Five Free Apps » twitter

Wake Up With Bongiorno – Good Morning! for iPad

Brian Mongold — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 02:20:16 +0000

Faqden Labs, developers of notable apps such as IntelliVocab, Trailhead and PowerVocab, just launched a brand new free iPad app.

Bongiorno – Good Morning! is a Free iPad news reader app that integrates Twitter, weather and alarm functionality into its’ interface. To make for a more visually satisfying wakeup, the app lets you choose from a variety of background images based on the weather and time. The intent of the app is to better organize your mornings, giving you a centralized interface to give you your early morning needs.

Let’s first examine the home screen, which is ultimately your control panel for the app. A high resolution image that correlates to the time and weather serves as the background. A navigation bar along the top of the screen has buttons that consist of home, news, weather and sleep mode. Additionally, a settings button provides configuration options for each component. Directly below the settings wheel, you’ll find a Twitter button to tap and reveal Tweets from your timeline. Though the app icon shows a Facebook icon, this functionality isn’t currently available but I’d guess it will be included in the one of the next updates.

The app currently only displays in portrait mode, but hopefully the developer will add landscape mode in the future.

The bottom of the screen has an off-white shelf with a small weather/date block, time, coffee icon linking to the developer’s site and an annoying animated banner that stretches across the very bottom of the screen.

The heart of the app is the news section, which I unfortunately had some issues with crashing after customizing the categories and sources. You can read news with a simple tap of the news icon from home screen.

Customizing the news section is made through settings. You can add/delete categories and manually add new sources by typing the name and RSS URL of your favorite sites.When I was able to work within the app, it had a bit of a Pulse type display of sources/content. Upon tapping to open the full articles, the article expanded but only partially as a portion by other article cover flow. I’d personally prefer the ability to launch an article to full screen or access the original source.

The news section consists of popular sources such as TechCrunch, Engadget, BBC, CNN, Time, CNET, ESPN and Forbes organized into the default categories Tech, Business, Politics and Entertainment. As you delete categories, new ones are displayed.

Managing categories and sources could use an improvement since you can’t really browse the additional categories without first deleting one of those displayed. Hopefully the developer also considers adding more sources or a button to search for sources rather than manually typing a URL for every source. Another shortfall is the inability to remove the default sources from the list.

Another key component of the app is the alarm section. You can add multiple alarms, selecting the time and date, choice of seven tones and an option to have the alarm recur weekly or daily. This section, coupled with the sleep mode button worked well in my tests. My only fear was that the app would crash and I’d miss the alarm. However, it’s important to note the only crashes I observed were due to tapping the news icon.

The Weather component is nice, but for some reason I can’t get it to retain the city I saved so after relaunching the app I see Cupertino, CA each time. The strange thing is the display shows Cupertino, CA with my current time (Eastern Standard).

The Twitter drop down window is very nice, displaying the 8 latest Tweets. However, you can currently only read Tweets as there is no functionality to reply, retweet, etc. The annoyance with Twitter occurs when relaunching the app, which forced me to login again each time.

Overall, I really appreciate all the included components this app provides. I would personally categorize it more as a utility rather than a news app. It’s a bit like Nightstand Central, but falls a bit short. The bugs I found in the app, particularly with the crashes and my customizations failing to save after relaunch, prevents me from recommending a download. Bongiorno does have solid potential with the great development team behind the app. Keep an eye on this app. Once the quirks are worked out and the developer offers an ad-free version of the app, I can see it being competition for my Nightstand Central app.

Updates On The Way for Social iPhone App Recommendation Tool, Kinetik

Brian Mongold — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:56:33 +0000

Recently I published an article, Five Most Shared iPhone Apps This Week, highlighting some of the most shared app, courtesy of one of my favorite new iPhone Apps, Kinetik. While the app is already a fantastic way to share and find some great apps, the Kinetik team has some great updates on the way.

Here are the updates that are scheduled to launch next week. They should help make Kinetik even better

Improvements to the People section
New ways for users to be featured
Addition of #hashtags and @mentions to improve content discoverability and user interaction

Kinetik, Free at the iTunes App Store, has an outstanding interface and in my opinion is currently one of the best ways to find great apps. While the app is one of the better new apps I’ve seen in the last few months, it’s 100% dependent on user engagement. Check out Kinetik and start sharing your favorite apps. They are also asking supportive users to share apps you look forward to using with the new iPhone by including the hashtag #iPhone5 on both Kinetik and Twitter so so they can feature your shares.

