Twitter Tips- Sending update from your mobile phone as text.

Sending  update from your mobile phone as text

The next time you’re out and about without a computer in range and a perfectly tweetable thought, idea, or sight comes your way, pull out your trusty mobile phone and perform these almost-too-simple-to-be-true steps to post your update:

 1.  On your mobile phone, access the SMS feature, and then start a new message.

 2.  Use the phone’s text messaging interface to specify that you want the text sent to the Twitter phone number for your locale.

3.  Type your message.  Figure 5.4 shows an example. Notice that the SMS application on my BlackBerry tells me how many characters I have left before I hit 140 in the bar at the top.  Very  sweet.

4.  Send the message. Your phone shoots the message to Twitter, and it then appears on your timeline, usually within a few seconds, as shown in figure 5.5.











Reference : wiley.com 

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Twitter tips-- Activating Mobile Phone in Twitter account

Activating Mobile Phone in Twitter account

Your first step toward using your phone with Twitter is to activate the phone in your Twitter account. Basically, you let Twitter know your phone number, and it then provides you with a code that you text to Twitter to confirm. Here are the specific steps:

 1.  Sign in to your Twitter account.

 2.  Click Settings. Your account settings appear.

 3.  Click the Devices tab.

 4.  Type your mobile phone number in the text box.

 On most systems this text box is indistinguishable from the page background, so see figure 5.1 for its location. Precede the number with a plus sign (+) and be sure to include your country code.

5.  Select the It’s okay for Twitter to send txt messages to my phone check box.

6.  Click Save.  Twitter displays a code and tells you to text it to your local Twitter phone number.

 7.  On your mobile phone, access the SMS feature, start a new message, type your local Twitter phone number, enter the code 

supplied by Twitter, and then send the message.Within a minute or two, Twitter sends you the return message shown in figure 5.2.

The next time you load the Devices tab in your Twitter settings, you see the configuration shown in figure 5.3.

I discuss the new controls as you work through this chapter. For now, you’re ready to starting sending updates through your phone!

Reference : wiley.com

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Twitter Tips--Following a person’s updates via RSS

If you’re a dedicated blog follower and find yourself spending more time in your RSS reader than just about anywhere else, you might not like the idea of having to access the Twitter site or even sign in to your Twitter account to follow a particular person’s tweets. Similarly, you might be following someone’s tweets and you don’t want to miss a thing while you’re not signed in to Twitter. In both cases, Twitter makes each user’s timeline available in an RSS feed, so you can add that feed to your favorite RSS reader. Twitter even makes it
easy to subscribe to the feed using Live Bookmarks, Bloglines, Google, or My Yahoo!. Here’s how it works:

1.  Sign in to your Twitter account. Actually, this part is optional because you don’t need to be logged in to access someone’s RSS feed. However, if you want to get the feed for one of your friends or followers, then you need to sign in.

 2.  Navigate to the user’s profile page.

3.  In the sidebar, click the RSS feed of username’s updates link, where username is the user’s screen name. Twitter displays the feed,

 4.  Subscribe to the feed. The steps required here vary depending on your RSS reader. The standard technique is to copy the feed URL in the browser’s address bar, navigate to your RSS service, select the option to add a feed, and then paste the feed address.

Reference : wiley.com

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Twitter Tips--Automatically following someone who follows you

Following your followers manually isn’t a big deal if you only receive a few friend requests per day. However, if your Twitter profile takes off, you might become insanely popular and start receiving dozens of new followers each day. That’s a nice position to be in, for sure, but you could end up spending vast chunks of your day just processing all those new fans.

To avoid that, you can use a powerful online tool called Tweet Later to automatically follow anyone who follows you. Go to www.tweetlater.com and sign up for a free registration.(There’s a paid version of the service, but you don’t need it for this.)Once you ’ve done that, you add your Twitter account and then configure it to automatically follow your followers.Because Tweet Later is an online service, the interface changes fairly regularly. 

However, here are the steps to follow as I write this:

1.  Log on to your TweetLater account.

2.  Click the +Twitter tab. The Add a New Twitter Acocunt page appears.

3.  Type your screen name in the Twitter User Name text box.

4.  Type your password in the Twitter Password text box.

5.  Select the Auto Follow check box. 

6.  Click Save. TweetLater adds your accounts and configures it to automatically follow your 

followers.

Reference : wiley.com

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Twitter Tips--Following Twitter’s suggested users

If you’re really not sure where to start with this following business, then you might want to take a look at Twitter’s Suggested Users page, which lists over 100 Twitter users. The list is a real mixed bag that includes mostly members of the Twitterati (the Twitter elite who have the most followers) — including celebrities, companies, media outlets and personalities, and bands — plus the odd apparently randomly selected tweeter. It’s not exactly personal, but it’s an easy way to populate your friend timeline.





Here are the steps to follow:

 1.  Sign in to your Twitter account.

 2.  Click Find People. The Find People page appears.

 3.  Click the Suggested Users tab. Twitter displays a list of users.

 4.  Select the check box beside each person you want to follow. Twitter adds the user’s avatar under the You’ll be following heading.

5.  Click Follow. Twitter returns you to your home page and you see the latest messages from your selected users in your friend timeline.

Reference : wiley.com

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