On Friday, I was checking some news items when I stumbled upon a note about TweetDeck.  For those who don’t know, TweetDeck is a wonderful Twitter client that lets you read your stream easily as well as view additional columns for users, searches, or lists.  This is my preferred Twitter client.  I don’t know how I’d keep up to date with Twitter without it.

Unfortunately, it looks like I’m about to find out.

As of May 7th, TweetDeck’s Android, iPhone, and Adobe AIR versions will cease to function.  (The web app will continue to work.)  The reason behind this is the impending Twitter API upgrade.  The 1.0 version of the Twitter API is being retired in favor of the new 1.1 version.  TweetDeck is based on version 1.0.  TweetDeck’s team made the decision to focus all effort on the web version of the application and thus shut down the rest.

First, Google Reader and now this.

Of course, this meant that I went on a hunt for a new favorite Twitter client application.  My initial step was to list all of TweetDeck’s features that I liked and that I’d like to see in a new Twitter client.

1.  I like that TweetDeck allows me to show lists and searches as columns.  Users as columns is nice, but I don’t actually use it that often.  (Mostly during Twitter parties and then I can use TweetDeck’s web version.)

2.  I like getting notifications for updates not just for mentions or direct messages, but for said lists and searches as well.  (Notifications for my main timeline aren’t needed.  Since I’m following over 1,000 people, there’s no way I can keep up with everyone.)

3.  Handle multiple accounts.  (After all, I do have the @FollowerHQ account even if I don’t use it often.)

I began trying a few apps from the Google Play app store.  UberSocial looked nice initially, but wound up missing key features.  (Namely, it couldn’t save searches and lists as columns.)  Then, I decided to try out the official Twitter app, but found it extremely limiting.  (Which is odd since Twitter actually owns TweetDeck.  I’d think they’d want to fold TweetDeck’s features into the main Twitter client.  If they do, I’ll revisit the app, but for now it’s MUCH too limited feature-wise.)

I had a recommendation of Falcon Pro, but it costs $1.96.  I don’t mind paying, but I’d like to be able to try it first.  I’d hate to pay only to find out that I don’t like the application.  Besides, this review says that it doesn’t have push notifications.

For now, I’ve settled on Plume.  It’s not perfect.  For one thing, while it lets me use a list or search as a column, it won’t show me notifications on new tweets in these areas.

What Twitter app do you use?  If you are answering TweetDeck, what will you move to when TweetDeck shuts down.

NOTE: The "cutie bird" icon above is by Luen and is available from OpenClipArt.com.

Back in November of 2011, after many months of development, I launched FollowerHQ.  This was my first major Twitter application.  For those who haven’t used FollowerHQ, it’s goal is to help you manage your Twitter followers.  Other tools will let you automatically follow everyone who follows you, but I didn’t want to do that.  If I did, companies that I’m not interested in might follow me only for the automatic follow back.  They could then pollute my Twitter stream with tweets that I don’t care about.

FollowerHQ shows you who is following you that you aren’t following back.  It lists detailed information such as how many followers they have and when their last tweet was.  You can use this information to determine whether or not you want to follow them back.  Perhaps you might ignore some followers because they haven’t tweeted in a long time.  Maybe you might pass over some others because they don’t have any followers or seem like spammers.  Or, perhaps, you will choose to follow some users who tweet about subjects that you find intriguing.

In addition, FollowerHQ will show you who isn’t following you back.  As with people you aren’t following back, you can decide to ignore this situation, or you can decide to unfollow the accounts.  Finally, FollowerHQ will track your followers and will show you who you have unfollowed.  This is useful for the seemingly all-too-frequent times when Twitter decides to automatically make you unfollow someone when you didn’t want to.

Major Upgrade

The previous version of FollowerHQ was good, but it had one major flaw.  It needed to work while the user was waiting.  The user would open the page and FollowerHQ would start pulling information from Twitter’s API.  Since Twitter limits how much data you can pull at once, this meant that the application could be slow at times.  If the person running FollowerHQ only had a thousand followers, it might not be too bad.  If they had a hundred thousand, however, it was unusable.  Even worse, if the browser crashed, you would lose all of your progress and would need to start from scratch.  Needless to say, this limited FollowerHQ’s usefulness.

For the new version of FollowerHQ, I ditched the "real time load" and went with a report request.  Once you request a FollowerHQ report, it will queue up in the system.  FollowerHQ will then process these report requests behind the scenes, completely separate from the users’ browsers.  You can close your browser and even shut down your computer because FollowerHQ is running on my server.

When FollowerHQ is done, it will e-mail the user to notify them.  They can then log in to view the report.  Since the report information is pulled from my database and not from Twitter, the report comes up nearly instantly.  (I also used Google’s PageSpeed analysis to speed up the site.)

Now Available as an Android App

I’m also testing out ways of packaging FollowerHQ as a mobile application.  The first of these attempts utilized AppsGeyser.  I’m very happy with this approach so far.  AppsGeyser: 1) packages a special web browser that has no controls of its own and points to my site by default, 2) bundles said browser into an Android app, and 3) gives it all of the usual app characteristics such as being able to put an icon on the device’s home screen.  As a bonus, there are no ads (unless I want to include some which would give me some revenue) and I can submit my app to the Google Play store.

I’ve wanted to get into app development for awhile so this is highly intriguing.  I might make a "mobile.FollowerHQ.com" version of my Twitter application for the app to launch, however.  I also want to find similar tools to utilize to create an iOS app.