Create Your Very Own Twitter Daily Newspaper in Seconds With Paper.li

Brian Mongold — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 21:28:37 +0000

How have I been using Twitter for this long and only just now decided to create The Five Free Apps Daily Newspaper? I didn’t realize how quick and ridiculously easy it truly is. After seeing many other Twitter users I follow with the occasional “The (fill in the blank) Daily is out,” I finally decided it was time to see this amazing tool all my favorite Twitter users are taking advantage of. Boy…am I happy I finally did. What an amazing tool and it’s also optimized for the iPad, which makes it that much better!

Overview

@Smallrivers is a Swiss company co-founded by Edouard Lambelet and Iskander Pols. The company’s primary focus, as mentioned on their site, is to “facilitate the discovery of relevant content and other people of interest on the web.”

Their first project, Paper.li, lets you create your Twitter newspaper tailored to your Twitter account and followers, a specific tag, or a Twitter List you choose. Paper.li has been featured by Mashable, Techcrunch and around the net.

“paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag. A great way to stay on top of all that is shared by the people you follow – even if you are not connected 24/7!”

How to Setup Your Very Own Twitter Daily Newspaper

1. Visit Paper.li and sign in with either your Twitter or Facebook login.

2. Click Create a Newspaper

3. Choose to input a Twitter User (with followers), #tag or a Twitter List, then click Create

Another option is to Create a Custom Paper, which lets you change the title, choose contributors from a list, specify the focus and modify the language.

4. Once you click Publish Paper, your paper is finished in a snap. Here is my very first published Daily Newspaper, which took me about 2 minutes to create.

Once your paper is established, you need to promote it. I used the Autopromote within the page and it did the work for me. Here’s what my autopromote looked like,

“The Five Free Apps Daily is out! http://bit.ly/as5JbS ▸ Top stories today by @askoli @BrettRelander @danenow.”

Thoughts

There is much to like about Paper.li. Not only is it free, but a very useful tool for both you and your readers. It repackages all the Twitter links and organizes them into a tailored newspaper just they way you like. Top Stories, categories, archives and more.

It gives readers the ability to subscribe, Tweet and Like on Facebook. Best of all, it lets you keep track of your stats, displaying number of subscribers and views.

Though there isn’t much you can do in regards to design, but readers have the ability to change the language, which could be very valuable and help you avoid the language barrier we often face on Twitter.

Follow and Share Your Paper

Have you created your Twitter Daily Newspaper yet? Feel free to share your newspaper below and follow me at @FiveFreeApps and subscribe to the Five Free Apps Daily Newspaper.

Five Best Twitter Web Apps to Optimize Your Twitter Followers

Brian Mongold — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:55:21 +0000

With the recent transition from Twitter handle @eazycheezy to @fivefreeapps, it’s safe to say starting over in Twitter requires some tough work. While following other users will help you get follow backs and get you listed in some of the Twitter engine recommendations, you need the right tools at your disposal to better optimize the users you follow. After all, you don’t want to waste your time, follow spammers, etc. Luckily, the five outstanding free Twitter Web Apps below will help to regain control.

Before we get to the list, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @fivefreeapps.

Twit Cleaner

Twit Cleaner is a handy tool that performs an analysis of all the Twitter users you follow, determines which are not worth following (time wasters, spammers and users who are no longer active). Just type in your twitter name and Twit Cleaner will provide you with a report (via direct message) that shows who only posts links, who repeats the same URLs, who posts identical tweets, who are inactive, who posts all the time and more. You can then unfollow these users with 2 clicks.

UnTweeps

UnTweeps is another tool that helps you take out the garbage. You can identify all the users you are following who haven’t posted updates in awhile. You can then unfollow them with just one click. This tool gives you three free users each month (per Twitter account). Select Tweeps to list who haven’t updated their status in x amount of days and make a whitelist of Tweeps to keep off your lists.

