SocialWhale AKA “How Twitter Should Be”

I love Twitter. It is one of the most useful tools and a great source of information for a great number of topics. Either you are interested in celebrities and goship or development news, if you want to stay in touch with your friends or just promote your job, Twitter is a great way to do it. Even though being a great tool, Twitter lacks some user friendliness IMHO.

Twitter lacks some basic functionality that could really make it’s users life easier:

• The lack of retweet buttons (Twitter added this feature some days ago)
• Not being able to follow / unfollow someone directly from the timeline
• The plain simple textarea box with no shortcuts to major text editing options

are just some of the features that Twitter developers should reconsider adding to it. Thank god, Twitter provides a great API which made developing clients like SocialWhale possible.

What is Social Whale?

Social Whale is a privately funded start up from Greece. Founded in 2009, Social Whale tries to create an extended version of Twitter, where more advanced Twitter users can find more features than on classic Twitter. The project tries to create a Twitter API clone and extend it so that other Twitter clients will be able to collaborate with it too.

Social Whale is currently on a beta stage and you need to get invited in order to use the service. You can get invited either by following @SocialWhale on Twitter or by kindly asking a beta tester to invite you. We have 3 invites which we would be happy to give to anyone interested.

How is Social Whale better than Twitter?

Well, Social Whale is better because it provides most of Twitter’s missing features. One drawback is that it is bound by Twitter’s API limits but most of us (regular usage) will not notice it. Would you like to see what Social Whale does better than Twitter? The screenshot bellow will list some of them:

Here is an analysis of the features:

1,2) The Status Box re-invented

This is not the typical Twitter status box. As you can see, there is a bar of buttons beneath it. Starting from left to right, we have:

• Insert Image Button
  By clicking this button you can upload an image on Twitpic and use the URL generated from the service in your tweet without going around browser tabs to do it.
• Insert Special Char Button
  This one allows you to insert special chars (eg: ✽) in your tweets as described here.
• Shorten All URLs Button
  On the fly URL shortening. No need to go to external sites to shorten an URL in order to not exceed the 140 chars limit. Just click the button and all URLs in the Status box will be shortened at once, leaving valuable chars space left for your text.
• Post to Groups Button
  Groups is a Social Whale feature where you can assign your tweets. More on Groups later in this article.
• Check Spelling Button
  English, German, Italian, French, Finnish, Swedish and Greek languages are supported.

3) The Update Button

This is the typical Update button that you know from Twitter. The only difference is that it allows you to post something if it exceeds 140 chars. If the tweet includes a full URL, Social Whale will try to shorten it and then it tries to post to Twitter.

4) New Tweets Message

Anytime a new tweet is posted, this message informs you about the number of new tweets. It is not needed to click on it for new tweets to appear though. A visual clue about new tweets is displayed (6).

5) Timeline Select

You can choose which timeline to view with this select box. There are currently 4 major timelines to follow. These are:

• Friends Timeline
• Groups published
• Groups recent
• User Lists
  This one allows you to view a the timeline of a list you follow. It lists all your lists and the ones you follow.

6) New Tweets clue

A visual clue for new tweets.

7) Groups

Groups is a special Social Whale feature. It assigns tweets on groups based on…(Info from the developers needed)

8) Hash Tags Definitions

Each time a hash tag is available on a tweet, a blue icon appears on which when you mouse over, a tooltip appears where you can find a small definition about the tag and statistics.

9) API Usage Stats

A panel where API usage information is displayed. You can leverage the API usage by choosing update intervals.

10) People Search

A checkbox which once checked, will turn the search box into a people search box.

Wait, there’s more

Social Whale is more than that. More features are there for you to use. Do you miss your saved searches and trending topics? Just click on the search box:

Do you want to check new followers and quitters? Hover your followers link:

Retweeting in Social Whale is as simple as clicking a button, revising the tweet to be retweeted and click Update:

A Twitter Client or Something Bigger?

Social Whale can be set to :

• Post to and collaborate with other networks like:
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • Identi.ca
  • Youtube
  • Digg
  • Flickr
  • MySpace
  • Blogger
  • LinkedIn
  • Google
  • Picasa
• Shorten URLs with one of the 12 URL shortening services.

Popularity: 2%

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