Size Matters: Twitterer's Lengthening Tweets

Written by Dana Oshiro / June 14, 2009 6:58 PM / 11 Comments

This post is part of our ReadWriteStart channel, which is a resource and guide for first-time entrepreneurs and startups. The channel is sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark. To sign up for BizSpark, click here.

You may not believe this, but there are actually people on Twitter who don't have blogs, use bookmarking services, or contribute to review sites. Don't judge. Maybe they're busy, or bucking peer pressure, or their repressive government or pseudo-Amish lifestyle makes juggling multiple profiles inconvenient. Regardless of the reason, there are just some people who only use Twitter and email to communicate. And when these individuals are ready to share more than the standard 140 characters with the Twitterverse, they've got a few different tools to choose from.

Perhaps one of the newer players on the Twitter scene, Write4Net is a service that allows users to write longer posts and share them with their followers. Upon writing a post, the service automatically links to it from your Twitter account, creates a personal page and updates your Write4Net RSS feed. Write4Net also allows members to upload images and embed video. While editing for the site is said to require "Wikipedia-style formatting codes", the codes are unfortunately not identical to Wikipedia's formats. This means that first time users posting photos and videos may be inconvenienced by having to learn a new set of rules. However, the rules are admittedly pretty easy and employ simple brackets and punctuation.

Write4Net is similar to Posterous and does not require members to register. However, because Posterous is email-based and Tumblr has an iPhone app, theses tools are more conducive to blogging from handheld devices. That being said, Twitter integration with these services requires registration with Twitterfeed. If you'd like to avoid the additional effort of the feed, you can also create posts directly from Twerbose, Twitblogs, TwitWall or XLTweet. For more information on ways you can add to your Twitter experience, check out this article on 35 great lifestreaming apps.

Finally, we at RWW caution you to remember that for the most part, Twitter is a place for brevity. Your followers want to be tweeted with respect and we'd hate to see you submitted to the Tweeting Too Hard wall of shame.

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Sean Ammirati, Doug Coleman Dana Oshiro, Steven Walling and Lidija Davis.

Microsoft BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. Click here to apply.

Comments

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Twitter is successful because it's easy to use.

Posted by: converter | June 14, 2009 9:24 PM

WFN is AWESOME!
great review!

Posted by: Diego | June 14, 2009 11:07 PM

Just tested write4net... it sounds great!

Posted by: Chisty | June 15, 2009 1:02 AM

Good points Dana. Quite honestly, I encourage people to use Posterous for its ease of use and Twitter commenting integration (something some of the other micro-blog add-ons do not have),

Posted by: Brandon Mendelson | June 15, 2009 3:46 AM

I like the idea of it. Tried it out and I'm not too crazy about the layout of the post page once its published. There's a big ad in the way.

Posted by: virtual worlds online for kids | June 15, 2009 4:08 AM

140 characters is part of the reason why twitter succeeds. It comes down to the same reason why lists, top 10's, bullet points and other easily scanned content proves to be more successful. Time!

Posted by: IMS | June 15, 2009 4:10 AM

Posterous and Tumblr don't actually require twitterfeed.com at all.

Both have Twitter integration built in.

For Posterous, in addition to Twitter, we also integrate with Facebook, Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, and every other blog platform, with support for YouTube, Vimeo, Friendfeed and every other social media site coming really soon.

Posted by: Garry | June 16, 2009 6:56 PM

Twitter is successful because twitter is easy to use and also good looking.

Posted by: Ricky | June 16, 2009 9:23 PM

Good points Dana. Quite honestly, I encourage people to use Posterous for its ease of use and Twitter commenting integration (something some of the other micro-blog add-ons do not have

Posted by: شات | July 3, 2009 6:41 AM

Good points Dana. Quite honestly, I encourage people to use Posterous for its ease of use and Twitter commenting integration (something some of the other micro-blog add-ons do not have

Posted by: تعب قلبي | July 12, 2009 6:02 AM

Hi,
I'd encourage you to try out JumboTweet for writing longer tweets. It compliments Twitter well when you need to express yourself beyond 140 characters.
Cheers!

Posted by: Daniel Nabuch | July 24, 2009 1:55 PM