Tweepi

Tweepi provides a table of sortable information to get some key stats and information about users you are following. Information displayed about your followers include number of followers, number following, follower to following ratio, updates, when they last tweeted, your relationship status with the user and more. You can then simply click each you want to unfollow and use a bulk unfollow option.

Who.Unfollowed.Me

This Twitter tool is exactly what’s in the name. It helps you determine and track who unfollows you. Each time you check your followers, you’ll get a comparison displaying who isn’t following you back and who has unfollowed you since your last visit. Once you see who is unfollowing you, you can unfollow them back from the site.

My Tweeple

My Tweeple provides a dashboard showing who you’re following and who isn’t following you back. It provides detailed information about each user, enabling you to click to follow, unfollow or block. My Tweeple also has tools to export your friends to a csv file, an out of office assistant, My Tweeple Chronicle, who said that and more.

What’s your favorite Twitter Client to help you manage your followers?

Socialize Your BlackBerry; Twitter, Facebook, IM and More

Brian Mongold — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 23:08:14 +0000

In terms of applications, BlackBerry lacks the depth of the iPhone and Android app stores. However, many of the available BlackBerry apps are quite useful and provide much of the same functionality of the platform’s competitors.

Within the BlackBerry AppWorld, there are currently 142 IM and social networking applications, 97 of which are free. Today, I wanted to highlight the cream of the crop. Below, you’ll find five of the absolute best free BlackBerry apps to socialize your device.

CrunchSMS

CrunchSMS takes your BlackBerry SMS and makes it so much better. This app displays chat-style bubbles, includes smileys and signatures, while displaying pics of your contacts. Style and customize your SMS conversations and enhance your SMS.

Snaptu

Snaptu is a suite of apps which include Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Picasa as well as Sports news, AccuWeather, Movies, Soduku and more. The value of this app is that it’s all-in-one. BlackBerry apps can be a bit large, so you can replace multiple apps with Snaptu. It’s well designed and quite useful.

UberTwitter

UberTwitter gives you an awesome Twitter client that has all the same functionality and some added features such as photo integration, URL shrinking, Twitter Lists, embedded videos within Tweets and more. It also supports multiple accounts.

BlackBerry Messenger

BlackBerry Messenger lets you connect with other BlackBerry users by sharing your pin or barcode. Chat, while sharing pictures, videos with individual contacts or groups.

Translick Mobile Chat for Google

Transclick Instant Mobile Messenger is a chatting client that provides its’ users with text translation utilizing a Jabber-based IM platform. The text translation supports 12 languages, integrates with Google Talk and is fully compatible with Jabber. This will be very handy when traveling.

Twitter Optimization Tools; Clean Up Your Friends and Followers

Brian Mongold — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:48:00 +0000

How time flies! In 2006, the Twitter concept originated from one of the most successful brainstorming sessions in our time. Employees of Odeo, a podcast company, held a daylong brainstorming session. The idea was to provide the ability for one individual to communicate to a small group by SMS.

Fast forward four years and Twitter has grown to over 100 million users. With so many users, we need a few good tools to optimize and streamline our friends and followers. Having your uninteresting or spammy tweets in your timeline will kill your Twitter experience. Use the apps below to greatly enhance your Twitter.

Friend or Follow

In looking through all your Twitter Followers, it’s often difficult to quickly determine who is following you back. This is where Friend or Follow brings value to your Twitter experience. Simply plug in your Twitter user name and in a snap you’ll see everyone you follow that doesn’t follow you back and your fans who you don’t follow. You can further filter by seeing which users accounts are protected and which are verified. (helpful to get rid of those fake celeb friends). Use this tool to trim the fat or add some new friends.

Twit Cleaner

What defines a good Twitter user? Who are the spammers, bots and the ones who waste your time? Twit Cleaner works by analyzing your Twitter network showing you who posts nothing but links, who doesn’t talk much and those who rarely follow anyone back. Clean up your friends and take out the garbage. Once it provides the spammers, just click to unfollow.

Listorious

One of the best aspects of Twitter is the ability to create and find new lists created by other Twitter users. With Listorious, you’ll get a quick and fun way to discover new lists on Twitter and the ability to manage your own. I personally like the top 140 lists section to see which are the most popular.

