Trying Twitter

So recently I decided to start using Twitter a lot more.  I have had a Twitter account for a while, but haven’t done much with it.  I am trying to get in the habit of using it more on a day to day basis.  So far so good, it is pretty simple and is much like the Facebook status I am used to.  This allows you access to another social network, and while it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Facebook, it is a pretty easy to use interface.

The one thing I was hesitant about was having another place to update my status.  I spend enough time updating my Facebook, and having another account like this is just more work.  So upon digging I found Facebook has a Twitter app.  What this means is when you update the status of your Twitter account, it automatically posts it to your Facebook.  This was key to me as I only want to update my status once.  Now what I would really like is to have it go the other way, that when I update Facebook it goes to Twitter.  However this isn’t available for personal pages on Facebook yet.  I am hoping sometime down the road they will include this.  But for now having my Twitter post to Facebook is enough.

The next was, I didn’t want to have the Twitter page open all the time.  I already have this for Facebook and wasn’t really keen on having a whole page open just for Twitter.  So I did some playing around with a few Twitter clients.  I have some of them listed below, and have tried to set them up on my different devices, so I can always post to Twitter, as this is how I am trying to post to Facebook now.

On my iPhone this was really easy, I installed the Twitter App for the iPhone and have been really liking it.  It is very simple and basic, and looks much like the other Twitter apps, but this one is from Twitter and is free.

For my netbook, I am running Ubuntu Linux, which comes with a social networking tool called Gwibber.  In a matter of seconds I had my Twitter account setup with Gwibber and it worked great.  It reminded me a lot of the iPhone Twitter app, and was very intuitive and easy to use, much like my other experiences with Ubuntu Linux.

When it comes to Windows though, I have tried a few different Twitter clients.  I started off by using Twhirl a while ago when I first setup my Twitter account.  It was great, when it worked, but often crashed and I found it more annoying than useful, hence the reason I stopped using Twitter.

The next client I used for Windows was TweetDeck, which seemed really promising.  However it did way more than I wanted, and took a long time to load.  However I was just starting to get used to it, when after today it decided to crash every five minutes.  The memories and frustrations of when I used Twhirl all came back and again Twitter got a bad rap.

After being frustrated with TweetDeck I talked to my co-worker, Aurora, who is very much into Twitter.  She showed me an add-on for Firefox called Echofon.  Echofon pretty much sits in the system tray of Firefox and tells you if you have any new tweets.  It is very unobtrusive, and easy to use.  I also haven’t noticed any interference in Firefox since installing it.  It loads as fast as the other clients I have used, and has a nice simple interface.  Something I think both Twhirl and TweetDeck tried to overdue.  After switching to it, Twitter has been easy to use again for me, and I find it a great place to post from, so that I can post on Twitter and Facebook simultaneously.

So that is my experience with Twitter, I do like it as a nice easy to use social networking tool.  As I said I am trying to integrate Twitter into my life more as I have some friends on Facebook and some on Twitter.  This way I can be connected to them both and be able to post once.  So if you are not on Twitter, give it a try.  It is pretty easy to use, especially if you are already using Facebook.