Just Stwo

Managing your Twitter traffic can be near impossible, especially if you follow a lot of people. Through trial and error I have gone from being insanely overwhelmed and not being able to keep track of many conversations or streams of my favorite people, to somewhat having a handle on specific tweeters and conversations. This problem is twofold; it occurs when you are on a computer as well as when you are mobile (I consider mobile to be any time you are not in front of a computer). Believe it or not, I have discovered ways to make Twitter more easily manageable while mobile. I’m still having issues when in front of a computer, but have definitely improved things.

So, let’s talk about mobile traffic. First and foremost, Twitter allows you to have tweets sent to your device via text message. You can select which users’ streams come to your device in multiple ways. Once you connect your mobile device to Twitter, I recommend setting 40404 as a contact named Twitter. If you use twitpic, you can also set your custom email address to this contact as well. All you need to do to have someone’s updates come to your device is send a text to 40404 which says “follow “. To remove them from your mobile updates, just send a text to 40404 which says “off “.

I learned the hard way not to follow too many people via mobile updates. My phone used to buzz and vibrate incessantly, and mostly from users I did not interact with on a regular basis. My recommendation is to only follow (via mobile) a small handful of users, preferably those you either have frequent discussion with, whose tweets provide you with invaluable information, or maybe a news outlet or two to give you real time updates of what’s going on in the world.

Next, is to choose a Twitter client for your device. (assuming you have a device that supports one). I use the iPhone, so my options are plentiful. There are many choices for the iPhone, but I stick to two Twitter apps. First and formost, my old standby is Twittelator Pro. This is probably one of, if not, the most powerful of apps available. You can have multiple accounts, unlimited groups, the ability to easily embed photos, audio and video, shorten those extra long tweets, and a whole slew of other invaluable features.

The second is TweetDeck. As many of you may know TweetDeck is one of the most popular desktop Twitter clients. The beauty of TweetDeck for the iPhone is it’s ability to sync with your desktop client. It may not be very feature rich otherwise, but easy continuity from desktop to mobile is priceless.

Both of these apps, as well as any other mobile Twitter client are great for those times when you’re away from a computer and have the time to sit down and look at Twitter for a longer period of time than just a brief glance.

Yet, with an iPhone, it becomes even easier to participate in Twitter conversation thanks to a great little app named Boxcar. Thanks to firmware 3.0, the iPhone now supports push notification. Boxcar pushes all @mentions as well as DMs directly to your device. Twitter.com will send DMs to you as texts if you have mobile notifications on, but not @mentions. I find this application invaluable. Especially, for example, if I am in the middle of a thought provoking discussion with another Twitter user while at a computer, and must leave my desk. No matter where I go, as long as I have my device with me, Boxcar will make sure I can continue the conversation. It will even automatically open up your favorite Twitter app for you to reply to any message.

My next suggestion is an app for all of you who actually care when you lose followers. I usually don’t care myself, but I like to know when someone who I take interest in unfollows me. There is a relatively new app on the AppStore named BridBrain. This app does things I have not yet been able to find in a desktop app. Birdbrain lets you know who follows/unfollows you, (as well as if it was because Twitter blocked/removed them) if someone you follow is following you, allows you to easily look at their last tweet, as well as a ton of other metric data.

With all of these tools, staying connected to the Twitter universe while “afk” becomes much more practical. I dare to say you can be even more “in the loop” while mobile than when in front of a computer.

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