Mr. Tweet

Mr. Tweet is your Twitter recommendation and management buddy. It’s currently undergoing a revamp and will be relaunched in July, but you still have access to the great and useful Classic Mr. Tweet. You get personalized suggestions, you can recommend your favorite Twitter buddies and see some cool stats about your followers.

UnTweeps

The value of Twitter is in the instant news and updates we’ve grown so accustomed to enjoying. If your followers haven’t sent a tweet in 30, 60 or 90 days, you may want to consider cutting the fat. Simply plug in the days to search your Twitter users, then get the list of inactive Tweeps. You can then just click to unfollow those users or choose to whitelist others.

3 Twitter Analytic Tools to Track and Analyze Your Twitter Statistics

Brian Mongold — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:20:15 +0000

Twitter is one of the most prominent social networking sites and continues to be widely used by bloggers, business owners, celebrities, techies, social networkers and just about anyone who has an internet connection and an excuse to use it these days. While so many have Twitter accounts, few know how effective their Twitter activity is.

My focus today is on providing you three excellent tools that will show you how often you’re tweeting, who you retweet the most, your twitter rank and score and ways you can improve your Twitter experience.

TweetStats – Twitter analytics is a tool to graph your Twitter stats. The different graphs consist of your Tweet Timeline, average tweets per day, replies, who you retweeted and much more information and statistics. Below you’ll find my @EazyCheezy TweetStats.

Twitter Grader – Twitter Grader is a very interesting tool. It calculates your rank, number of followers and individuals you are following and updates. You get a Grade out of 100. My Grade for @EazyCheezy is 97.4, not bad. You’ll also be able to see your tagcloud and garph your trends.

Twitalyzer 2.0 – Twitalyzer is great for businesses and users who are looking to improve their Twitter use. It’s also the closest Twitter tool I’ve found to Google Analytics. From your dashboard, you can get detailed information such as number of clicks for links you Tweet, context, goals, detailed recommendations, referrers and much more. From the main page, you can see scores in areas such as engagement, influence, generosity, clout, retweeted, referenced and many more categories.

Five Slick Twitter Desktop Apps to Organize Your Tweeps

Brian Mongold — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 03:03:00 +0000

Does any Twitter user actually still use Twitter.com these days? While Twitter.com is simple and effective, the available desktop and mobile applications blow Twitter.com away in functionality and design. Applications such as TweetDeck, Seesmic and Destroy Twitter give you multiple pages so you can see all the information you prefer on one screen. Below, you’ll find what I believe is the 5 absolute greatest Twitter Desktop Applications.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is like being behind a mission control panel. It integrates Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and lets you update your status with one post. You can reply, forward, retweet and have just about all the same functionality within TweetDeck. You can create as many custom pages you want to stay organized and up to date.

Tweetie for MAC

Tweetie for Mac lets you double click on Tweets to see full conversations, open multiple compose windows at once, browse the current trends, display direct messages as chat, view in-depth user detail (including entire threaded conversations), add custom searches and much more. You can use the free version with ads or register ad-free for $19.95.

Twitterrific for Mac

Twitterrific uses a clean interface and is designed to take up a minimum of real estate on your Mac’s desktop.

Seesmic Desktop

Seesmic Desktop gives you Facebook and Twitter on your desktop, post comments, likes and much more. You can follow your friends, update your profile, etc. This application is a bit like TweetDeck with some differences in design.

Destroy Twitter

Destroy Twitter is a compact Twitter application built to run on Mac, Windows, and Linux using Adobe AIR. Like TweetDeck and Seesmic, it consists of a series of pages that constantly update to keep tweets up-to-date using notifications. Destroy Twitter uses a minimal amount of memory without sacrificing functionality and performance.

My favorite Twitter Desktop Application is currently TweetDeck. I use it on my desktop and iPod Touch. It does everything I could ask a Twitter Application to do. Another secondary application I use is Destroy Twitter. I enjoy it’s simplicity. Do you have any favorites? Let me know what you think.

3 Sexy WP Plugins – Drag to Share eXtended, YARPP and Digg Digg

Brian Mongold — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:26:59 +0000

Since migrating the site from Blogger to WordPress a little over a year ago, my favorite thing about WordPress has been Plugins. There’s a plugin for just about everything, but sometimes the best plugins are a little tougher to find in the Plugin Directory of 8002 WP Plugins. I recently installed WordPress Drag to Share eXtended and loved it so much that it prompted me to share a few of my favorites. Let’s take a closer look.

