17 Oct 2014

// // 1 comment so far

LongerTwits - A Simple Web App To Tweet More Than 140 Characters

Checkout my app at http://longertwits.vickythegme.com


Yay!!
I released my first app online which is currently serving as a sub domain on my personal blog vickythegme. I happen to read about twitter api past these days and got pretty much interested to it that I wanted to build an app on my own.

The first idea that I got is to bring up an app that would let users follow and unfollow (a simple twitter management tool similar to JustUnfollow, Unfollowers.me etc.,).

 By the time I got into it and been working on the app, I got another idea why not create a simple app and releasing it and wait for the user response so that I could carry the workings for the unfollow app behind the hood. (I still have the idea of developing an unfollow app as well.)

So, the simple app that I am talking about is none other than Longertwits – http://longertwits.vickythegme.com which is most inspired by Amit Agarwal’s talltweets.

I used to use talltweets back then to tweet if I need to send more than 140 characters and some day decided why not write a similar app on my own.

Once I started, I felt pretty good that I made an app (with some errors though ;) ), I started to work on the reducing the errors that could possibly happen and let the users use it as well.

So, here I’m sharing my first twitter app. – Longertwits.

So the thing that is different about the other apps is that I happen to manage 3 types of tweeting options like Tweet as Text, Tweet as Link, Tweet as Image

I could see so many apps that use these features and not one of them having all the three.!


With respect to that, I added these 3 options to tweet  to your twitter account.


Tweet as Text :


This option lets you tweet your message in the form of text. If an user types a tweet message that is more than 140 characters, the app splits the first 140 characters and sends it first and then sends the next 140 characters and so on.

Tweet as Link :


Tweet as Link option lets you tweet a text message which is more than 140 characters as link. This means that the tweet is sent with a link such that it shows some first 40-60 characters and add a link to the tweet that is saved in our db.

This option could be very useful if someone wants to mock up an essay of something or an announcement or anything that will relate to the limit.

Tweet as Image : 


Tweet as Image is one option that is mostly inspired with the idea of talltweets which I wanted to make it available to longertwits app as well.

This option lets you to send the tweet text in the form of an image.

The Images above are the old design with bootstrap 2 and I will be changing the app with the new bootstrap 3 design real soon.

Conclusion : 


I could not say anything more than just ask you to try out this simple app Longertwits  and do let me know your feedback below in here as comments or you can ping me up on twitter -@vickythegme or anywhere you feel convenient.


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11 Aug 2014

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How To Register A Twitter Application

Twitter Applications are nowadays getting created like hundreds and thousands a day.

According to this post -> One Million Registered Twitter Apps at their twitter blog back then at 2011, a new app is registered every 1.5 seconds. It is needless to say the amount of apps that would be registered by the end of this year and only you can imagine the limit. And the amount of twitter app developers are increasing day by day.

I've been running a nono-coding blog (mostly twitter related tips) and I don't wanna get into any details to coding with this blog, as I've my personal blog where I share some coding experiences.

This post will guide you to create (register) a Twitter App in just minutes.

The first thing you should do is to go to Twitter Dev - http://dev.twitter.com

If you have a twitter account (I'm sure you do), just sign in with it to twitter developers site.

Viola., You've created your developer account.

Now GoTo -> My Applications at the right corner of your account

In My Applications, obviously, you'll find nothing if you've not created any applications. ;)

So, create one by clicking on the "Create New App" button.


Follow the Instructions and enter the fields that are neccesary.

If you don't have a website, you can just add your localhost as your Website Address. But make sure you type
http://127.0.0.1/website 
Similarly when adding the callback url, make sure you add the localhost ip address, because it returns error if http://localhost/website/callback.php is entered.
Callback URL : http://127.0.0.1/website/callback.php
only if you don't have a server to host the application.

Once you click on the "Create Application" , twitter will generate some keys that you'll be needing when it comes to coding part.

The 4 needed part of the api applications are
Consumer Key 
Consumer Secret
Access Token
 Access Secret
You should be using them in integrating the app that you've created with your code to make it up and running with twitter.

An important thing to note down is that you can change your access level to the following.



Read - Can only read tweets, view user profile and login options
Read, Write - Can  both read and write (which means pretty much you can tweet , retweet, favorite tweets) etc.,
Read, Write and Direct Messages - Can read, write both statuses, direct messages.
To  know more about the Application Permission Model,->  https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model 


And you can get user details, tweet status, retweet, favorite, do nifty things (not literally) with twitter api.

Now you can test your oauth connection with the test Oauth option at the top right side of your app.

