Someone I was talking to (yes, physically in the same place having a verbal conversation) the other day asked what I used to Twitter with. There are so many options out there nowadays no one knows quite where to turn. Do a quick search, go ahead, I’ll wait.

OK, what did you find? A LOT of blogs and opinions on every possible twitter application out there, right? Right. It wasn’t much different when I plugged into the twitter scene last year. There are desktop applications, web applications, iPhone apps, and, well you can see where I’m going with this.

When I first got into following the bird, er I mean people, I did my homework.  I just really didn’t know what application to use. I was new and there were a ton of applications and various amounts of people recommending one over the other. And they all had good reasons, but alas, I was alone in this endeavor and the more I read the more confused I got. (I won’t even begin to tell you how confused I was when I first saw #FF!)

So my dilemma continued over a few days while I read the pros and cons of this and that. Should I stick with the original twitter.com or some integrated desktop version chock full of bells and whistles?

Finally I settled on one desktop version only to be quickly frustrated at not having the ability to see all my accounts at the same time (ok, a couple of accounts, but still…who’s counting)?

So after a little more research I decided desktop versions with all is baggage in the background wasn’t working for me. I started checking out the online versions and landed on HootSuite. I mean who can resist that cute little owl?

Image by David Berkowitz via Flickr

HOOTSUITE

Seriously, after some research I decided that HootSuite with its multiple account functionality and the ability to setup other users for the same account was what I was looking for. This online application allowed me to manage several accounts at once without logging in and out of each one. Why do I have more than one account?  That’s a different story, but suffice it to say my partners still think a little blue bird is a Blue Jay.

One of my favorite features (all right two or three) is the ability to write a tweet now and schedule it for later.  Cool!  I love quotes, especially the motivational kind. So as I came across them I would just pop them into a tweet and pick a day a time to share it with the world. I mean who doesn’t like a good motivational quote?

I could click on one icon to retweet, no more copying and pasting. It also gave me the ability to modify the RT prior to sending or scheduling, especially when the tweet was long and needed to be modified.

EVEN better, I could stream feeds automatically into my tweets as they came out.

FAVORITE FEATURE

I have a friend (OK, more than one), but this particular friend created a blog about a fund raiser for the Southeastern Food Bank of Virginia over the 2009 holidays. I thought it was a really cool thing, so I added his blog RSS to my HootSuite feed and every time he blogged, no matter the day or time, an hour later I was tweeting about it. He was so thrilled that his blog was getting out there to lots of people he didn’t know.

He doesn’t twitter. So how did he find out that I tweeted every time he blogged? He and I are friends on FaceBook. So another cool thing about HootSuite is that FaceBook and HootSuite could be integrated. I set it up so my twitters then stream automatically to FaceBook status.

Did I tell you I <3 HootSuite?

This is how my friend found out I was promoting his cause. He blogs, I tweet then FaceBook and he got more hits to his site.  I spent all of 2 minutes setting up this automatic feed. And some of my more advanced twitter and FaceBook buddies still don’t know about this little connection.

Side note: This also helps me keep up on blogs I follow, well, uh, blog.

MORE FEATURES

As I floated around the Internet while writing this post I noticed that a lot of desktop and online versions have these same capabilities. I’m not on top of all the latest technologies associated with twitter, so I don’t know who did what first or when, but I know that HootSuite was in the forefront of the applications I researched at the time and from what I can tell still is.

Some great new features that HootSuite has released recently is the ability to pull in any lists created from Twitter.com, as well as create a new list via HootSuite. I can also manage all my social networks from their dashboard (facebook, linkedin, pingfm, and wordpress).

I also love their little Hootlet. Cool little icon on your tool bar that allows you to tweet the web page you are on without leaving the site. As simple as that.

Oh, I could go on, multiple columns view based on groups, tabs for each account to include blogs, stats on my tweets and retweets, tweeting from multiple accounts simultaneously, a Show Conversation button so you can see what a tweet was in response to, and oh my, sooooo much more I could go on for days.

I am very happy with my owl. Now that you know what I use, what do you use and why?

Related articles

• http://www.growmap.com/retweet-apps (growmap.com)
• http://kikolani.com/2010-social-media-wishlist-facebook-stumbleupon-twitter.html (kikolani.com)
• HootSuite – a one stop destination for all your Twitter needs (twi5.com)
• HootSuite Review : Ultimate Twitter Web Client (shoutmeloud.com)