WordPress Drag to Share eXtended

Easily the plugin I’m most excited about! This plugin uses the same functionality found in TechCrunch and Mashable. It works by allowing readers to drag any image on your post and drop it into a social networking site of their choice. You can select which social networks to use, which include Delicious, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Reddit, StumbledUpon, Technorati and Twitter. Other options include text to display while dragging and display location of icons.

I recently switched from Possibly Related Posts to YARPP and couldn’t be happier. This plugin will give your readers more relevant content and increase page views and popularity of older content. YARPP gives you a list of posts and pages related to your current post. The algorithm is based on post titles, content, tags and categories used. In addition to displaying the related posts, YARPP calculates a match score beside each related post. You can display the related posts in blog posts, RSS feeds or both. The templating system gives you quite a few options to customize what’s displayed.

Digg Digg

Don’t let the name full you, Digg Digg gives you much more than just Digg buttons. It features the best fbShare button I could find. This plugin gives your readers vote buttons to simplify sharing for your readers. It integrates social network, which include Digg, Reddit, Dzone, Yahoo Buzz, TweetMeme (Twitter), fbShare (Facebook) and Polladium buttons. You can choose either normal size or compact buttons, select only those buttons you want to display and the location.

What do you think about these plugins? Is there any plugins you think are better or more useful? Have you tried the WP Drag to Share eXtended yet? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Top Android Market Apps – 15+ Free Social Networking Android Apps

Brian Mongold — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 03:23:53 +0000

In the limited time I’ve had my Motorola Droid, I have found myself spending a significant amount of time diving into the Android Market and exploring countless Android Apps. Though the Apps are well categorized, the amount of Apps in each category seem to be never-ending. Hopefully today I’ll save you a bit of time. Below, you’ll find 17 of the best Free Android Apps in the Social Networking category. All Apps below have been rated an average of 3.5 out of 5 stars and a minimum of 500 downloads. Descriptions are quoted from the App developer and all information was borrowed from the Android Market.

AnyPost 4.5 Stars, 103 ratings, 5K – 10K downloads

“A full featured Ping.fm client that syncs with your Ping.fm account. Post to sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and more with ease. Attach photos or update your current location. You can even view your recent posts including photo thumbnails.”

Babbler Lite 3.5 Stars, 3320 ratings, 50K – 250K downloads

“Babbler is the first full-featured native Android application on Facebook Platform. See/post on walls, comment on posts, share photos and videos straight from your phone.”

Bloo – Facebook Beta 4 Stars, 1591 ratings, 50K – 250K downloads

“Live folder for Bloo friends. Instantly access your friends streams from your Home screen. Photo comments. Photo swiping. Brand new media section. Ability to setup notification refresh time.”

CavtelGPSClient for Twitter 4.5 Stars, 5 ratings, 500 – 1K downloads

“A location aware, Twitter client for sending and receiving Tweets which can include a link to a GPS location. Friends can see where you are just by opening a link to Google Maps in a tweet.”

Facebook for Android 3.5 Stars, 27K+ ratings, 250K+ downloads

“Facebook for Android makes it easy to stay connected and share information with friends. You can share status updates from your home screen, check out your news feed, look at your friends’ walls and user info, upload photos and share links. 1.1.2 adds the ability to browse your friends profiles and native photo integration.”

iTookThisOnMyPhone 4 Stars, 140 ratings, 10K – 50K downloads

“iTookThisOnMyPhone lets you automatically send photos and videos to an internet gallery where they are stored securely. You can organize albums for private and public viewing; send to websites like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Picasa, YouTube, PhotoBucket, WebShots and Shutterfly; and see the photos on a map if GPS is enabled.”

MySpace Mobile 4 Stars, 54K ratings, 250K+ downloads

“If you love MySpace, you’re really going to love MySpace Mobile for Android. Download the free application to stay connected with your friends…anytime, anyplace! Version 1.7: Create shortcuts on your desktop, set photos as Wallpaper, launch embedded URLs, Performance Improvements, Bug fixes.