To know more about the coding parts for the twitter integration with the app that you created just now., checkout my personal blog - vickythegme for the code pieces.

Let Us know your difficulties with creating a sample twitter app by following above.

Photo Credit : Flickr
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8 Jul 2014

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Search List of Twitter Apps with Twi5


Usage of Twitter has been increasingly growing its rate these years with the Bloggers and Social Media Strategists understanding the value of it.


You might not have seen much impact of twitter on bloggers and other internet promoters earlier and it is may be because of the power of social media in the field of SEO and Marketing.

Search Engines (clearly I want to refer to Google) have made it possible for the marketers to know the value of twitter and other social medias.

If you're a serious internet user or to be specific, a serious twitter freak, you must know the relatives of twitter (not really), but related to it and making it use better.

How cool it would be if you can find the information about all the twitter tools in just one place.?


You may have found this information on Wikipedia- List of Twitter Services and Applications, but still I have a better place in my mind to search for.

Here's a little description of one place where you'll find most of the interesting third party twitter applications.

You may know about it earlier and if not let me tell you, it is Twi5

Twi5 

Twi5 Logo - http://www.twi5.com/twitlogo-create-twitter-like-logo-for-free/5145/

Twi5.com, page by Nischal Shetty- Founder of JustUnfollow, is one place to search for most of the twitter tools online. Twi5 has a big list of vast range of tools to help you with twitter easy access and management. You could find most of the applications that are quite familiar with you and some you might not heard about it too.

And trust me, I haven't heard of most of the twitter resources until I looked into it.

To get your twitter app profiled in the site, you have to Submit your App and follow the details shown in the page.

There are so many apps that are related to some of the biggest social media names that you use already (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Orkut ) and it has the list of mobile apps related to those social medias.

You'll find it interesting to know about these apps and may be try out some.

Now let me know something that you find interesting about it at the comments.

Image Credit : Flickr
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23 May 2014

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4 Tools to Tweet Longer Than 140 Characters


Twitter Users are increasing more and more day to day. When you start using twitter frequently you may want to use something that ll make it easy for you to tweet at times when you can't be online all the time.

 There comes the usage of twitter management tools which will help you manage your twitter accounts (even multiple accounts too with some cents spent). But then you want something that will let you tweet more than the tweet characters limit which is obviously 140 as you know it.

Basically, twitter is designed as a Short Messaging Service (SMS) and you can't blame for what it is. There are many third party tools, that make use of the twitter's API facility and are created to fullfil your reason to tweet longer tweets more than 140 characters.

 With that in mind, I am going to share some of the 4 tools that will let you tweet more than 140 characters.

Talltweets :


This is the one that comes to my mind when I first think about tweeting longer sentences more than the character limit. You may know it obviously, the make of this application., Yes, you guessed it., Amit Agarwal, a professional blogger from India. This tool is a simple one with you can tweet more than 140 characters in two forms.
  1. Tweet as text which will split the full lengthy tweet into chunks of tweets that apply the tweet character limit.
  2. Or tweet as an image which will create an image of the tweet message and send it to twitter as one media tweet which looks good by the way.

Twitlonger :


Twitlonger is one tweeting tool which attaches a link to your tweet and let the users view your tweet on twitlonger site.

Also you can reply to the tweet that you sent or any tweet that is sent from the site.

Twishort :


Twishort is another one tweeting tool where you can tweet longer than 140 characters with a link attached to your tweet. The users can view the full lengthy tweet when they click the link which will take you to view the lengthy tweet in your account at twishort.

One different feature other than the above tools is that it has also a facility to reply to any specifc tweet. All you have to do it to copy and paste the twitter url link for the tweet that  you wanna reply to.

You may also would like to use their twiage - an app to calculate the your twitter age. :)

JumboTweet


Jumbotweets is another platform to tweet longer than 140 characters to your twitter account.

This works the similar way as the other tools,. tweets the lengthy messages with a link attached to it at the end of each tweet.

It is used as a microblogging platform service where you tweet with a link and the users can view the full tweet in its website.

P.S : A new service from us LongerTwits has come out to tweet longer than 140 characters and more.

Currently we've Tweet as Text facility where your tweets are split into chunks of 120 characters each and sent to twitter.

Tweet as Image facility will let you tweet your lengthy messages in an image format. (Inspired by TallTweets).

Tweet as Link will let you tweet your messages by attaching a link at the end of your tweet which links to your complete text in our site.

Soon, we'll provide the option to save and collect your tweets (last 3200 tweets).

Stay Tuned with our posts and let us know your feedback in the comments.

