Blogging Tips

I’ve been playing with a new tool recently – Twazzup’s Twitter reader. It’s an add-on to a previous real-time search service (which I must admit I hardly ever use). But the reader itself is a thing of beauty.  Here are ten things I like about it.

1. Simple Start

Login with Oauth and you’re in; it’s that simple.

2. Updating on updates

When you login, you can see how many new updates, replies and messages you have (indicated with a number on a red background in the top navbar). You can also see, just below the home button, who’s made those updates. Click on an avatar to load a particular person’s stream or click on the yellow box to show you’ve seen it and it disappears, leaving an update box in its wake.

3. Filtered stream

There’s a secondary nav bar where you can see all your updates or segment by highlights, photos & video or questions. You can also click on the people link to see recently active people or on links to see … links.

4. URL shortening

Just click on a link under the update box to make this happen.

5. Stats

Check out the top right of the page to see how many updates per day come from your Twitter stream, and how many updates have happened from how many contacts in the last couple of hours. The geek within me rejoices.

6. More filtering

There’s a box where you can filter your stream by inputting certain words, but you can also use the tag cloud that’s generated from the tweets in your stream to see all the updates on a particular term. And they are highlighted too.

7. Pluses and minuses

Green and red boxes in the sidebar show how many positive and negative tweets there have been in your stream. Click on a box to see them.

8. Easy access to lists and trends

These are in the top nav bar, where you can also access favorites and settings – and the search bar.

9. Lightning quick

Everything on Twazzup loads fast so there’s no hanging around

10.  Rinse and repeat

When you click on a particular user, you can filter their stream in the same way as your own, using the tools mentioned at No 3 and No 7.

Nitpicking

The only thing I can’t figure out is the ‘highlights’ section. I don’t know how it picks them or why sometimes there’s nothing there.  And I can only manage one account at a time, which is probably enough for most people, but not for me. And there are a couple of links where nothing happens when you click.

The verdict

These are just nitpicking, though. As well as the features I’ve highlighted, Twazzup Reader also shows a profile when you hover over an avatar, has inline link, image and video previews and includes translation features. So I still think it rocks! What about you?