How I Manage 10 Twitter Accounts

twitter

Feb 16

I told you I was compulsive didn't I? Maybe some of you manage more than one Twitter account too.For fun or profit I manage around 10 Twitter accounts. Thats a lot of little birdies to take care of! Here are two ways I do it.At Message CatcherFirst I really want know if anyone, anywhere is including one of my @names in a tweet. Logging into all these accounts and hitting that ol' reply tab would be tough. So I take all the RSS feeds from search.twitter.com that contain the user names and tie them together. I output the feeds to a drop dead simple HTML page as seen below. The text is big and clunky, perfect for a quick scan. I dim out tweets I've already viewed so I can focus on new ones. That page refreshes every 30 mins based on one of the oldest tricks in the book.

This is all done using basic PHP and some software called SimplePie. To get started download my code which includes the SimplePie software, modify the main file, and toss it up to your own server.

Even if you don't manage so many accounts you can modify the code to pickup other words or phrases. This is great for trends spotting and vertical specific conversation tracking.

Tweetie

I'm not a fan of most desktop or iPhone twitter apps. For me the web or mobile version has always been the fastest way to access the site. However Tweetie is one of the better apps out there, especially for multiple account support. Living in Los Angeles there are lots of delays, whether in line somewhere or on the john, this app makes it easy to scan for @messages and other tweets. Since the app stores your password there is no need to re-enter login details.

If you don't have an iPhone, throw your phone away and go buy one. Then get this app.