Photo Credit : Creative Tools - Flickr
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22 Apr 2014

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How To Use Twitter Advanced Search


Use Twitter more for business purposes? New on Twitter? I've been there before what I call as a couple of years back.
Twitter Users are increasing day by day and by the time that you're reading this, hundreds of new users might have joined twitter with the intention of developing their business.

Later these days, twitter users are increasing more and more mainly because of the reason that it is a major social media to promote your business.

We've been writing tips to use twitter for quite a period now (you might wanna look into our posts on twitter tips) and realized the missing of twitter's advanced search.

 And not to mention, this post will let you know how to use twitter's advanced search feature and make it more useful for tweet searchers.

Use of Advanced Search :

As you know twitter's advanced search has more features added to it.

Advanced search has many options to search people or tweets on twitter like, search by Words, People, Places, Dates, and Other vibes.

You can search for tweet by date, people tweeted, place etc.,
Even typing nothing in the text boxes will result you with some search results that you might feel interesting to know. :)
You can also search tweets based on language too.
Advanced search in Twitter works when you search for anything on the search link https://twitter.com/search-advanced and you will get directed to the search results that usually comes when you search using the simple search bar at the top of your stream.

You may see the search query with some keywords in your simple search bar at the top which you've used in the advanced search option.
That means the search queries will work fine if you search them directly in the search bar that you always use to search.

Here are some of the tips that you can use the simple search bar as an advanced search option using operators.

All you need to do is to search using the operators column in the above image.
 Use the above technique to make your simple tweets search on twitter as an advanced one.

Conclusion:


Now try those similar search operators in your search bar and make use of the advanced search right where you tweet and let us know too.. :)

Photo Credit: Flickr- Rosaura Ochoa

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18 Mar 2014

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How To Use Twitter Analytics Efficiently

If you're running a business or a weblog, you sure must've tried twitter, atleast would've created an account and tweeted some tweets that are related to your business promotion. If you have noted something on Twitter later days, more people on the web are making use of a business profile. It is comparatively growing as equal to Facebook these days where people starting to use Facebook for their personal preferences. People become more conservative on Facebook that they want to keep things to themselves.

This post will help you to use twitter analytics as if you've used it before.

As you know Facebook has already its graph analytics based on the posts like, share and number of clicks, Twitter has released its analytics functionality which is not much reached to all the people over the world, but still people are making use of it. You might see the Analytics at the Settings drop down at the top of the navigation bar. Sometimes you might see Ad Analytics at the place where you want to see the analytics.

You should be aware that you can only use twitter analytics if you're a publisher or developer or advertiser.

To be a publisher, you can easily create twitter cards which is explained down below.

To be an advertiser, you've to apply for the ads which is possibly a paid one.

To be a developer, all you've to do is to have an account at twitter developers site and should have atleast one app created with it. 

 Anyway it shows the number of retweets, favorites, as wel as number of clicks any url can get when shared.

Using Twitter Analytics:

Twitter Analytics can be used to its best for your business. And this post will help you know the needed. We use url shorteners that provide click analytics to know how many times the url is being clicked in a tweet.

But on Facebook, there is no need to shorten the url because there's no limitation in number of characters to be used. And this is what it makes special about Twitter.

 With the twitter analytics, you can see how many times the url is being clicked in a tweet for both shortened urls as well as the original ones. The below image shows the number of clicks and retweets, favorites for a set of tweets that are shortened.

Here is another image below that shows the number of clicks, retweets, favorites for a set of tweets that are not shortened which is that I always shorten the url so that I could save some space for the retweeters to mention people or add words to the tweet. Twitter analytics also provides you the overall analytic graph of your tweets per month and its most retweeted, favorited tweets etc., It will help you know what kind of words that work more on twitter and can optimize your tweets to reach more people.

Using Ad Analytics:

Ads Analytics are not applicable unless you pay for it to get your tweets promoted to more number of people. Still if you have ads enabled to your profile, then you'll see the number of clickbacks the url gets per day or week or month.

Follower Analytics: 


Twitter also lets you get the whole analytics of your followers lists as well as your followings.

You can view the best of your followers analytics here at twitter analytics itself. Twitter shows a graph analytic of your followers per month which is useful to analyze the growth of your business profile.

There are also other applications such as Topsy,  Hootsuite etc., that provide you twitter analytics based on your data once you sign in with your twitter account.

Card Analytics:


You can also get the analytics of your twitter cards here.

For the card analytics to work, you've to create one for your website. Inside the twitter card analytics, you'll find the URL clicks, Install Attempts and number of Retweets your tweet with the card gets.

