As Twitter becomes more entrenched, a growing number of people are using multiple accounts in their personal and professional lives. Personally, I’ve got three Twitter accounts that I use regularly, and two work-related accounts that are used from time to time.
This means having separate Twitter accounts that you have to bounce between to write and read message from each one. The solution is having one place where you easily manage and use all of them at the same time. Fortunately, there are a number of services hitting the market. Here are some the leading choices – all of them are free, although EasyTweets offers premium versions.
1. SplitTweet: A new player on the scene, SplitTweet is the best and most use-friendly multi-Twitter service. Developed by Albert Garcia Gibert, Alberta Lombarte Noria and Alberta Lopez Galvez, SplitTweet lets you set up multiple Twitter acounts in seconds.
You can see the Twitter stream for all of them with each account having a different color tag. You can send messages to one or more Twitter account by simply clicking on the account tabs beside the message box. As well, SplitTweet has a right-hand column that shows the messages of people who have responded to your Tweets so you don’t miss anything. For more, check out reviews from Killer Startups and Aaron Wall.
2. Digsby: A software download, that does Twitter and a whole lot more. The whole lot more includes social networks (Facebook, MySpace and Linked, e-mail (GMail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, POP and IMAP) accounts, as well as instant-messaging services (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc.)
Digsby had a good user interface with each account going into a “stack” that display your messages in a new box when you have over them. Digsby lets you reply to messages and provide status update updates. All in all, it’s a pretty good way to solve the multiple account problem. The only downside is it’s only available for Windows right now.
3. Matt: Developed by Ryan Caron’s Carsonified in four days for $10,000 as a corporate team-building exercise, Matt looks funky (lots of purple and wild graphics) that takes away from its usability. Like SplitTweet, you can quickly set up several Twitter accounts. Unlike SplitTweet, Matt is not as slick or use-friendly as SplitTweet but it works well most of the time. TechCrunch has more on how Matt was created.
4. EasyTweets: It has less frills and fewer design pizzazz as SplitTwee, Digsby and even Matt but it’s easy to set up. While you can write posts (including a way to post-date them), look at posts you’ve written and received, and see your followers, the big flaw is you can’t see your Twitter stream. The free version lets you manage up to three Twitter accounts with premium accounts selling for $24, $49 and $99 a month.
5. Twhirl: It’s not the idea approach but you set up multiple accounts in Twirl, and then open boxes for each account on your screen. It’s the approach I used before discovering SplitTweet.
Technorati Tags: twhirl, digsby, easytweets, splittweet, twitter
13 Comments
Mark, thanks for this. I've been using a hodge-podge approach myself. SplitTweet looks like it will serve my needs quite nicely. Great find!
Mark, what can I say? You're a legend. We are going to set up about 65 different Twitter accounts for clients but were afraid to budge until we saw this post. Thanks for the great work!!
George,
I'm always happy to put the spotlight on things to make Twitter easier to use. You can thank me by telling people about Twitterrati!
Glad you found it useful!
TwitterFox can manage multiple accounts too and it's pretty handy.
Brightkit just launched on Friday – it allows you to manage multiple twitter accounts, pre-schedule tweets & track stats. http://brightkit.com/
Jenn,
I've already signed up, and looking forward to checking it out. So far, so good as I was able to get all my Twitter accounts set up in just a couple of minutes.
Mark
Hey Mark,
Thanks for checking it out. Let us know what you think about it as you use it more, we'd love your feedback.
Hi Mark,
Great post. I just wanted to let you know about the new service we launched on Friday – BrightKit. BrightKit was developed with this exact problem in mind. Currently, BrightKit has 4 major features:
1) Manage Multiple Twitter accounts – you can add as many twitter accounts as you like.
2) Multiple editors per BrightKit account. This was designed with Agencies and Corporations in mind. If you have several people who tweet for a single twitter account, this allows you to give them access to the twitter account without having to give out your twitter password to them all, let editors view what tweets have been sent, as well as which are scheduled (so no double-ups, great transparency) and people can log in to the same profile simultaneously from different places
3) Analytics. Currently, we have analytics on how many times a link you've tweeted has been clicked. We have more analytics in the works that will be rolled out over the next couple of weeks.
4) Prescheduled tweets.
We'd love it if you checked out our new service and give us your feedback.
Good job. I never thought I'd need one, much less two Twitter accounts. But I do.
Great post..trying out Digsby and loving it so far…thanks!!!
I have done a lot of research and identifying the best tools to manage multiple twitter account. I have used several twitter tools for a week and compiled a comparison table. You can view a detailed comparison table here
Let me know your views on the same.
The twitter team allows you to have multiple accounts ? I ask you that just because the Facebook network, for example, allows you to have a single account.
However these tools are very effective and you can have the full control of these accounts in a very interesting way.
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