Power Tweeting: Next Steps

When product pipeline first covered Twitter back in July 2007, the tool was so novel that only a very few libraries and librarians were experimenting with it. Now, over two years later, Twitter has gone mainstream, thanks to promotion by high-profile stars like Oprah (@Oprah) and Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk). From its early beginnings as a microblogging application, Twitter morphed into a communications platform, a customer service portal, an answer engine, and a marketing haven.

Though the basic functionality of Twitter hasn't changed much over the past few years, the powerful Twitter APIs have meant the creation of hundreds of new and innovative tools designed to integrate with and improve your Twitter experience. Here, we look at a few of these amazing applications and how libraries and librarians can use them.

Sure, 140 characters are great, but sometimes a picture is needed to show those 1000 words. Luckily, there are several tools designed just to help you share some of those great library photos.

Until June 2009, Flickr users had to rely on third-party tools to post their Flickr pictures directly to Twitter. Finally, though, Flickr has introduced its own blend of Twitter integration: uploading from a mobile device to a special Flickr2Twitter email address and uploading individual photos directly from the Flickr web site. To get started, Flickr users need to add their Twitter account as a blog under the "Extending Flickr" options in the account information. As with many of the tools discussed in this article, the Flickr/Twitter integration makes use of OAuth, an authentication protocol that allows users to share information between sites without sharing their username and password, so you won't be adding your Twitter credentials directly to your Flickr account.

Once a Twitter account is linked to Flickr, you'll be given a special email address. You can use this email address to upload photos from a mobile device or a desktop computer, and the email's subject line becomes both the tweet and the title of the photo on Flickr. If you already have a photo uploaded to Flickr that you'd like to Tweet about, just click on the "blog this" button. You'll be able to edit your tweet (the default is the title of the image) before you post. All Flickr images posted to Twitter this way will have an http://flic.kr base URL.

Flickr's new integration with Twitter is useful, especially for uploading those mobile photos you want to share and save, but for Flickr devotees and those who want to share all their photos, it may not seem like a good enough solution. That's where tools like TwitterGram and SnapTweet can help. Both of them automatically post new uploaded Flickr images to Twitter. It's as easy as entering your Twitter username and password, Flickr username, and a special tag to let each service know to post any image with that tag to Twitter. You can choose to post all Flickr images to Twitter in TwitterGram by omitting a special tag, or you can create a default tag in Flickr that matches the tag you specify for SnapTweet or TwitterGram.

Because each tool only checks your Flickr account for new images periodically, you may see a delay between uploading and tweeting. To combat this, SnapTweet offers an additional handy piece of Twitter integration. Merely direct message SnapTweet (@snaptweet), and your latest photo will be tweeted within a few minutes.

TwitPic is the most well known and commonly used of the Twitter photo-sharing services and also one of the simplest. There are two options for sending photos to Twitter via TwitPic: uploading the images at the TwitPic site, or, more popular, sending a photo to a unique email address (the subject line is the tweet, similar to Flickr's email uploading tool). The latter enables mobile phone users to snap a picture and send it via email in a matter of seconds. It's possible to upload .gif, .jpg, and .png files. If you already have a Twitter account, you're all set to use TwitPic—just log in using your Twitter credentials. Many stand-alone Twitter apps for mobile devices also feature direct photo integration using TwitPic (and sometimes options for other photo uploaders, too).

Though TwitPic is undeniably the easiest tool for sending photos to Twitter, sometimes you want a toy with a little more power and flexibility. Mobypicture provides that something extra. In addition to posting photos to Twitter, Mobypicture also allows you to post video and audio files. Furthermore, Mobypicture works with more social sites than Twitter—send your audio, video, and images to Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, Blogger, and more as well.

One of the bonuses of using Mobypicture is that if you already have a Twitter account, you don't even need to go to the web site to set up your account first. All you need to do is email your photo, video, or audio clip to twituser.twitpass@mobypicture.com, replacing twituser and twitpass with your username and password, respectively (though this does potentially expose your account details over unsecured email). Alternately, Twitter account holders can sign into Mobypicture with their Twitter credentials and get a special email address to send their media to, either via email or MMS protocol.

iPhone users have yet another reason to appreciate Mobypicture: a native iPhone app. Unlike most other mobile photo-to-Twitter tools, which require sending email, the Mobypicture iPhone app bypasses email and sends your photos directly to Twitter and the other social media sites it supports. Simply take a picture, describe it, and post it. Not an iPhone user or planning to share images, video, or audio files from your regular digital camera? Another option for uploading to Mobypicture is its basic web interface, or any number of third-party Twitter tools with Mobypicture integration (Twitter client Seesmic Desktop is one example).

