Twitter Phweet and SMS – Your Smart Phweet Life

Phweet makes it more obvious than ever that Twitter should share more on how to set up your Twitter Life. I personally have observed that Twitter only really comes alive when you are following a 100+ users maybe more. Then the next problem is even when you follow someone it doesn’t mean that they will necessarily follow you. In the end we are on Twitter to fuel the conversation. And Twitter is a wonderful signaling service.

So how do you get smart about and on Twitter? Read More

Settings:
First things first. Fix your settings. Login to Twitter, go to “settings” and then in the tab Notices see the line @replies… change the poorly choosen default from “@ replies to the people I’m following” to “all @ replies“. See my settings below. This is just step one. What it means is you can get a notification when someone anyone sends you an @stuarthenshall you. I believe at one time this was the default. It still should be.

Why change this? If you don’t you may not see all @messages. It also means that if you send an @message and they are not following you they simply won’t see it. That’s dumb! It’s the same as sending an email to an address that doesn’t exist. The problem is on Twitter you don’t know this and thus newbies are left confused.

Note: You cannot send direct messages to people that do not follow you. This means that Twitter can be a fairly safe place to send @messages for you can always see who the other person is and what they Tweet. If you can’t well that’s because they have their updates protected. That too makes little sense to me. What protected should mean is a “for my group” only. Note if you get @messages and approaches from someone you don’t like then simply block them rather than blocking everyone.

Devices:
The big secret to making Twitter more responsive and you being more active is getting the notifications of @ and direct messages when they happen. Right now the only way to do this is activate SMS notifications. Unfortunately Twitter just turned them off for those outside the US, Canada and India. (See my post here, and these 2% Importance? and Industry Impact .) That means that if you have a number of followers and you are out in the woods you will probably miss that @message which could just be the one to make your day. So if you can. Activate SMS notifications. Now you will get all @ and ‘d” messages sent to your cellphone. You can respond with updates there too.

This means if you have a lot of buddies you better have an unlimited text plan in the US and Canada. HUGE WARNING>>> Unlimted text plan! You can respond to in the US to 40404. You can also turn this “on” and “off”

Following:
There are two types of activity levels that I now follow. First. I have a strategy to follow everyone. That means they can send me direct messages. It also means they have a little more confidence that I’ll respond. I just find it hard to keep up with the approval process which Twitter makes more cumbersome than it should be.

Second. I have a few a real few favorites (those I work with type of things) which I am prepared to follow there every tweet with a beep to my phone. Here’s a screenshot where I have “device notifications follow everything on”. Note if you have used this function in the past for pushing notifcations for to chat which is now broken then you may get more SMS’s than you expected. You will want to stop the notifications on some of these individuals.

So in this example. Change Dan from Yes to No and I no longer get SMS’s of his updates. However I will still get SMS updates when directed to me via an @ or “d” message.

Summary:
Direct notifications of @ and “d” messages to SMS and set your very favorite buddies to on! Use SMS to update when you are just around. Or use Twinkle or another twitter client on your mobile.

Now you are more connected to your Twitter world and one step closer to your Phweet Smart Life. The benefit for those using Phweet. You won’t miss the notifications and your friends thinking you didn’t want to talk.

People discuss how asynchronous Twitter is. For some it is and that is why they don’t get it. For those that know how Twitter is just as fast and often more rewarding than IM. Every Twitter super user should be trying to get the apparent latency out of 1 to 1 correspondence. You can’t do it with the default settings or any of the current desktop clients (I’m yet to hear it) for they don’t make different signals for @ and “d” messages. A huge oversight.

Twitter and Phweet work better when you apply the above. Happy Phweet Tweet Life!