Twitter Tech

Ok, so I’ve made my points clear about twittering schools, but I’ve been finding that I am using twitter more and more.  I check my phone probably every hour out of work.  I see what other are saying about the telly programme I’m watching and I now seem to use it as my main source of news.

I’m really interested in what people follow, and what makes someone click a link.  The problem with twitter is that you can’t really see any stats.  I know who is following me (all twelve of them) but I don’t know who is reading my tweets without following.  But more than that, what do people look at, and possibly most importantly, what do they ignore?

I found that through two bits of technology I could create my own URL shortening service, and my own twitter image host I could see stats on who, where and when people look at my content.

For my URL shortening service I found yoURLs.  I’ve made mine private, but you can use it to host a public shortener link bit.ly, goo.gl and tinyurl.com.  Even better you can install a plugin to wordpress, which will create a short URL for every post, and then automatically tweet a link when it is published.

For my image host, I’ve turned once again to wordpress (which is simply the best blogging platform ever created) and a plugin simply called twitter-image-host.  After authorising it with twitter, you can use it in your mobile app, or desktop client to host your twitter pics.

Both need a short domain name to start with though.  I chose IrTe.eu and IrTe.tv.  Both don’t cost the earth.  I used the first two letters of Irritable and Techy to make up my snappy FQDNs.

Just one problem.  I do most of my twittering from my phone.  Although twitter for iPhone does allow a custom image host, it doesn’t allow a custom URL shortener.  Because twitter now provide their own.  All very good, but you lose those stats.

After much googling, I found the app which best suited me was TweetBot.  It allows multiple twitter accounts, individual settings for each, and crucially custom image host and sURL service.  It looks pretty nice too, although not quite as clean as others.

It did however take me a long time to work out how to use my yoURLs service within tweetbot.  I finally found a site in German which explained it.  If German isn’t your language, here is the string you need…

http://YOURDOMAIN.COM/yourls-api.php?signature=YOURSECRETSIG&format=simple&action=shorturl&url=%@

You can find your secret signature in the admin section of your yoURL instalation.

I can now do everything I want to do, automatically within an iPhone app and not rely on any service except for my own, and twitter!  I’m such a geek.