Twitter and a Mobile Phone

Have you ever wondered what it takes to integrate Twitter and a mobile phone? This guide will walk you through the required steps to post or receive Twitter updates from and to your mobile phone.

Twitter vs. E-mail

Using the popular blogging application known as Twitter with a mobile phone is a wonderful thing. The ability to remotely post updates to your Twitter page when you are mobile is an amazing technological achievement, and it opens up the door to a whole range of possible applications. You could post updates for friends and family to read while you're hiking up a remote mountain, or you can read all of the latest gossip that your friends are posting while you're traveling home from College for the holidays.

Regardless how you intent to use it, going Twitter with mobile is going to change how you communicate with people in a very positive way. But the first step is to connect to Twitter using your mobile device. The following procedures will walk you through posting updates to your Twitter account, or receiving updates from your Twitter friends.

Whether you want to use your phone to post updates or receive updates via your phone, the first step is to add your phone to your Twitter account. Keep in mind that this approach requires the use of text messaging from your phone. If you'd prefer to avoid text message charges, or you have a device that's set up to handle email but not SMS, then you may want to look into a service like TwitterMail, which lets you post updates to your Twitter account through a specially configured email address. However, if you're okay with using text messages to interface Twitter with your mobile phone, then walk through the following steps.

1. From your main Twitter page, click on "settings"
2. Click on Devices
3. Type in your cell phone number preceded with a "+" and click "Save"
4. You will be assigned a phone number, and you'll receive a verification code
5. Text the code to the Twitter phone number that was displayed in the settings page
6. Once you've verified your phone, anything you text to that same phone number will automatically get published as a Twitter update on your account

Once you've verified your phone using the instructions above, you can immediately start receiving updates from people that you're following by enabling phone notifications by texting specific codes to the Twitter phone number.

• "ON" - Twitter will send updates from everyone you're following to your mobile device
• "OFF" - Turns off all notifications
• "ON user" - Replacing "user" with the user name of the person you're following enables your phone to receive updates from a specific person (texting "FOLLOW user" will do the same thing)
• "OFF user" - This turns off notifications coming from a specific person (texting "LEAVE user" will do the same thing)

There are also some very cool codes you can text to Twitter in order to interact with other people through your mobile phone.

• Typing "@user" followed by the message will post a reply to your Twitter friend
• "D user" followed by a message sends a private message to your friend
• "GET user" obtains your friend's latest Twitter update

If you are lucky enough to have a web enabled PDA or mobile phone, another way many people prefer to connect to Twitter is through Twitter's mobile webpage. Not only will this avoid any extra text messaging charges, but the mobile web interface offers a more visual interaction with Twitter than the text commands offer. Additionally, the mobile Twitter page has more of the look and feel of the original web page, and it allows you to quickly scroll down through your friends and all of their updates instantly. The navigational menu incorporates your number pad, or you can use arrow keys or a touch screen if your device has one.

Mobile technology, and in particular mobile access to the Internet, is advancing rapidly. People can now email, have an IM chat, or blog from their PDA or cellphone. It only makes sense that Twitter would follow suit, but Twitter's entire format of short and quick updates lends itself especially well to this sort of mobile use.

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