A plug for Pluggio

A few months back, @mistygirlph reviewed what is now pluggio on her blog. Given that I was looking for something to "schedule tweets" to space my tweets out over the day more I tried it.

I like it.

It hasn't become my primary way to access twitter, but it does do some things very well.

Before I go too far, I must stick in the required disclaimer. Although, I work for Intel, I tweet only my own opinions. Nothing I say should be construed as a recommendation on Intel's behalf.

One of the things that works best about it, is that it runs in your browser. That wouldn't seem like an advantage, but it actually is. The reason why that works well, is following a link becomes very easy if you used a tabbed browser, simply click on the link and the text pops up in a new tab very fast. Much faster than from a standalone twitter app. Moreover, when you close the new tab, you are back on twitter.

Another thing that pluggio does really well, is how it handles your inbound and outbound messages. In particular, it has a special category that holds just the tweets you send out. You might not think that is useful, but it really is. If you are trying to figure out if a tweet got sent or not in times of twitter problems, just look at the tweets you have posted and if it is there, you sent it. They also do the same thing with in-bound and out-bound DMs, so you can see just the ones you've received or just the ones you've sent. I really like both of those features and for those alone, I will keep using it.

However, it's main claim to fame is reading RSS feeds and helping you get that content into twitter. It is very easy to follow RSS feeds with pluggio. More importantly, pluggio helps you turn those articles into tweets. If you are trying to build a following by offering links to interesting content, this can be a big boon.

The second feature it offers is scheduling tweets. It has a couple of ways of doing this. A schedule at a specific time option, and a rolling tweet option. If I used pluggio as my primary interface to twitter, I would probably use the rolling tweet option as my primary way of RTing people, as it helps you avoid overloading your stream by sending too many tweets at the same time and then having dead air later.

One feature, pluggio offers that is in several other clients is the ability to manage twitter, facebook, and other social media accounts from a single client. If you want to put your message out across several sites at once, this might be the solution you need.

Now, it is time for some balance. There are two things I get from my primary interface to twitter that I don't get from pluggio.

The first one in multiple visible columns. I have my tweetdeck open all the time, with about 8 columns visible. That really helps me keep up with the "way too many" people I follow. Pluggio only shows 1 column at a time.

The second one is "tweet shrinking". Since most of what I do is RTing other tweeps, I often have to shorten their tweets. Again, there is a tweetdeck feature that gives me a head start on that and pluggio doesn't have that.

The last thing I should mention is that pluggio is "nagware". The free version is truly no cost, but it does gently remind you after a while that to support pluggio's development some people need to get commercial copies. It's reminders are gentle though and not too intrusive.

In the end, you will need to try pluggio before deciding whether it is something you will like or not. I did and I do.

Confessions of a Serial Retweeter

Hi, my name is Chris, and I am a Serial Retweeter. I last Retweeted 15 minutes ago.

That's how the introductions in 12 step programs go. Right?

Hmmm, serial retweeter, that sounds bad doesn't it. Oh, well, it is accurate. It is what I do, what I like to do on twitter. And, this in my own way is my apology for that.

My apology for not being quite as engaging as I perhaps should be. Not writing as many "hello, how are you?" notes as I should. Apology for not writing as many "thank you" notes. Apology for letting conversations drop once someone has posted the answer to a question, or at best retweeting their answer.

However, please take my retweets as my indication of appreciation, interest, and respect. There are many out there already saying what I want to say, and saying better than I could. My retweeting of them (of you!) is my way of getting my own message out. And, yes, I do occasionally add a tidbit or to onto a tweet to make a small point. Or, write a follow up tweet. Still, all-in-all, I will let my shyness keep me from posting too many things on my own. Apologies for that.

The same goes for blogging. There are already great bloggers out there. Ones that say important things, Ones that are thoughtful. Ones the get their points just right. Ones who are convincing and motivating and persuasive. Ones that are witty or up-lifting.

