The first thing I noticed when I came across this tool was that the web has got one more “Just Another Twitter Tool”, and when I actually used this tool, I noticed pretty much the same. There was certainly something missing as I generally look out for break through features that will help our readers to know more about the tool.
Brands going social on twitter is a passé. Now we are interested in knowing how well they are using twitter and its tools to leverage on Social Media. Twextter is not the only tool when the question is of how the tool facilitates the effective usage of your brand on Social Media.
Here is why I think this tool is not so effective doing Social Media
1. Brands on Social Media:
Doing polls, trivia or rating updates will always require a tool which is better in terms of the interface and ease of usage which Twextter lacks. Also there are many tools in the market that do the same or more and have better interfaces.
2. Quality of reports:
The whole idea of doing an activity on twitter is that it should generate results. Results that are comprehensive and that give a better idea to a Social Media Marketer about the returns of the activity are the need of the hour.
3. HashTags:
The tool uses hastags to keep a check. For e.g. “#reply”, if there is any reply to be checked on. My concern is what if I want to see replies to only my questions. A new hastag would do, but then this hash tagging business can also be done without using this tool.
4. Statistics:
There is nothing noteworthy in the statistics this tool offers in terms of the quality and detailing of the reports that are required. Also knowing how many people responded would not suffice for the whole activity
5. Complexity:
Twextter as a tool is not that clear in terms of what all can be done because of its complexity. Raising the complexity issue I believe that the tool has not been explained properly. For e.g. there is a Custom SMS Integration feature which you may not notice unless you dig the whole tool like I did.
There is nothing noteworthy or remarkable about this tool that will add up to your list of the best twitter tools. No wonder one would not want to use this app because of the user interface, design and complexity issues. Our message to the developer would be to look out for something which is original and unique and at the same time is user friendly too.
Thanks for the review. Its good to get feedback – even the tough kind. Clearly we have not done a good job of explaining the tool.
I will try and address some items here:
1) Ease of use and similar products – On the ease of use issue we'll take a look at how we can simplify the user flow further – there is primarily just one feature – i.e. creating tweets via the form on the home page – except that these tweets are in the form of poll, trivia or rate. Many tools offer the same poll, trivia, rate feature – all the apps on twitter that enable this require users to click thru to URLs to respond. Our app has been made specifically with SMS interaction in mind. Users can reply purely with SMS using a specific format – for example – @twitterid #reply 1 a/b/c. This reply format is exactly the same whether user is on SMS, web or using a client.
2) Quality of reports – this is certainly not intended to be an analytics tool.
3) Hashtags – In order to check replies to only your poll, trivia or rate tweet you can go to the Statistics page on twextter and see the statistics for each of the poll, trivia or rates that you created. The #reply is only used by us to "listen" to the twitter-sphere and pick out the relevant tweets to compile statistics (which is done automatically by the app and compiled for the user so they do not need to look out for #reply to figure out how people are responding). We need to do a better job of explaining this for sure.
4) Statistics are very basic – we'll see what feedback we get and improve as needed. The statistics for now just provide an aggregate score similar to what you find on various SMS contests.
5) Complexity – the ball is in our court on this one. One note on this is that the tool was built based on discussion with digital agencies and their interest in SMS campaigns and combining these with twitter campaigns. We will be working with our agency partners as they employ this tool in their twitter/sms campaigns. Again the key emphasis is to use the application under the correct use cases – the use case I would emphasize is for EVENTS where you may want to engage users and have them participate via twitter via their cell phones and using pure SMS (so users do not need data enabled phones/plans). See our note on this use case on this page: http://twextter.cellzapp.com/twexts/about.html and again we emphasize any Agency/Brand that would like to try out this app for an upcoming Event can contact us and we would be happy to help.
Lots of work on our end but thanks for the review.