With all of the changes I’ve made to FollowerHQ, I’ve love to hear what you think.  Head on over to http://www.FollowerHQ.com/ and give it a try.  Post what you think about it here.

You might know that I made a little Twitter application called FollowerHQ.  It was born out of frustration of being unable to keep up with the people following me.  I’d try to evaluate each person to see whether I wanted to follow them back, but I couldn’t keep up.  So I made an application to help me decide who I wanted to follow back.

Of course, like any developer, I wasn’t fully satisfied with my final product.  It was nice, but it had a big flaw.  If you loaded the site, you needed to wait for a long loading screen to complete.  Part of this was due to the Twitter API.  Thanks to how it was structured, I needed to break my requests up into multiple smaller requests.  (In their defense, Twitter has a good reason to do this.  It likely keeps their server load down.)

Depending on how many records I needed to pull, this back-and-forth would take awhile.  It might not be so bad for someone with a thousand followers, but ten thousand or more would get painful.  Furthermore, you needed to keep the browser open at all times or you would need to start again.  Finally, if you came back to the site the next day, you would need to pull down all of these records again.

My solution was to restructure FollowerHQ into a "request and report" system.  In FollowerHQ Version 2, You submit a request to see the followers you haven’t followed back (including your e-mail address as a contact method).  In the background, FollowerHQ will queue your request up, retrieve all of the information, and store it in its database.  When it is done, it will e-mail you notification.  Then, you simply come back to the site and view the results.

Have a hundred thousand followers?  No problem.  Your report might take some time to generate, but you don’t need to wait by the browser.  Go do something else and FollowerHQ will let you know when it’s done.  Too tired to get through the whole list or computer crashed? No problem. Coming back to the site gives you the ability to open the report again and pick up where you left off.

Of course, I’m sure there will be bugs that I haven’t picked up on, cool features that I didn’t think of implementing, or refinements that I didn’t think of making.  That’s why I need some beta testers.  So who’s in?  Who would like to try out FollowerHQ Version 2 and let me know what they think?

If you’re in, please comment below and then visit http://www.followerhq.com/version2/.  Happy beta testing!

Twitter just tossed a grenade into the room.  One that’s causing developers everywhere to scatter for cover.  This grenade took the form of a blog post detailing the upcoming changes to the Twitter API.  There are many controversial changes, but perhaps the most shocking is that all Twitter apps will now be capped at 100,000 users.  If a Twitter app currently has more than 100,000 users, they will be allowed to double their user base, but no more.  This (and the other changes) means that popular Twitter clients will likely get the axe.  Soon the only way to browse through Twitter may be on Twitter.com.

There are many different rumors about why Twitter is doing this.  Many think that Twitter will soon be showing ads in an attempt to turn a profit.  If you are using a Twitter client, however, you wouldn’t see these ads and so Twitter needs to find a way to pull everyone back to Twitter.com.

This possibility got me thinking.  What if Twitter charged for access?  What if you were able to read tweets for free, but actually tweeting out required a paid subscription?  Would people pay?  Or would they switch to another service?

Twitter will likely hit 250 million users by the end of the year.  If the subscription fee was $10 a year and only 10% of those people paid, Twitter would earn $250 million.

I’ve got to be honest.  I’m not sure whether I’d pay or not.  On one hand, I enjoy taking part in social media and I understand that Twitter needs to make money to pay for servers, employees, etc.  On the other hand, there are free alternatives (Facebook, Google+, etc).  I guess if the fee were small enough, I would pay, but if they set the price tag too high, I’d bid a tearful farewell to Twitter.

How about you?  Would you pay for the ability to Tweet?  If so, how much do you think you’d pay?

NOTE: The money image above is by Kamil Koszuta from OpenClipArt.org.

"It came to me in a dream, and I forgot it in another dream." – Professor Hubert Farnsworth (Futurama)

I’ve had a few times when ideas came to me when I couldn’t write them down.  At one point, this might have been when I was out and about.  Of course, since the advent of texting (and, later, Smartphones), this isn’t a problem.  A quick text or e-mail to myself and I’m good to go.

Recently, ideas seem to come to me on the Jewish holidays.  You see, during certain holidays, I refrain from "working at my occupation."  I take this to mean that anything that I could use to do work for my job is off-limits.  I’m a web developer, so computers are no-nos as are pen and paper (could write down code/designs to type up later) and phones (could call in to discuss work issues).  (NOTE: I’ll carry a phone with me in case of emergencies, but it is set to vibrate and everyone knows not to call unless it is a matter of life or death.)

So what happens when I get an idea in the middle of a Jewish holiday?  That is, during a time when I can’t write it down, type it up, or use my smartphone to send a reminder to myself?  That’s when I’ve got to exercise that brain of mine to remember it myself.  Kind of like how people used to remember things before computers were all-but-grafted onto us.

A couple of nights ago, I had a weird dream.  In it, I had built a very popular Twitter application.  I was showing it to someone to demonstrate how it worked.  I’m going to leave off the "how it works" details for obvious reasons, but suffice it to say that my dream was quite descriptive.  When I woke up, I remembered it perfectly and realized that this was an application that I could actually develop.  One that people might use.

Of course, the past three days have been Jewish holidays.  (Shabbat followed by two days of Shavuot.)  Since I couldn’t record it in any other manner, I kept it in my mind up until the Jewish holiday ended.  Luckily, by then, it hadn’t been forgotten.  If anything, it’s taken root and expanded.

Now if I only had more free time to work on Twitter applications.

Have you ever had an idea come to you in a dream?

Disclaimer: The "sleeping face" image above comes from OpenClipArt.org.