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.

which IMHO is the best option.

Clicking the “Yes” button will automatically retweet it without letting you add some info or your personal opinion about it. The retweeted text doesn’t even show up on your public timeline. A retweeted message appears like this on your personal timeline:

A new section has been created for you to track your RTs and you can access this section by clicking on the Retweets link under your accounts choices:

Clicking on this link will show you the RTs section:

You are also allowed to Undo the RT (not quite sure why though).The tabs are good for tracking your RTs and see who has retweeted your tweets but the first tab is something that a lot of people might find confusing. What does “Retweets by others” mean? Obviously it is a place to track who has also retweeted something you retweeted from it’s original source.

Even if the RT section is something Twitter users were asking for years ago, Twitter seems to get things wrong. People don’t need just a button to click and RT. People need a tool that will let them choose the options and the text of the retweeted message.

The Whale Way

A great implementation of the RT button has been applied on Social Whale a long time ago allowing you to prepare your RT message:

If you don’t know what Social Whale is yet, wait for our next post, where we will have a full review of this awesome Twitter web client.

Meme, got it’s place in the YQL and we will show you here how to manage your meme account from your own site.

First of all you need to download this file. It is a php library that manages queries to the YQL with PHP. It also includes the oAuth library and a JSON parser. The next step is to create an API key to use with the library. We have to note that some features don’t need to get an API key to use them.

Getting an API from Yahoo

So lets explain what YQL is. YQL is an SQL like language. So the basic syntax is exactly the same as SQL. An example query is this:

select * from weather.forecast where location=90210

The YQL is based on data tables. Meme is the last addition to the data tables provided by Yahoo.

Lets move to some code. We first need to write some code that will query the YQL service and your meme account in general.

The Query:

function query($yql) {

require_once "Yahoo.inc";
$app = new YahooApplication($clientKey,$sharedKey);
$response = $app->client->get(
sprintf("http://%s/v1/yql",
QUERY_WS_HOSTNAME),
array('q' => $yql, 'format' => 'xml'), 30);

if(is_null($response) || $response["code"] != 200) {
return NULL;
}

$resultSet = $response["responseBody"];

return $resultSet;
}

The $clientKey and $sharedKey variables are the ones you got from the Yahoo API generator page. The function above will manage the queries to the YQL service. You can save these vars in a database table and call them whenever you need them.

We also see that we set the response to be xml. I like working with arrays than xml in PHP. So, we will create another function that will parse xml code to array (Credits for this function should be given to the author but i lost the referring URL to the author’s site. If it is yours please contact with us to get the credit) :

function xml2array($contents, $get_attributes = 1, $priority = 'tag'){
$parser = xml_parser_create('');
xml_parser_set_option($parser, XML_OPTION_TARGET_ENCODING, "UTF-8");
xml_parser_set_option($parser, XML_OPTION_CASE_FOLDING, 0);
xml_parser_set_option($parser, XML_OPTION_SKIP_WHITE, 1);
xml_parse_into_struct($parser, trim($contents), $xml_values);
xml_parser_free($parser);
if (!$xml_values)
return; //Hmm...
$xml_array = array ();
$parents = array ();
$opened_tags = array ();
$arr = array ();
$current = & $xml_array;
$repeated_tag_index = array ();
foreach ($xml_values as $data)
{
unset ($attributes, $value);
extract($data);
$result = array ();
$attributes_data = array ();
if (isset ($value))
{
if ($priority == 'tag')
$result = $value;
else
$result['value'] = $value;
}
if (isset ($attributes) and $get_attributes)
{
foreach ($attributes as $attr => $val)
{
if ($priority == 'tag')
$attributes_data[$attr] = $val;
else
$result['attr'][$attr] = $val; //Set all the attributes in a array called 'attr'
}
}
if ($type == "open")
{
$parent[$level -1] = & $current;
if (!is_array($current) or (!in_array($tag, array_keys($current))))
{
$current[$tag] = $result;
if ($attributes_data)
$current[$tag . '_attr'] = $attributes_data;
$repeated_tag_index[$tag . '_' . $level] = 1;
$current = & $current[$tag];
}
else
{
if (isset ($current[$tag][0]))
{
$current[$tag][$repeated_tag_index[$tag . '_' . $level]] = $result;
$repeated_tag_index[$tag . '_' . $level]++;
}
else
{
$current[$tag] = array (
$current[$tag],
$result
);
$repeated_tag_index[$tag . '_' . $level] = 2;
if (isset ($current[$tag . '_attr']))
{
$current[$tag]['0_attr'] = $current[$tag . '_attr'];
unset ($current[$tag . '_attr']);
}
}
$last_item_index = $repeated_tag_index[$tag . '_' . $level] - 1;
$current = & $current[$tag][$last_item_index];
}
}
elseif ($type == "complete")
{
if (!isset ($current[$tag]))
{
$current[$tag] = $result;
$repeated_tag_index[$tag . '_' . $level] = 1;
if ($priority == 'tag' and $attributes_data)
$current[$tag . '_attr'] = $attributes_data;
}
else
{
if (isset ($current[$tag][0]) and is_array($current[$tag]))
{
$current[$tag][$repeated_tag_index[$tag . '_' . $level]] = $result;
if ($priority == 'tag' and $get_attributes and $attributes_data)
{
$current[$tag][$repeated_tag_index[$tag . '_' . $level] . '_attr'] = $attributes_data;
}
$repeated_tag_index[$tag . '_' . $level]++;
}
else
{
$current[$tag] = array (
$current[$tag],
$result
);
$repeated_tag_index[$tag . '_' . $level] = 1;
if ($priority == 'tag' and $get_attributes)
{
if (isset ($current[$tag . '_attr']))
{
$current[$tag]['0_attr'] = $current[$tag . '_attr'];
unset ($current[$tag . '_attr']);
}
if ($attributes_data)
{
$current[$tag][$repeated_tag_index[$tag . '_' . $level] . '_attr'] = $attributes_data;
}
}
$repeated_tag_index[$tag . '_' . $level]++; //0 and 1 index is already taken
}
}
}
elseif ($type == 'close')
{
$current = & $parent[$level -1];
}
}
return ($xml_array);
}

Now all we have to do is query the YQL service.

