So, if you’re currently monitoring multiple Twitter accounts using Twext.me, you will be able to continue to do so. Those of you who were monitoring a single Twitter account, we will be deleting your account. You will be able to get instant mention notification using Twitter’s new notification features. These can be found under the mobile setting in your Twitter account.

And, you never know, we may add a feature or two for those power users.

“We want to make sure you see important Tweets even when you’re not looking at Twitter at the moment. To help with that, today we’re launching push notifications for @mentions.”

TWEXT.ME?

Since this is essentially why we created Twext.me for Ben Martin, we will be evaluating what to do with Twext.me in the next 24 hours. For those of you with one Twitter account, we’d advise switching away from Twext.me immediately. The mentions notifications are sent almost instantaneously.

To set up your Twitter account to notify you via SMS when you get mentioned, go to your settings on Twitter, select Mobile and tell it how you want it to act. The illustration to the right shows you the setting for having all mentions from anyone sent to your phone.

Note: Twitter will only allow one account to be associated with a phone number. So if you have multiple Twitter accounts, you can only have mentions sent to a single phone number from one of those accounts.

Twext.me Terms Of Service

1. We’re a free service that depends on Twitter’s API to function properly. If our service isn’t working, it’s likely because Twitter’s API is acting up.  It happens a great deal. So, we can’t be responsible for outages that are Twitter’s fault.
2. We use Twitter’s OAuth to access your account, so we don’t know your Twitter password. We don’t want to know it. That said, in order to communicate your mentions to you, we must store some of your twitter information on our servers. This information is visible to the public anyway, so there’s nothing in our database that is of any value. Except to you.
3. We won’t spam you. Ever. Once again, we’re a free service, so if you’ve chosen the “true SMS” option, instead of the email SMS option, we use a service called Textmarks to send the SMS. They DO put an ad at the end of the SMS message. That is NOT our ad. We don’t make a dime off of it. If you don’t like those ads, or you consider THAT to be spam, chose the other options. Just note that some systems, like AT&T don’t support threading with the email SMS option. The choice is yours.
4. As for privacy, we won’t be selling your information to anyone or giving your information to anyone for any reason. Ever. Period.
5. I suppose we (Twext.me, Zeek Interactive, our employees, officers, affiliates, agents, partners, anyone we’ve ever met face-to-face, on the phone or on the internet, or anyone we’ve ever thought about meeting, real or imaginary) should tell you that we’re not liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, including without limitation, loss of profits (yeah, right), data, use, good-will, or other intangible losses, resulting from using our service. We can’t imagine what that could possibly be, these are just your Twitter mentions for goodness sakes, but we felt like we had to say it. We live in a pretty litigious society. A better idea: If you feel like we’ve done something to hurt you. Send us a tweet. Twext.me will alert us and we’ll work it out. Promise.
6. If we fail to enforce any of these terms, that doesn’t mean we’re waiving our right to do so. If one of them is not enforceable, that doesn’t mean the others aren’t. We think that’s just fair.
7. We don’t feel compelled to keep this service running forever. If Twitter changes their service offerings to include SMS notification for mentions or some better solution comes along, we reserve the right to shut this service down without asking for your permission. Sorry, it’s just too hard to get consensus on these things.
8. When in doubt, we always take the high road.

We’ll have this up on Twext.me, along with a more formal Privacy statement, in short order.

The recent surge in Twitter spam has people feeling sketchy about giving anyone their password, so we decided to go ahead and implement this more secure way of accessing your Twitter account. We will never see your password.  This is a good thing.

Convert your existing Twitter accounts inside Twext.me

You may convert your existing Twitter accounts by logging into Twext.me and clicking on the “Manage Twitter Accounts” tab. This will take you to a page that will look like this:

Click on Re-Authorize with Twitter. You will then be taken to twitter to give Twext.me authorization to access your data. We use this access to get a better look at the data inside your account. We will never send any messages out via your account. Ever. The authorization on the Twitter side will look like this:

When you set up a new account, the process is similar, but the page will look slightly different. The username field is required so we can help you easily keep track of multiple Twitter accounts, should you choose to do so.

Many have requested this in the past, so we’re happy it’s now live. Hopefully this will encourage more to use this free service. And remember, if you want your text messages to come via standard SMS, once you’ve set up your accounts, just text TWEXTME to 41411.

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.

Twext.me demo from Ben Martin on Vimeo.

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.

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.

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.