Twext.me Has A New “True” SMS Option

If you’ve been with Twext.me from the beginning, you know that we’ve been using the various mobile carrier email-to-text options to deliver your Twitter mentions vis SMS. This worked fine, but most of the carriers generated a unique short code for each notification we sent. This resulted in each message looking as if it were coming from a unique sorce, like this:

If you recieved a lot of mentions, the Twext.me updates would dominate your text message screen and require you to delete each one individually. This was annoying at best.

Many of the newest smart phones “thread”  SMS messages that come in under one SMS short code. But getting a short code for Twext.me would have been cost prohibitive. And since this is a free service… that wasn’t an option.

Enter TextMarks.com.

Yesterday we used the TextMarks.com api and can now offer a standard SMS option without going through email. This will allow smart phones to thread the Twext.me updates, like this:

All of the individual Twext.me updates will be shown under the single 41411 short code and can be easily cleared if needed. This method requires one additional step in the sign up process.

To take advantage of this option, you must send TWEXTME to 41411 to initiate your subscription. This gives us permission to send SMS to your phone. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to go.

Personally, I had switched from individual messages sent via SMS to a summary message being sent to me on Twitter via DM. With this new option, I have switched back to the individual SMS messages and it works like a charm. Of course, for this to remain free, we all have to put up with the advertising messages, but we think the threading ability is worth it.

Let us know your thoughts.

@bkmcae Explains Twext.me

Ben was the reason we created Twext.me, so it was great to see him take the reins and create this quick video to explain why we did.

Twext.me demo from Ben Martin on Vimeo.

Make It Easy For Friends To Share Your Message On Twitter

Last week I received a direct message on Twitter from Matt Stigliano, aka @rerockstar. He was writing a post about Mothers Fighting For Others and wanted to automatically place specific text into his readers’ Twitter status window to help spread the word about the cause.

He asked if I knew how to create that kind of link and I said I did, but that it would take more than 140 characters to explain. So, he sent me the text he wanted and I created the link for him. You can see how he used it on the link to “@realhughjackman” near the end of Matt’s post about MFFO.

In making the link, it occurred to me that there should be an easy way for anyone to do this.

So, today I passed the objectives on to Steve, gave him some links to a couple of API’s, and he built a simple tool that allows you to quickly and easily create a status update URL for Twitter. How simple is it? In the form window on the page, just type in the message you want OTHERS to send via Twitter, then hit submit. We then generate a TinyURL link that you can use in blog posts, or simply include in a tweet or direct message. You can use it anywhere you can place a link.

If your reader is logged into Twitter, clicking on the TinyURL link will automatically place your words into their Twitter status update window. They can then review the message and hit send. It makes it easy for someone to help you spread your message and gives you more control over that message.

Shortly after we created the tool, I used it to try to get the attention of Hugh Jackman again. This time via a Facebook. As you can see in the image below, I placed this URL – http://tinyurl.com/cw7o5j - in my Facebook status window.

Because it was so simple to do – click on a link, hit send – the single status message created a slew of updates on Twitter. Each update contained the exact message we wanted delivered to Hugh. Real people sending a real message.

The easier it is for your readers to do something for you, the more likely they are to do it. Create a status update URL and your readers will be more likely to help you spread your message.

Would you like to give it a try? Click here to create your own status update URL for Twitter.

Twext.me Updates – SMS Alert Options, Pausing

That didn’t take long. One weekend of live testing was all it took to figure out that some changes needed to be made if “power users” were going to find any benefit to the Twext.me service.  Ben Martin and Derek Massey both sent in their requests for updates. Ben requested that we use the Twitter screen names in the notifications, instead of real names. So we made that change. I agree, when I’m in Twitter mode, I recognize people’s Twitter handles more easily than I do their names.

Derek suggested that we provide an option to only track true replies, instead of an static default to a universal mention. So, we’ve added that capability. This will be presented when you set up a new Twitter account or when you’re editing an existing Twitter account. Each Twitter account your tracking can be set differently. The default setting is for both “true replies” and “mentions” to be tracked. See below.

