Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [51]
In addition to sending tweets as SMS messages from your phone, you can receive your contacts’ tweets on your phone via SMS. Setting this up takes a little more work. First, think long and hard about how noisy you want your phone to be each day. Most Twitter users find that they can handle between 10 and 20 peoples’ tweets being sent to their phone before the constant incoming text stream becomes overwhelming. Luckily, even power users like iJustine (@iJustine) have discovered that they can take advantage of SMS tweets to their phone by being really selective about whose actual tweets they get via SMS. It’s not all-or-nothing.
To receive tweets from your contacts on your cellphone:
1. Open your own Home screen and, under Device Updates on the right sidebar, click phone to activate your phone notifications.
Now you can subscribe to receive SMS tweets from any or all of the people that you already follow on Twitter.
Don’t confuse notifications with following, though. Following means you follow their updates generally via Twitter. Notifications are a more intimate connection where you get their every tweet as an SMS text on your phone. With notifications ON, you also get all your DMs via SMS.
2. Make a list of people whose tweets you really want to receive directly as SMS messages on your phone.
These people can be anyone — friends, family, influencers, clients — whatever works for you.
3. Go to each of those Twitter users’ profiles and select (toggle) the updates on or updates off radio buttons to turn their notifications on or off.
You can also send a tweet to turn individuals’ message notifications on or off (see Chapter 7).
Via smartphones or PDAs
If you have a smartphone, BlackBerry, or PDA that has Web capabilities, you can use Twitter’s mobile Web site, http://m.twitter.com, or a number of other third-party mobile Web sites like Hahlo, pretty much the way you use Twitter.com on your computer. You can also download applications that allow you to use Twitter as an application on your phone. You can find several popular applications — these are just a sampling of what’s available for various devices:
For iPhone: Tweetie (www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone), Twittelator (www.stone.com/Twittelator), TwitterFon (http://twitterfon.net), Twitterrific (http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific).
For BlackBerry: Blackbird (http://dossy.org/twitter/blackbird), TinyTwitter (http://tinytwitter.com), TwitterBerry (www.orangatame.com/products/twitterberry). Considering how popular BlackBerry phones are for tweeting, it’s disappointing how weak the apps are. Laura uses a combination of TwitterBerry (for her read-only account), texting (to send most of her tweets), http://m.Twitter.com (to drop by friends’ pages or check replies), and http://search.twitter.com (to check trends, do searches, and so on).
For Windows Mobile: PocketTwit (http://code.google.com/p/pocketwit), TinyTwitter (www.tinytwitter.com), TwitToday (http://dalelane.co.uk/page.php?id=1047), Twitula (http://cid-eda3c1275909727a.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/MobileApps/Twitula35.CAB), Twobile (www.infinitumsoftware.com/twobile).
Play around with the applications’ options a bit until you find one you like best. They’re all a little bit different, and they have varying advantages based on how you use Twitter, how often you tweet, how big your network is, and so forth.
Using Twitter through Your E-Mail
When someone new starts following you, Twitter sends you an e-mail that contains a link so that you can check out that user’s profile right away to see whether you want to follow him back. These e-mails save quite a bit of time and hassle — you don’t have to try to remember who followed you and when.
If you don’t have the time or the need to follow back your new followers right away, use whatever options your e-mail client (or Web service) provides to search, file, or tag certain messages received. Setting up a mail filter to segment those notifications outside