Recorded using Screen Jelly.

Twitter is already overwhelming for some users. Add lists and groups on top of that and you’ll find even more confusion.  Tweetdeck makes those both easier.

In the video above, I walk through adding a user to a group and a list with just a few mouse clicks and without leaving Tweetdeck.

So, What Do You Use To Twitter? via Sysomos Blog: “That’s the question we wanted to answer with our latest report focused on the applications to use Twitter. We analyzed a sample of more than 500 million tweets collected over the past five months to determine the most popular applications to use Twitter.”

Sysomos analyzed your tweets and determined that the Twitter website is still the number one tool. I’m not surprised as I know several people personally that only use Twitter.com.

A distant second is Tweetdeck. That’s my client of choice and the one I recommend most often to friends and clients. One of the rising stars is Tweetie. Tweetie is quickly becoming the defacto iPhone Twitter app.

Slicing the pie a different way, Sysomos looked at how many different clients active users use. Limiting active users to those having at least 50 tweets in the last five months. Most interesting fact there? That 82% of users use just one application.

There are some more findings you’ll want to check out there, as well as some nice visuals.

About Sysomos (from their site):

Sysomos brings business intelligence to social media, providing instant and unlimited access to all social media conversations to quickly see what’s happening, why it’s happening, and who’s driving the conversations.

Through the use of contextual text analytics and data mining technology, Sysomos collects data from blogs, Twitter, social networks, messages, boards, wikis and major new sources.

Seesmic sent the insiders and email today announcing the addition of Twitter Lists to the Seesmic client. The image above is an example of how the lists would be selected.  There are a few other screen shots and some explanations on the Seesmic Help Desk.

Seesmic is the first to add Lists to their client. Loic and his team continue to shine both in making a solid Twitter client but in keeping it cutting edge.

This might have me pitting Tweetdeck against Seesmic once again.

What’s your client? Are you using Lists? Will this be a game changer?

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• Seesmic Desktop Adds Support for Twitter Lists (mashable.com)

Realtors use Twitter. Shocked? You shouldn’t be.  Real Estate Agents are voracious consumers of new communications technology. Proving that out, several agents turned out for Twitter training given by Karen Goodman (Arch City Homes blogger and premier realtor), and me. The class was offered by Keller Williams Realty.

Agents were aware of Twitter and it being a social network.  A few of the real estate agents were already members, as well as being Facebook members. Universally though, they were using only the basic web sites and none was using Twitter on a regular basis.

Training took Twitter from the ‘what is it’ level up to installing Tweetdeck on personal computers.  The questions focused primarily on privacy and distribution. People were worried about being spammed and spamming others.

Here’s a few of the questions and how Karen and I chose to answer them.

• If someone starts following me do I start seeing their posts?
  • No.  It does mean they’ll begin seeing of your Twitter messages
• Do my Twitter messages also post on Facebook and LinkedIn?
  • Not automatically. There are add-ons and tools that allow cross-posting; those are all optional and can be controlled.
• Someone I’m following starts spamming, talking about porn, etc. What can I do?
  • Unfollow them. Visit their Twitter profile page and unfollow them.
  • They don’t stop copying you? Visit their Twitter profile page and block them.
• How do I find people I know?
  • Using Find People on the Twitter home page.
  • Email or call that person. Most reliable choice. Avoid’s picking someone else with the same name.
  • Check that person’s web site for Twitter and other social network information.
• How do avoid being sucked into too much Twitter use?
  • Time control – only open Twitter at regularly scheduled times. Much like you’d handle email inbox review.
  • Browsing control – unless you have plenty of time, only check your replies and direct messages.

These may seem like basics to many of you, but these are questions anyone in business should be asking.  Approaching Twitter and other social networks with a plan, even if it’s a ‘don’t do this’ plan is better than winging it as a business user.

We also discussed what’s appropriate in terms of content.  Realtors online seem to line up on two sides; those that broadcast listings, and those that never talk shop.  Karen explained how becoming a local area expert is more valuable than spewing out listings.  Expertise shared equates to trust building and from there to clients.

Attendees were quite involved, asking good questions, and wanting to understand how Twitter connects, and how it could be used. A great follow up class would be on mixing up social networking to find what works best for each individual.

If you’d like to have a Twitter class at your work, please contact me – todd at toddrjordan.com, @tojosan on Twitter, or by phone (636) 486-4723.

Realtor shout out to attendees from Keller Williams Realty:

@patislay

@jbbutler03

@karenprinster

@Nancygkw

.

Tweetup at Pujols 5 West Port Plaza

Karen Goodman, aka @KarenStL, and I will be presenting a class on Twitter for Real Estate Agents. Introducing them first to what Twitter is followed by hands on.  Hands on will cover not only how to send a tweet, that’s a Twitter message, but also installing a client on their personal computer.

Key topics:

• What is Twitter?
• Signing Up
• Sending a tweet
• Replies and Direct Messages

Hands on will cover how to find and install a few of the popular Twitter clients. Tweetdeck will be the primary client used in the demonstrations, and will be the first client recommended and offered to install.

Training is open to all St. Louis area real estate agents.  If possible, please RSVP to Karen Goodman, 314-677-6538 office, or karen – at – archcityhomes.com. It is this Wed, October 28 from 1:30-3:00 pm at the Keller Williams office in Kirkwood. Agents from any brokerage are welcome to attend, but registration is required for non-KW agents.

Mirexo is YAATA, Yet Another Twitter Air Application. Kidding aside, it brings us a different look to Twitter. Big selling point is detachable channels or columns.

Mirexo starts off with a simple main application with two panels on either side of a central control column.

As you can see, it doesn’t require a ton of desktop to use. The left side of the application is used for various channels to be displayed. A channel is a selected stream such as all friend, replies, DMs, or a custom channel based on search or a subset of folks you follow.

On the right is your follow list, and a tab away is your list of channels. Adding a new channel is a button click away, and the same holds true for following someone. The central column at the top shows a count of replies, and DMs, as well as providing a single click way to bring up a posting window.

Customizable features aren’t many here. The best feature over other clients is really the detachable channels. In the top picture above, I’ve split out my all friends, replies, DMs, and two channels, a search on origami and a search on #STL. The detached columns are individually adjustable as to height, width and position. Each column can be filtered as well.

One nice feature is the ability to view a conversation thread. Each tweet in the display will show an icon under that users avatar if there is a conversation history. Basically a chain of reply messages.

If you see the icon, click on it to display the thread. Interestingly enough, it will not just show your replies to that user’s tweet, but other’s as well. Gives real context to the conversation.

Things I’d love to see?

• Themes.
• DM button, or shift click on the @ to do a DM.
• Tweet from any window. I’d love to keep the control panel out of the way.

I guess that’s a big enough wish list for now.

Give Mixero a chance if you’ve gotten an invite. If not, follow @Mixero on Twitter and ask for one. They’ll send you out a code pronto.

We’ve all lost data before due to lack of backups, and it’s quite possibly one of the worst feelings in the world. (With that in mind, when’s the last time you backed up your system?)
TweetDeck does not offer a backup option, so I was on a mission to find out how I could backup my groups. I’m a big TweetDeck user and have all of my tweeps very organized, and to lose my groups would be devastating.

Backing up Tweetdeck is important to me. It’s my primary Twitter interface. This article, by James Shiner, walks through backing up your groups. It covers Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X.