Perhaps because Twitter has not been especially popular with scientists, it is difficult to find apps which are specifically advertised for use by scientists. However if we consider the lifestyle and career of a scientist or a technician, there are a host of apps that might be useful and/or appealing — at least at the geological or psychological levels. The following highly-rated Twitter apps — ranging from the most practical to the most playful — are divided into categories, providing links so you can sign up for these free services immediately.
The following links are categorized alphabetically.
Managing Your Twitter Account and Stream
Cadmus Real Time Twitter Service manages your stream and organizes content in order of relevance since the last time you checked in. This way you won’t get that feeling of “too many posts” and you can catch up on what you missed. It groups similar posts into threads and puts the most important ones at the top.- Manage Twitter — Fast & Easy Unfollowing. This is a Twitter account management service that allows you to clean up and manage who you follow. Easily search inside your stream to find out who isn’t following you back, and which inactive accounts you are currently following.
- Qwitter: Catching Twitter Quitters sends you an e-mail when someone stops following you, helps to identify spammers, and offers Qwitter Therapy if you become sad about being unfollowed.
- The Twit Cleaner analyzes the people you follow, finds time-wasters, spammers, the boring, bots, and offers a detailed report on everyone you’re following. It thus enhances your personal image by showing you have discretion, and it helps you focus your time and energy.
- Tvvitterbug 1.5 helps with many aspects of your Twitter account. You can manage different accounts (up to five), tweet from wherever you are, tweet as long as you want (your tweets will be automatically divided into 140-character chunks and automatically put in order to read from top-to-bottom), include photo and video, embed shortened URLs and much more.
- Twitter Followers Statistics by TwitterCounter tracks statistics of over 10 million Twitter users. Simply enter your username and click “Show Me” to receive your number of followers, number of tweets, Twitter rank, most popular Twitter users, predictions, and more.
- Welcome to HootSuite — The Professional Twitter Client is a “social media dashboard.” You can manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, work with a team, share data and access without sharing passwords, track your results and measure your success.
Managing Tweets and Content
#earthtweet from Brighter Planet is an easy way to send out eco-news (environmental news). Just include the #earthtweet hashtag on your environmental tweets, and then pay attention to what others are saying.- Tawidget creates an events widget for your Web site so you can share the event on Twitter.
- Tvider — Share your pictures / videos /audio on Twitter! You may record with your Webcam or browse your computer’s files for pictures, videos, or audio to share on Twitter.
- Twuffer — Schedule Twitter tweets allows you to compose a list of future tweets and schedule their release to the Twitterverse. You might, for example, tweet ‘milestone’ or ‘appointment reminders,’ or tweet pre-written announcements, run a scavenger hunt that is timed, notify people of an upcoming podcast, or just make it appear that you are always on the job.
- Your tweets where you want them — AddTweets is a service that allows you to plug your latest tweets into a blog or Web site. It uses a small piece of JavaScript code. Choose up to ten tweets at a time to display.
Manage Other Tweets
My Tweet Map shows where your friends are tweeting from. Information updates every minute.- monitter — live, real time Twitter monitor | free live Twitter imbed widget. This service lets you “monitter” the Twitter world for a set of key words to see what people are saying. Enter three words and start seeing relevant tweets. You can imbed a widget and follow monitter on Twitter.
- TweepML allows users to share groups of Twitter users (“Tweeps”) through an extensible open standard format. This site also allows users to follow a Twitter list directly instead of following the list itself.
- TweetMeme — Search and Retweet the Hottest Stories on Twitter. This service gathers together and sorts the most popular links on Twitter so you can retweet them.
- Twiblend allows you to bring tweets together to make a conversation. Grab tweets from anywhere, drag and drop them to make a conversation, and then you may share them on your site using a widget.
- TwitCause by experience project enables people to support causes via Twitter and enables nonprofits to get recognition. TwitCause joins Twitter as a delivery system with the intimacy of The Experience Project, where people may share stories about any life experience. Follow @TwitCause to keep up with what’s happening, retweet, or donate directly — three ways you can help.
- Twittervision is a service that shows live twitterfeed (with photos) from around the world.
Different Tweeting Experiences
Bet Your Followers: Cause a stir in your social circle! Use your scientific mind and compute the odds, then play this Twitter game where you wager your followers as currency! Hundreds of thousands of followers have already been won and lost.- GroupTweet allows you to post a message to members of a group using direct messages. These are converted into tweets that followers can see. If you want your group’s updates to be private, you can protect your group account on Twitter.
- Post Like a Pirate converts your tweets into Pirate speak. Not very scientific, but maybe fun?
- SneakyTweet is a Twitter client app for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. It has many account management apps like multiple accounts, photo tweets, video tweets, and editable user profile, plus features like GeoAnywhere, which allows you to tweet from where you want to be, not just where you are, plus private tweeting for your closest friends.
- SpokenTwit.com enables you to speak your tweets and post to Twitter; unlimited recording length, no 140-character limit; followers hear real voice in local language. An ideal reporting tool for scientists in the field, for course notes and more.
- TwitArcade is a free game-sharing site for Twitter users.
