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.

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.

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.