Get your twitter card in just some clicks selecting which type of card suits your business.

 And add the code to your blog for it to work when you share a tweet with your followers.

Validate your card, make sure the card are enabled in your domain. Check for validation at twitter itself or else you can make use of the twitter card validator.

Remember you can access to your twitter analytics only if you're a publisher or advertiser or developer.

That means you can access the data if you've any twitter card enabled to your website as well.


Export Your Data:

The Export Your Data facility allows you download the analytics data and let you view the data offline.

The data will let you calculate your growth on that particular month of the year.

The export facility is only for twitter card data.

Conclusion:


Twitter analytics are useful and it is recommended one for the users who are using third party applications as well, because there might be some limitations with the twitter api that other applications can't happen to provide you with which twitter can provide you with all your data completely.

Try out the latest twitter analytics and let me know your thoughts about it..!!

Photo Credit: Flickr

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17 Feb 2014

// // 3 comments so far

5 Tips to Send URL via DM - Twitter

You may all probably wondering why people send URL links via DM right after you follow them. Is it a spam link or is it their real blog or website's address? You just don't know how to find it and then you end up unfollowing them or just letting it go and never reply or talk to them about it.

This post will provide you some tips to send urls in a DM on Twitter.

 Now lets see about the two things that can happen when sending a url with a DM message from the tweeters.

Traffic?

Is that the reason you're sending DM to the people who follow you and only want to get to know you? Or do you think it is the way of telling the people that you're onto something ?
Anyway, it can be either directly or indirectly, still the best thing is you're doing it for the growth of your business. How are you going to increase your traffic just by sending your url link with the DM?
 When you send out a DM to an unknown person who just followed you will likely to click on the url if send any which is a good gesture provided you don't spam them.
 The urls are sent only to let people know you more and your interests, profession. Let me guess, when I send an url to you , what would you do?
 Will you click it? Obviously not., only if you want to know about me and find something interesting and informative on my url with some trust that I don't spam you. It has become a common practice to use url shortners while sending links in tweets, DMs just to make use of those 140 characters somewhere else. This is an advantage to the spammer bots, or spammer profiles which send spam urls shortened by most used url shortners like bit.ly, goo.gl etc., You might have noticed that the DM urls lesser these days as twitter is cleaning out the process of sending unknown urls.

Spam?

Do you think all the DM messages are spam? Fine. I agree with you that there are spams spreading through DM more than never before, but still there are other small scale marketers, bloggers, artists etc., who would try to power up their business through twitter taking advantage of the DM. There are hundreds of thousands of profiles on twitter that are spambots, still finding out a follower sending a url link via DM spam or not is something that we need to work on. Of course, you would assume an unknown url as a spam and it is been common these days. I always use to click on the urls that I feel as legit. You can sense the url even if it is shortened with any url shortners. Down here are some tips that would help you to send URLs via Direct Messages without being misidentified as spams.

Twitter Blocks URL :

Twitter has blocked sending of urls in DM messages keeping in mind to avoid spams flowing all over. You can't just send any url in a DM now and most importantly it doesn't allow URL Shortners. If you really want to send URLs in DM messages here are some tips.

Never Use URL Shortners:

As it is been said above, there are many url shortners that would let you shorten your url so that you can make use of the characters on Twitter. This makes your url invisible to others which is a problem to your followers because they might take it a spam sometimes unless you're some kind of a big deal in your industry. So, while sending any url link to your followers, make sure you add your full url to let them visit and know you. Even though it works earlier, now you can't send any shortened url. This actually goes opposite when sending tweets because you should allow your the tweeters to RT or add some characters with your tweet.

Add the url at your profile:

You have to let people know that the url that you're sending is not a spam link. For this to happen, you should add your website or blog url at your profile. When a user sees a DM from you, they ll first see your profile to make sure you're not a bot or any spammer personality. And when they see the same url that you have sent them through DM, there's a chance of people knowing it is a legit link.

DM the tweet link :

You can send a DM with the link of a tweet that has your blog or website url so that people will understand and might throw a visit to your blog. Some people might think it as just another link and it goes both ways.

Send as a plain text :

Twitter doesn't block all the urls that are being sent via DM. You can still send links to your social networking profiles in a DM. But there are other links that it can't recognize as spam or not, will not be sent. But you can still send the message as a plain text such that
You can visit my blog at techlanes .com
just adding a space or something that seperates the com or org or net from your domain name. But still there are chances that you can be neglected by some twitter users who feel lazy to copy and paste your link to their browser. :D

You know what is right!!