Pingdroid 3.5 Stars, 347 ratings, 10K – 50K downloads

“Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Brightknight and more! Update all your social networks from your phone using your Ping.fm account. Post status, micoblog and blog messages. Upload pictures. Add geographic location using GPS. URL shortening (tinyurl.com, tcp3.com, tr.im, bit.ly). Full integration with Android Apps.”

Pixelpipe Post & Upload 5 Stars, 212 ratings, 10K – 50K downloads

“Upload Photos and post to Blog & Status services directly from your Android with Pixelpipe Lite & get your content out to your favorite social network, blog and photo sites. Supported services include Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Blogger, Twitter, hi5, Photobucket, TwitPic, TinyPic, yfrog, Evernote, Yahoo Meme, Pixel Pipe.”

Seesmic 4 Stars, 1454 ratings, 10K – 50K downloads

Seesmic now offers the Twitter client you’ve been waiting for! A powerful feature-rich application that’s simple and easy to use. Share photos on Twitter, post videos to YouTube, Search on Twitter and get notifications for new messages!”

Social Network All in One 4 Stars, 32 ratings, 1K – 5K downloads

This includes Facebook, Twitter and Myspace. Features multi tabs, smart bookmarks, full screen, switch between different social network sites. Light weight browsing.”

Swift App for Twitter 4 Stars, 2175 ratings, 50K – 250K downloads

“The fastest, leanest, meanest Twitter app. More features per KB than Twidroid or TwitterRide. Messages, Mentions, DM, Searches, Profiles, Notifications, Conversations. Open links in Swift. Photo/Video uploading.

The Snoop 3.5 Stars, 54 ratings, 1K – 5K downloads

A Twitter application with an emphasis on trending topics. Includes a home screen widget. Basic features (before login) – trends, nearby searches, search. Account features (after login) – user search, reply, Retweet, Favorite, Timeline (from widget), Tweet (from widget).

Tweetatorium 4 Stars, 56 ratings, 1K – 5K downloads

This app allows you to tweet your videos to TwitVid and your pictures to TwitPic or TwitGoo.

Twidget Lite (Twitter Widget) 4 Stars, 4360 ratings, 50K – 250K downloads

“A Twitter homescreen widget that keeps you up to date where ever you are. View tweets, reply, favorite, retweet, dm, set your status and upload pics, share web pages and youtube videos.”

Twitget 4 Stars, 19 ratings, 500 – 1K downloads

“Twitget is a widget bar for Twitter. It permits you to just send a tweet with your account without loading a big app which uses all your battery.”

XeekuTweets 3.5 Stars, 327 ratings, 5K – 10K downloads

“XeekuTweets is the most feature complete Twitter client which challenges popular iPhone apps such as Twittie 2.0, Twitterific, etc. It supports virtually all features as other clients yet rendering with speed and elegance.”

While many of the above Apps intrigue me, my favorite current social networking Apps are Facebook for Android, TwiDroid ($4) and Seesmic. Which are your favorite Apps? Did I miss one that belongs in the list above?

3 Twitter Apps to Unfollow Spammers, Inactive Users and More

Brian Mongold — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:58:11 +0000

In looking at my Twitter profile today, I realized I haven’t been getting the most out of Twitter. Once I would get new followers, I began to click to follow the majority of them back. About 30 minutes ago, I had 783 followers and I was following 685. Of the 685 Twitter users, I knew maybe 10 or so. The Tweets from those I know have been getting lost in a bunch of other Tweets that, for the most part, didn’t interest me.

I began to question whether it was wrong to unfollow those who are currently following you, but then realized in order for me to get the most out of Twitter, I had to follow only the content that interests me. Therefore, my goal was to unfollow as many users as possible and start over. Unfortunately, Twitter has no way to do a bulk unfollow, so I looked to Google for an answer. Google brought me Twitter Kharma, a handy little tool that displays all followers and users you are currently following and gives you the option to bulk follow or bulk unfollow. It also displays their last updated, to help you determine which users have been inactive for a long period of time. In a period of 5 to 10 minutes, the users I follow decreased from 685 to 37. I unchecked the users I knew I wanted to follow, then clicked the “bulk unfollow” button.