There are also great reporters out there. Ones that find the news stories. Ones that analyze them. Ones that bring just the right insight to them. Ones the get the news to us quickly.

Neither of those things can I compete with. I'll never be the first to find some news, nor will I be the one to distill it into a bit of insight that motivates people to change in a way that improves the world. So, yes, I will blog some. However, more often, I will take the easy way out, and simply RT a reference to what someone else has written. Again, apologies.

However, hopefully, it is actually the better way. You will get the same news and you will get the same insight and same motivation and inspiration, just from someone who writes better.

So, while I am sorry I am not a better writer and I am working on being more engaging, I will continue to let those who do the hard work of creating great content do what they do best, and I will continue to find items I like and retweet them.

And, now, I will sit down and let our next 12 step participant speak.

New Style ReTweets A Mixed Results Experiment

To the dismay of many longer time tweeters, Twitter added a new (and slightly different) form of retweet, that is supported not only as a convention among its users, but also by code in the implementation. The prospect was greeted with certainly mixed feelings by many. Fortunately, the old style of retweet was still available, since it was simply a conventions, that we as twitter users adhered too. It was something Twitter couldn't take away.

Well, at first, I was not that enthused about the new style retweets, but came to use it more and more. It is a lot easier, and it allows one to RT those tweets that are already near the edge and are difficult to shorten. Moreover, I read a tweet from someone who suggested that it was "better" for those tweets where you specifically want to honor the original source, since the original source appears prominently in the new style retweet.

As time went on, I switched to primarily using the new style retweets. The idea of honoring the people who either originated the thought (or just the ones I read and who keyed me into it) was very compelling to me. In fact, recently my ratio of new style to old style has shifted so that the overwhelming majority are new style.

The one downside of new style is the inability to add comments. So, I always use old style when I want to add a comment. But, to use new style, I have even adopted the convention where I do a new style retweet, followed by an old style (and then truncated) RT where I add comments. That seemed to me like the best of both worlds.

If that was it, there would be nothing worth writing about.

HOWEVER

There always is a catch isn't there.

However, I have noticed something from using these new retweets. Less of what I am passing on is getting picked up. Now, some of that can be attributed to the fact that twitter doesn't track intermediaries in the new style. And, I've even noticed some people compensating for that by adding my name as a via credit. (Thank you, for that, that is a very nice gesture.) However, most people who follow me, I also follow, and thus I can see when the retweet something, and yes some of what I retweet new style gets passed along, but much of it doesn't.

Moreover, if I do an old style retweet, I get very good pickup rates. In fact that ratio of retweeting for old style retweets I make to new style retweets is better than 10:1 based on my non-scientific, biased, not rigorously collected, and small sample.

I don't know what the cause of this behavior is. I somehow doubt that it is the small comments that I add to an old style retweet that makes that much difference. I think it is more likely that we want to honor our friends (and most of the people who retweet me are ones whom I also retweet and consider to be a friend, and suspect that emotion is reflected). If I indulge that bit of narcissism, I might even countenance the idea that seeing my avatar helps capture their attention. That works for me, I certainly have avatars that I immediately read upon seeing, even if they are in one of the tweetdeck columns I'm not currently looking directly at.

Still, whatever the cause, the phenomena seems to hold. I'm not going to give up on new style retweets. However, I am considering scaling back their usage. If I find that, it affects the amount of information that gets passed on, then I will probably scale back even more. At some level, I find that a shame. I like the idea of giving more credit to where it is due. However, I won't let that get in the way with getting the information shared. That, after all, is why I am on twitter.

Disclaimer

Well, some of you might note that I am on twitter as an Intel employee, and tweeting to improve Intel's brand recognition, especially in the security space. This is certainly true and the sharing of information is simply one way I help accomplish that task. However, I am not tasked by Intel to improve Twitter and don't know of what relationship, if any, exists between the two companies. In this regard, I am just simply a twitter user.