Blogging Tips

“Twittaw is a social messaging service focused around threaded notes. Its main focus it to enhance the exchange of better conversations.” Since it lets you use your Twitter ID to login (via Twitter OAuth), there is no registration required. I have been using Twittaw for a few months now and it has quickly become my favorite way to have easy-to-follow conversations on the Web.

Though the community there is small, it is quickly growing  and new features are being added on a regular basis. There is a complete, extensive guide at the Twittaw blog if you’re interested in a more in-depth description of what it has to offer. Alternately, you can also follow Twittaw on Twitter.

Setup/Usage

There are 5 tabs at the bottom that will take you to 5 different streams: Home, Friends, Favorites, Tags and Public. Each stream also has a notifier that will show you how many unread messages it contains. Twittaw is great when used in a browser sidebar; it fits perfectly. Though it can be used in any desktop browser, it may actually stretch out too much across the page. This is of course is dependent on your preference. Twittaw is optimized for the iPhone/iPod Touch (in Safari as a mobile site) and can also be used in any smartphone mobile browser or SSB (like Bubbles, Prism and Fluid); there is even Growl support for notifications.

Character Limit

We all are aware of the often annoying 140 character limit that Twitter gives us. Well, at Twittaw this is not an issue since the limit is a whopping 10,000 characters.

Twitter Integration

Every note you post will be sent to Twitter unless you add a tilde ( ~ ) in it. What happens is that the first 100 characters of your note will show in your tweet along with a short URL and the hashtag #twittaw at the end. You can also choose to have all of your comments (that you add to notes) shared on Twitter, or you can just turn it off in the settings.

Threaded Conversations

The best part of Twittaw is the ability to easily follow any conversation via threading. This is really something that often makes it difficult for some to keep up with Twitter. As you’ll see below, full notes are displayed and if there are any comments on the note, the first line from the latest comment will appear underneath it. Once you go into the note, you can see all replies in chronological order and add your own. You can also add #tags to your notes or in a comment on any note. All tags (even ones included in comments) will show on the main view, underneath the note (as seen below).

Friends List

You can follow up to 20 people on Twittaw, which will appear under the “Friends” tab. To create a friend’s list, you simply create a list on Twitter and name it “Twittaw”. The updates for the 20 people that you add to that list will then show on the “Friends” stream.

Embedding/Styling

Twittaw allows photo and video embedding and it’s very easy – no codes needed. To embed an image, simply add the link to the photo or image that you want to share. To embed to a video, just add the link to the actual video. This currently only works with NicoVideo and YouTube videos. HTML is not allowed but you can add a little bit of this type of formatting: *italic*, **bold**, __underline__ and ~~strike-through~~.

Other Features

Editing. Don’t we all wish that Twitter had this feature? How many times have you had to delete and repost a tweet because you made an error? Well with Twittaw you can edit any note or comment that you make. You can also add notes to your favorites and then view them under the “Favorites” tab. You can also see who has favorited a note because it will show hearts underneath it (see below).

If that’s not enough, there are a ton of other features like note translating, muting and more that I won’t include here, so that you can check it out for yourself.

Since everyone seems to be so in love with Twitter these days, it can be hard for any other site to compete. If you can pull yourself away, I definitely suggest giving Twittaw a try. What’s your opinion?