In addition to Twitter Kharma, another great tool is The Twit Cleaner, which analyzes those you follow to determine which are spambots, spammers, time wasters, etc. It will then create a detailed report and DM you upon completion. Another effective tool is UnTweeps, which analyzes those you follow to determine who hasn’t been active in 30, 60 or 90 days.

So now that I’ve cleaned up my followers, the following tool will be used to help me follow Twitter users based on my interest, as opposed to just who follows me. TweetPromote helps you find targeted friends and followers on Twitter. It doesn’t use automation, robots or spam. Instead, you use it to help match your interest with other Twitter users.

Top 10 Most Popular Twitter Apps – iPhone, Adobe AIR, URL Shortener & More

Brian Mongold — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:35:04 +0000

In my quest to find the best Twitter Applications, I’ve found no better resource than oneforty.com. One Forty tracks, reviews and provides information on over 2000 Twitter Applications in 21 categories and 16 different platforms. Using this outstanding resource, please find the overall top 10 most popular Twitter applications.

10. Screenr (iPhone) – 5 rating, 116 reviews, used by 292 people

“Instant screencasts for Twitter. Now you can create screencasts for your followers as easily as you tweet. With Screenr’s web-based recorder, there’s nothing to download. Your screencasts play everywhere, even on iPhones. Record one now, it’s completely free! Try it now at http://screenr.com/“

9. TweetStats (Analytics) – 4.5 rating, 137 ratings, used by 931 people

“Graph your Twitter Stats including – tweets per hour, tweets per month, tweet timeline and reply statistics.”

8. Digsby (Facebook) – 4.5 rating, 180 reviews, used by 867 people

“A multiprotocol IM client that lets you manage all your IM, email, and social network accounts from one easy-to-use application. For IM, it brings all your buddies into one merged contact list with support for AIM, MSN, Facebook Chat, Yahoo, ICQ, GTalk, and Jabber. For email, it offers notifications of new emails with message previews, as well as, the ability to perform actions such as “Mark as Read” and “Delete” right from the notification with support for Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, POP, and IMAP. For social networks, it provides a newsfeed of events on the network and the ability to set status with support for Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.”

7. Friend or Follow (Networking) – 4.5 rating, 349 reviews, used by 755 people

“Friend Or Follow helps you manage your Twitter contacts. Submit your Twitter screen name to find out who you’re following that’s not following you back, and who’s following you that you’re not following back.”

6. Brizzly (Web) – 4.5 rating, 107 reviews, used by 1,712 people

“Thing Labs’ new browser-based Twitter client allows you to use multiple accounts, monitor searches, share photos, save drafts, interact with Facebook and edit trending topics. It’s in public beta, but you can try Brizzly at http://brizzly.com!”

5. TweetDeck (AIR, Facebook) – 4 rating, 283 reviews, used by 7,129 people

TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more. TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organized and up to date.”

4. HootSuite (Web) – 4.5 rating, 229 reviews, used by 2,250 people

“The professional Twitter client. Monitor keywords, manage multiple Twitter profiles, schedule tweets, and measure your success. We’re in free beta! HootSuite lets you manage your entire Twitter experience from one easy-to-use interface.”

3. Tweetie (iPhone) – 4.5 rating, 167 reviews, used by 3,974 people

“Tweetie is a fast, full-featured twitter client for iPhone and iPod touch. It offers everything you’d expect – from your timeline to trends – all with an incredibly polished user interface, fantastic performance, and unparalleled ease-of-use.”

2. TwitPic (Photo Sharing) – 4.5 rating, 204 reviews, used by 6,901 people

“Share photos on twitter by posting them to a site and tweeting a link to it.”

1. Bit.ly (URL Shortener) – 4.5 rating, 210 reviews, used by 2,469 people

“bit.ly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier. bit.ly can be accessed through our website, bookmarklets and a robust and open API. bit.ly is also integrated into several popular third-party tools such as Tweetdeck. A more full list of third party tools can be found on the bit.ly blog. Unique user-level and aggregate links are created, allowing users to view complete, real-time traffic and referrer data, as well as location and metadata. Tracking stats are available after users shorten their long links with bit.ly by clicking on the “Info+” link on bit.ly, or just adding a “+” sign to the end of any bit.ly link (for example, http://bit.ly/n0og+).”