I told you I was compulsive didn’t I? Maybe some of you manage more than one Twitter account too.
For fun or profit I manage around 10 Twitter accounts. Thats a lot of little birdies to take care of!
Here are two ways I do it.
At Message Catcher
First I really want know if anyone, anywhere is including one of my @names in a tweet. Logging into all these accounts and hitting that ol’ reply tab would be tough. So I take all the RSS feeds from search.twitter.com that contain the user names and tie them together.
I output the feeds to a drop dead simple HTML page as seen below. The text is big and clunky, perfect for a quick scan. I dim out tweets I’ve already viewed so I can focus on new ones. That page refreshes every 30 mins based on one of the oldest tricks in the book.
This is all done using basic PHP and some software called SimplePie. To get started download my code which includes the SimplePie software, modify the main file, and toss it up to your own server.
Even if you don’t manage so many accounts you can modify the code to pickup other words or phrases. This is great for trends spotting and vertical specific conversation tracking.
Tweetie
I’m not a fan of most desktop or iPhone twitter apps. For me the web or mobile version has always been the fastest way to access the site. However Tweetie is one of the better apps out there, especially for multiple account support. Living in Los Angeles there are lots of delays, whether in line somewhere or on the john, this app makes it easy to scan for @messages and other tweets. Since the app stores your password there is no need to re-enter login details.
If you don’t have an iPhone, throw your phone away and go buy one. Then get this app.
Those are two things making my life easier. I have a few other tricks that I’ll save for another rainy day.
Oh, follow me on that silly website.
February 16th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
not shown my super secret twitter account
February 17th, 2009 at 6:41 am
http://www.tweetgrid.com/
is also nice for this!
February 17th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Thats a good idea and saves time so on the train, twitter your sites with the iphone.
March 13th, 2009 at 2:39 am
Sean, thanks for the simple pie code and application. Its a good fit for a project I am working on. I got everything to work but I keep getting an warning message at the top of the html doc referencing a cache issue
Warning: ./cache/86436094912f1ad9c77530d242582270.spc is not writeable in /home/content/r/f/2/rf25241762/html/simplepie/simplepie.inc on line 1773
It runs 4 times and gives a different cache number each time.
Any Ideas
February 5th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
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