user tweets in order to tell you when the best time to @ them is.
So if you want to contact me you’re most likely to get a reply at 4.35pm on a Wednesday but you also have a fairly good chance at 8.20pm on a Tuesday.
If you want to @chris_norton the best time is Thursday’s at 9.40am and Tweasier is Monday at 13.05pm.
This is a very useful app if you’re struggling to get in touch with a Twitter contact or just want to see when your own peak twittering time is.
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Posted: February 3rd, 2010 | Author: Paul Crouch | Filed under: General Twitter, Twitter Apps, Twitter Management, Twitter Tool | No Comments »
To get the most out of Twitter you need to follow people who are going to tweet about things that interest you and with whom you can interact. The problem is 
that there are thousands of twitter users around simply using their accounts to push out marketing links or who are just cleverly designed bots created to look like legitimate users.
One way to avoid following fake accounts and clogging up your news stream is with Twerpscan, a site devoted to investigating users and judging whether or not they are spam. Just type in a username and it will give you a full drill down of the user’s activity and wider online identity.
The results are split down into percentages telling you how much the user retweets, uses links and replies to others. On top of that you can see how quickly the user is accruing followers and Twerpscan will warn you if it thinks there is anything suspicious about the account (Stephen Fry, for instance, is adding new friends at an alarming rate).
You can also see the past 20 tweets and any other sites the user maintains online, all of which means you can decide at a glance if your newest follower is friend or foe.
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Posted: January 21st, 2010 | Author: Paul Crouch | Filed under: Business, Twitter Apps, Twitter Tool | Tags: Twitter app, Twitter Explained, Twitter monitoring, Twitter Tool | No Comments »
One of the most difficult things about Twitter is keeping track of what is being said either about your brand or industry 24/7. If you use Twitter clients like 
Tweetdeck or Seesmic then you can set up a search column and keep an eye on that but the rate at which Tweets are posted means if you close it for a second your almost certain to miss something important.
A good alternative is tweetbeep.com, a site that sends Google Alert style digests of recent tweets straight to your inbox. All you need to do is sign up, set up your search and tell it how often you want the digests delivered.
There are plenty of these ‘Twitter Alert’ sites around but Tweetbeep.com stands out from other alert sites thanks to its in-depth search fields. Tweetbeep.com allows you to create sophisticated keyword searches, restrict the alerts to Tweets within your area, only include positive or negative tweets or even restrict your search to tweets directed at certain people.
Google Alerts does pick up some tweets but for a full digest I definitely recommend Tweetbeep.
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Posted: January 15th, 2010 | Author: Paul Crouch | Filed under: Twitter Tool | Tags: Calender, Twitter app, Twitter Explained, Twitter Tool | 1 Comment »
I find one of the most annoying, and distracting, things about using a computer to be the sheer number of different programs you have to keep sitting on your desktop and checking all the time. With that in mind I present Remember the milk, a calendar working completely in Twitter. Sign up, follow RTM and direct message them your appointments to set up the calendar. 
You can add tasks for the day, schedule in meetings and create recurring appointment just by sending a direct message. Remember the Milk will direct message you in advance of appointments and you retrieve you task list whenever you need. You can even assign tasks to other Remember the cow users just by using the @ command when you send the task to RTM.
The Remember the milk calendar also has a range of add-ons that allow you to pinpoint your meeting location with Google Maps, track you tasks and appointments from your phone and sync tasks with Google Calendar. All this means you have one less pesky window logging up your screen and you’ll never miss an appointment again.
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Posted: December 21st, 2009 | Author: Paul Crouch | Filed under: Business, Twitter Apps | Tags: Geochirp, Twitter app, Twitter Business | No Comments »
One of the most difficult aspects of a local company setting up on Twitter is finding your audience; it’s easy enough for sandwich shops to find people talking about sandwiches but very difficult to find people talking about sandwiches within walking distance of the shop.
That is why I’m a big fan of a Twitter tool called Geochirp. The tool is based on Google Maps and allows you to search for Twitterers in your area talking about any subject. So if you’re a Sandwich shop in York you simply find York on the Google map and search for ‘Sandwich’. You can adjust the distance of your search and also see the most influential ‘tweeple’ in your area and follow them straight from the site.
These features make Geochirp a one-stop tool for local businesses setting up on Twitter and allow you to build up a relevant following quickly and easily.
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Posted: December 8th, 2009 | Author: Paul Crouch | Filed under: Tweasier, Twitter Apps | Tags: Twitter API, Twitter Tool | 1 Comment »
Hi, I’m Paul, I’m going to be writing a few guest posts on the Tweasier blog, and this is my inaugural post so please be gentle with me.
I thought I’d make my first post about my favourite, and most colourful, use of the Twitter API; the ‘expression tracker’ We feel fine. (to get on to the tool click
‘interactive version’ on the We feel fine homepage).
We feel fine searches Twitter for any mention of a range of emotions from ‘abandoned’ to ‘Zippy’ and puts them into thousands of tiny balls bouncing around your screen. Just click on a ball and you can see the tweet inside it. You can filter the tweets to only include certain emotions, tweets posted when it’s sunny or tweets by people in their twenties. You can even select tweets about being nervous by people in their thirties on rainy days.
We feel fine isn’t particularly useful but it is very creative and fun so I thought I’d point it out to anyone who hasn’t had the good fortune to stumble across it yet.
You can read my blog here.
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