Earlier this year in Product Pipeline (see LJ 1/09, p. S12–S14, and LJ 4/15/ 09, p. 62–64), we looked at screencasting tools that can be used to create software demos and short tutorials quickly to share with colleagues and patrons. In recent months, new free, web-based screencasting tools have added more options for producing high-quality screencasts on the fly. What's even better is that these tools have integrated directly with Twitter.

Screenjelly and Screenr are two examples of this trend. Unlike many other web-based screencasting tools that require you to open a new account to host video, both of these tools use your Twitter credentials as your account login—there is no need for a new username and password. Of the two tools, Screenr is far superior. It is incredibly easy to use: log in with your Twitter credentials, click the record button, click Done, and, voilà, you have a screencast! What sets Screenr apart as a screencasting tool, however, is its excellent HD video quality, audio quality, and flexible capture size (customizable or one of several default settings). Screenr also automatically initiates an iPhone-compatible version for your iPhone-loving Twitter followers, sets up a downloadable .mp4 file, and has an option to upload the resulting video to YouTube.

As with most other web-based screencasting tools, there is a time restriction of five minutes per video. Also, as with other free screencasting tools, librarians may be wary of the site's branding built into the video file. Screenjelly has a three-minute time restriction, begins recording automatically, and records full-screen videos only. Screenr and Screenjelly both post videos to Twitter, and Screenr also allows viewers to retweet videos directly from the video's web page as well as reply to the video's creator as an @reply.

Sharing photos, videos, and screencasts is one great way for libraries to use Twitter, but there are many more ways to engage patrons. Want to have an impromptu chat with a group of followers? TinyChat offers real-time video chat (for up to 12 people) and text chat and, of course, integrates with Twitter. From TinyChat's homepage, click on the "Create your room" button (you can choose a better URL if you like, just by typing a word or name in the text box first), invite people from your networks to join, and enter your chat. Users will need to click on the "Start Broadcasting" button to join the chat with video or audio.

Perhaps instead of meeting in a chat room in real time, you'd like to get a consensus on a topic in a slightly more organized fashion. Try StrawPoll, a Twitter-based polling solution. Twitter users can log into StrawPoll using their Twitter credentials (an email address is required also). Then, it's just a matter of creating a poll question, Twitter-style, and the two options. Users who reply to the ensuing Twitter post can respond with their answer and reason in the format @sender answer response. Responses take up to five minutes to display on StrawPoll.

Twitter is certainly not the only social network where libraries are engaging with their patrons, and trying to keep all of those social network statuses up-to-date can be a real challenge. For a long time, Twitter users were able to post their Twitter updates directly to Facebook through the official Twitter Facebook application. Recently, Facebook introduced a new feature to help organizations do the same, only in the opposite direction. Administrators of Facebook Pages can now publish their Facebook status updates to Twitter automatically. What's even better is that administrators with multiple Pages to maintain can choose to have each Page send updates to a different Twitter account, without affecting the individual administrator's profile. Not only can Facebook update Twitter with status changes, it can also send any posted links, photos, notes, and events—the administrator decides what information is sent. This is, obviously, a time-saver for libraries with accounts in both social networks and also provides an additional way of sharing those photos.

Sometimes vacations, meetings, and life interfere with one's tweeting schedule. Take charge of those tweets by scheduling them in advance. Several tools enable tweet scheduling, including the powerful web dashboard Twitter application HootSuite, along with Twuffer, SocialOomph, and FutureTweets.

One thing librarians are often concerned about these days is return on investment—is the outreach that library staff are doing through social media making a difference? Can success be gauged merely by the number of followers a library has? Several tools can help give additional insight into how members of the public are using the content on Twitter.

Bit.ly is a web site most people recognize as a URL shortener, one of those fantastic tools that make sharing links through Twitter's 140 character updates a little more feasible. Fewer people know, however, that bit.ly provides powerful real-time tracking tools to monitor the use of the links it posts. Simply create a bit.ly account, add the bit.ly sidebar or bit.ly bookmarklet to your browser, and start sharing links. You can add multiple Twitter accounts to your bit.ly account. For each link posted to Twitter in bit.ly, users can select which Twitter account to post to and can edit the content of the tweet. Each link will be tracked for clicks in real time, so trends and patterns may emerge from your data. And one final less-well-known fact: append a "+" sign to any bit.ly URL, yours or anyone else's, to see the real-time tracking data for that shortened link.

Favstar is a nifty item with RSS notification that lets users see when their tweets are favorited, another way to know what types of content may have made an impact on your users. An even more powerful tracking tool, Twitoaster, produces handy charts and statistics depicting what tweets received the replies and from how many users. It's a fast way to check on retweet power.

Twitter's ascendance has brought forth a wealth of tools like these that libraries and librarians can use to make their Twitter lives easier, more productive, and more valuable. Got a favorite power tweeting tool not listed here? Let us know by sending a message to @LibraryJournal.