Notes:

The $guid variable is an alphanumeric 26 chars long hash. For example Jeez Tech’s guid is : 3FLGPU5NXTTGNZYK76WX2DD5SQ

The $locale variable is used to set the country locale of which you need data.

Get the followers of a meme:

function getFollowers($guid){
$yql = 'SELECT * FROM meme.followers WHERE owner_guid="'.$guid.'"';
$results = query($yql);
$results = xml2array($results);
return $results['query'];
}

Get a list of people this meme follows:

function getFollowing($guid){
$yql = 'SELECT * FROM meme.following WHERE owner_guid="'.$guid.'"';
$results = query($yql);
$results = xml2array($results);
return $results['query'];
}

Search in meme:

function searchMeme($query){
$yql = 'SELECT * FROM meme.memes WHERE query="'.$query.'"';
$results = query($yql);
$results = xml2array($results);
return $results['query'];
}

Get the Popular List:

function getPopular($locale){
$yql = 'SELECT * FROM meme.popular WHERE locale="'.$locale.'"';
$results = query($yql);
$results = xml2array($results);
return $results['query'];
}

Get the Timeline of a meme:

function getTimeline($guid){
$yql = 'SELECT * FROM meme.posts WHERE owner_guid="'.$guid.'"';
$results = query($yql);
$results = xml2array($results);
return $results['query'];
}

Get your Dashboard:

function getDashboard(){
$yql = 'SELECT * FROM meme.user.dashboard';
$results = query($yql);
$results = xml2array($results);
return $results['query'];
}

Follow a meme:

function follow($guid){
$yql = 'INSERT INTO meme.user.following (guid) VALUES ("'.$guid.'")';
$results = query($yql);
$results = xml2array($results);
return $results['query'];
}

You can use all of the above functions like this:

$followers = getFollowers('GUID HERE');

We would like to have some commentary on this one and maybe the development of a Wordpress plugin would be nice. Any volunteers?

What is meme?

For those who are not aware of meme, it is a Twitter like service that does not restrict you on 140 chars when posting something.I also allows you to post images, video or audio files and your posts will go around without you having to be a part of any specific social network. You also keep the credit for your discoveries and creations or at least this is what the about page says.

The interface

It has a clear interface with big descriptive buttons on what each one does. This, unlike Twitter is closest to my likings:

The repost and comment buttons are just where they should be and so does the Follow button.

Functionality

Meme supports trending topics (like Twitter) but it relies more on reposts (Retweets) than hashwords (preceded by #). Following a person is plain simple. You just have to search for something you want, for example “web developer” and it will show you all users that describe themselves as web developers.

Some shortcuts are there too. You can repost something and add a comment on it by just clicking a button. You can also see who reposted something as well as how many times it was reposted.

Meme also supports themes. At the moment you can choose from 6 ready made themes:

My impressions

The first impressions was excellent. Some functionality like a trending topics sidebar, saved searches and direct messaging would be wonderful additions but it is still in Alpha Version. So we should wait to see if this service evolves as a Twitter killer.

Do you want an invitation?

By signing up, you have 7 invitations to invite your friends. We can invite the first seven visitors that will comment on this article and ask for an invitation.

Addition:

It uses your Yahoo! profile. So if you want to set some things for people to see, you should edit your profile on Yahoo profiles.

Jaiku

Jaiku is another micro-blogging tool and great alternative to Twitter. The functionality of Jaiku is similar to Twitter and Pownce, including the ability to import RSS feeds into your stream. Unlike Pownce, you cannot message files to other users. Another downside was that the service had been invite only since Google acquired it in October 2007 but things seem to have changed since then.

Friendfeed

FriendFeed is a social aggregator rather than a microblogging tool. However, backed with a strong and growing community, users can post to their FriendFeed lifestream just like on Twitter in addition to importing RSS feeds and various content shared on other social networks. Recently the service has added “rooms”, which can function like groups and restrict certain messages or items to a select group of individuals.

Brightkite

Brightkite is a mobile social network that extends Twitter-like functionality to its users. Essentially, users can update the service via their mobile phone and post location statuses along with a note or an image of their choice. Unlike the other alternate services, there’s no simple way to reply to another user.

tumblr.

Tumblr is a very clean, slick micro-blogging platform. Its focus is on simplicity and elegance. Similar to Pownce, users can share a variety of things, including text, photos, quotes, links, chats, or even videos.

Hictu

Hictu is a service for video microbloggers. A webcam and a mouse-click are all that is needed to create a videopost. This streamlined solution saves time and effort for traditional vloggers.

MoodMill

Moodmill is a way to express your mood or current state of being. A sliding scale facilitates this process, while a quick text update completes the personalized service.

Identi.ca

Identi.ca is a micro-blogging service based on the Free Software StatusNet tool.
If you register for an account, you can post small (140 chars or less) text notices about yourself, where you are, what you’re doing, or practically anything you want. You can also subscribe to the notices of your friends, or other people you’re interested in, and follow them on the Web or in an RSS feed.

Yonkly

Yonkly allows anyone to create a microblog about anything.
While Twitter requires users to update their friends with the question, “What are you doing right now?”
Yonkly gives the user freedom to ask and answer any question, as well as customize many other features of the Yonkly microblogging platform.