Yeah. Just think yourself as a user and you're getting a DM with a url. Most of the times your guess is right. You can differentiate the spam urls and other urls. Likewise, you know how you should send a DM without making an impression that it is a spam. Yes. 
Using url shortners will give you the analytics, number of clicks on that particular url. You can add a tweet with the shortened url and then send the tweet link to your followers to read and know about it.

Conclusion:

Sending URLs privately via DM can go both ways. You may get traffic , you may also get blocked and unfollowed. You can't expect everyone to think your link as a legit one. Still, you can make a try to let them click on it with your potential customers(readers). 
 I use automated tools to send out DMs and I only send DM messages to follow or add me friend to my social media profiles since those DMs wouldn't be blocked for sure. You can just test out if that url is sent via DM with some other profile to make sure you can use it automated bacause if that specific url is not sent, it will also block your whole DM message.

Photo Credit: Paul Downey -Flickr
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1 Feb 2014

// // 2 comments so far

Reasons For Your Twitter Account Spamming

Twitter Users are getting spammed so easily these days. Twitter is still a secure network where marketing of products and brands are still going on the other hand. What made you feel that twitter is insecure for you to run your social profile?

I am a regular user of twitter and I tweet 4-5 tweets daily even when I am not online just with the help of the auto tweeting tools which are scheduled to tweet at times. Its not a sin to use auto tweeting tools or in other words, twitter management tools. Twitter only considers those profiles that tweets spam urls or that tweets twice or three times continously.
If to be said, I am used to asked to rest my twitter password once in two weeks these days saying my twitter is compromised. I realized that its because I have been authorizing new and unknown applications that might have spammed my twitter.
Twitter guys are working on this condition since the increase in usage of twitter by marketers and brands and medias. They always send you an instant mail to change or reset password once they find anything spammy going on with your profile.

Now lets see why your account is getting spammed easily.

Spamming DM's:

It is an obvious one. And you know it. I am going to tell you why that is happening with your profile. Direct Messages are sent only to those people who follow you and you follow them. Anyone can send you a DM if there's a mutual following. Its not an etiquette to send someon url links privately via DMs and nobody's gonna click on that.
 You'll never click on someone's link at least not before you know them. And such, you should never expect them to click on the url link in their DM anyway.
Of course I agree you are doing it to promote your business. If you are doing it, then do it right.

Make your url visible at your profile page. Send the business blog or website link that is shown in your profile just to let them know you own it. Don't send direct messages with shortened urls which is nowadays a common spamming method spreading on twitter.

Unknown URL Clicks:


Clicking on the url happens all the time. It does happen even more with tweets. You can differentiate the spammy urls and other urls which you want to click. Mostly we click at the unknown links that tempt us. It is not a bad thing that we only click at those urls. But there are some third party unknown applications that will make the users to tweet automatically with their links many times making it a spammy url.

Most likely you'll click 1 link among 100 many unknown links you see everyday and that's all it takes for the spammers to run your profile .

Following Spam Profiles:

Following spam profiles happens to everyone who follow for a follow(#f4f). It is common that you don't see it coming.
This occurs mostly when you follow everyone who follow you and you become the victim of someone who's doing it for years. I am not asking you to stop following people who follow you. What I want you to do is to have a code while following back the profiles that follow you. You can find easily whether a profile is a spam or fake just by spending a minute watching its profile and reading its tweets.

Tweeting Spams:

Ofcourse you won't tweet spams with your knowledge. Tweeting spams happens when somebody takes over access to your profile. This not only means that you've been compromised but also your priority to suspension. Sometimes when you use any third party tools that will gain you followers, they have the control over your tweets and they can read and write messages which is an easy gateway for spammers to tweet any sort of spams on your profile.

This doesn't stop there. They tweet spams from your profile and you don't even know it. You'll know when you get blocked and suspended by somebody or twitter itself because of spamming. There are still people who take things seriously and block you for spamming activities. This has more influence on the list to get suspended on twitter.

I have experienced such incidents with my twitter twice when some users replied to a DM which is a spam message sent from my profile. I came to know when some nice people in my followers list informed me about this activity and the best part is I couldn't see the spam message myself.
These are just some of the ways which your account is spammed and there are many other ways which I haven't seen with my account but it happens.

Conclusion:

The worst thing that could happen about spamming is that you'll get tired of using it as I have seen many users stop using it. But once you start liking to use it, you'll get the best out of twitter to run your business online.
Seems like I have written what I wanted to tell and would really appreciate what you think by comments.

Happy Tweeting!!!

Photo Credit: Flickr
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