You’ll notice that there is also an option to have the alerts sent in “digest” form. This is an option I requested because I often have many mentions in a short period of time. The individual alerts was simply annoying. I have set my updates to come to me in digest form. A digest alert tells you how many mentions you received and who mentioned you. It will look something like this:

Finally, you can now “pause” you alerts with a simple direct message (DM) to Twextme. What was as annoying as the number of updates, was getting updates while I was sitting at my computer actively engaged with Twitter. So, to pause the alerts, simply send a DM to Twextme with the word “off.” Turn turn updates back on, send a DM to Twextme with the word “on.” (no quotation marks)

We have a few more changes coming tomorrow. Let us know your thoughts.

Twext.me – Twitter Mentions To SMS Text

Today we launched Twext.me to an extremely limited group of testers.

Ben Martin, the Zen Master of Association Social Networking, approached me a few weeks ago about a need he was filling with a mashup of several different online services. The need was simple. Ben wanted to be notified via SMS Text message anytime there was a mention of @bkmcae on Twitter. Since this is a seemingly logical function not supported on Twitter, I was surprised something like this didn’t exist in the wild. After some research, we determined there was really only one service similar, Tweettrak. The difference, Tweettrack sends your notice via direct message to your twitter account.

As a heavy user of Twitter, I know having mentions sent to me via direct message is not an optimal solution. I want my private direct messages to be distinct from my mentions. So, on Wednesday, April 15 we began to build Twext.me and two days later we have it up for testing.

I’ve had it running since this afternoon and I can already tell some major changes are going to be required to make this a service that heaver twitter users might find valueable. My phone was bombarded by text messages today. I did a quick look and in the last 24 hours, Ben has had 42 mentions on Twitter. In that same time period, I ( @respres ) have 90 mentions. I haven’t talked to Ben yet, but each mention coming in as an individual SMS Text was a bit overwhelming for me. So, right off the bat, we have a few changes to make.

Here are two things we’ll need to do pretty quick:

• A pause button. Twext.me needs a pause button or a way to schedule when you want the updates to occur. For example, I don’t want to get updates while I’m at my computer and able to engage directly with Twitter.
• A digest option. If 6 people retweet the same information, I don’t need six differnt text messages. Even if the information is different, I’m really only looking for an alert that indicates that I should go take a look.

I know the service will be a lot more valuable to me when those two items are incorporated into the site. Stay tuned. More to come.

Dear Wordpress, Don’t Hide the UI.

I love the new Wordpress – version 2.7.1. The Dashboard UI was in desperate need of a clean up and the Wordpress team did a fantastic job! Placing the navigation on the left-hand side of the page was a huge improvement. It pushes more page elements toward the top of the page and opens up more real estate for post editing. That being said, a change was made to the blog management pages that could (on the surface) make the new version harder to use for the technology challenged.

I maintain a few blogs that have multiple authors of varying technical “know-how.” One of these blogs is Pajamas Media which is built on WPMU. Pajamas has multiple bloggers (called Xpress Bloggers) that contribute content from around the globe. These people are brilliant writers who have many published books amongst them. However, some of them get nervous when we introduce new technology into the mix. Once we train them on a particular system, they tend to be fine until we make a change.

We recently upgraded to WPMU 2.7. All in all, the transition went very smooth – much smoother than any in the past. The new interface was well received and very little training was required. The authors liked the Quickpress feature as well as the Quick Edit feature for managing posts.

However, upon first login they were confused as to how to edit a post or to approve a comment. In the new system, actions like “Edit” and “Approve” are not displayed when you first view these management screens. Once the user moves their cursor into a the box of the post they want to edit, the actions appear. While this was perfectly natural for a coder like me, it was not obvious to them. After explaining how to use this feature, they understood immediately.

If I had not been available to explain this to them, I wonder if they would have found it on their own. I imagine that the decision to hide these features on first glance was driven by the desire to make the interface as clean as possible. And while I understand this reasoning, hiding this UI created an extra training step for me and it will for others.

I created a small plugin that displays the actions by default. You can download it for your own blog here. If you find this useful, let me know. I might take the time to build this out a bit more.

Show Row Actions

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The row actions in the Wordpress dashboard are hidden by default. They appear when you mouse over an area that you want to edit. Some users are confused by this as they tend not to “hunt” for functionality.

We wrote this plugin to display the Row actions all the time. Enjoy!

Download the Plugin