Yesterday I posted a first impressions review of the popular Twitter script Hummingbird. One of the things I didn’t realise when I wrote my review yesterday was just how great HummingBird is for managing multiple Twitter accounts.

As I mentioned yesterday, in addition to my personal Twitter account, I have about 4 other accounts which I use to keep my blog readers updated of the latest posts on my blogs. I don’t check these accounts as much though.

It’s not that I don’t want to use these accounts to interact with readers, it’s just very timeconsuming to monitor so many accounts as you need to sign in, check for @replies, reply to those who tagged you, post an update and then sign out. You then need to do this all again with the other accounts.

Hummingbird makes this whole process incredibly easy. The script is pretty much a basic browser with Twitter functions built in. So unlike other scripts which just access the Twitter API to post updates, Hummingbird lets you use and update Twitter in the same way you would on FireFox, Opera or Internet Explorer.

However, what makes the whole process quicker is the Twitter accounts feature. Once you have added all your accounts to HummingBird you simply need to click on the account you want to use. The script will then automatically sign you out of your current account and sign you into the next one. I know this doesn’t sound like much but it really does speed up the process of checking multiple accounts.

Although I have applications like TweetDeck and Twhirl on my pc and have installed some FireFox Twitter plugins, I use the Twitter home page to post updates and check my @replies about 95% of the time.

Today I have been instead tweeting from the HummingBird client itself and I love it. It’s saving me a lot of time and making my twittering much more productive, something which I am always trying to improve.

The only slight downside is that when you are using HummingBird to mass follow or unfollow, you can’t use it for twittering. So you would have to do your twittering on your regular browser. It’s not really a major problem to be honest though I thought I’d point it out.

Do any readers have multiple Twitter accounts? If so, please leave a comment and let us know how you manage them all

Thanks,
Kevin

I have been looking at a lot of Twitter software recently. Some are pretty cheap and cost under $30, others charge monthly payments of $99. HummingBird is somewhere inbetween. At $197 it isn’t exactly cheap however there is only a one time fee. And if it’s what you are looking for, it might prove to be a bargain.

HummingBird is a product that I have been looking at for about a month now. In short, the script helps you follow and unfollow users in mass at the click of a button. It doesn’t access the Twitter Api so it won’t slow down like other scripts. Instead, HummingBird simulates how a regular person would follow and unfollow someone via their browser, however it does it all for you automatically.

I actually went through the checkout stage a few weeks ago but I was simultaneously reading 3 or 4 reviews of the software at the same time and 2 of those were negative, which put me off from hitting the buy button.

For some reason, this software is dividing opinions. The main criticisms are :

• It’s costly : It is. There’s no denying that at a wholesale value of $197, HummingBird isn’t cheap. I agree with many people that it should be selling for around $50 or under. The developers intentionally increased the price of the script so that they could give affiliates more commission. And it has worked!
• Affiliates are spamming everyone : Hummingbird is being linked by loads of twitterers, many of whom are doing so to claim back the money spent on their product. I’ve read a few articles from bloggers claiming that the developers are not only condoning it, they are encouraging it. I’m not sure if this is the case though.
• The script features can be found elsewhere for free : I read several articles saying that the script is just not worth it and that the majority of features can be found elsewhere for free. Which was good news to me as it meant that I didn’t have to spend a lot of money to use those tools however, none of the articles actually told you where you could get these tools for free.

The fact of the matter is : the script is costly and many affiliates are spamming their followers. However, I haven’t seen any other sites offer what HummingBird does.

Therefore I took the plunge and bought the script. One of the main things that persuaded me to try the script out was this review from John Chow. In particular, his video convinced me it was worth the purchase. In it John walks you through the software and shows you exactly what the script can do.

Check it out for yourself below
* The volume is pretty low in the video so you might have to turn your speaker volume up more than usual to hear it clearly.

The video above should give you an idea of how HummingBird can help you build followers by following other users. Is this what you are looking for?

Is Hummingbird Worth It?

The question ‘Is Hummingbird Worth It?’ is what most people are asking. I think the question should really be ‘Is Hummingbird Worth It To You?’, as it really depends on what you are looking to achieve with your Twitter account.

Building a large follower list by following other people is not something I plan on doing with my personal Twitter account.

However, I have about 4 other ‘News Bot’ Twitter accounts at the moment which I use to post updates from my blogs to readers (for example, @Time_To_Tweet). I want to build large follower lists with these accounts as it means that more people are being updated about my latest articles. Up until now I have been doing this manually, which is tediously timeconsuming.

Which is why I am so impressed with HummingBird. Time is something which is very important to me. I am trying to maintain and promote 3 or 4 blogs and sites at the moment. Building the twitter accounts associated to these sites is something which I want to do, however I don’t want to spend countless hours trying to achieve it.

Put simply, this script does everything I am looking to do with Twitter with these accounts at the moment :

• It lets me manage multiple accounts.
• It lets me mass unfollow without removing those who are following me.
• It lets me mass unfollow without removing VIPs i.e. people I don’t want to unfollow.
• It lets me mass follow without trying to follow people I have already followed and unfollowed. This will stop me annoying users and run the risk of getting banned from Twitter for abusing it.
• It’s all automated. I just select someones list of followers which closely resemble my target group and click ‘follow all’ or remove those who aren’t following me by clicking my own following list and clicking ‘unfollow all’.

The script is by no means perfect. There are some features which I’d love to see like the ability to schedule follows a week or month in advance, something which I think would be great as because of the 1,000 daily follow limit the script has to stop after a while. If you could schedule a list if people to follow then it could automatically start following them the next time you load the application.

I’ve been using it for less than a day so time will tell if this purchase will prove to be worthwhile. However, so far I have been incredibly impressed with HummingBird and I’m sure it will help me build up a large follower count on some of my Twitter accounts (including the one for this blog!).

I will do a follow up post on my progress within the next week and let you know the best way to get the most out of HummingBird.

If you are interested in purchasing the script then please make sure you use the discount code RECESSION. This code will give you a 15% discount and will bring the cost of the script down to $167.45 (A saving of $29.55). I am not 100% sure but I believe it expires at the end of May 2009.

If you have any questions about the script or would like to see a screenshot of a specific area, please let me know

Link : HummingBird

Disclaimer

I need to put my hands up at this point and admit that I accidentally downloaded a cracked copy of the script first. However, it was not intentional. You see, many websites were telling readers to try the 36 hour demo of the script first to see if they liked it however the download page did not give you a temporary license and nothing was included in the zip either. I later read a lot of comments from people saying that the trial offer had expired.

One blogger said that you could still download the trial version of the script elsewhere and I found one on a torrent site. It was marked as the trial version and after downloading and installing it, the script said I had 36 hours left. However, the zip also containted a crack folder which had a cracked version of the hummingbir.exe file.

I was really impressed with the trial though and purchased the script this morning. I know that HummingBird is expensive however I would strongly discourage you all from downloading an illegal version of the script for a few reasons :

• You won’t get new updates to the script (apparently they are adding a lot of new features soon).
• You won’t get full support at Twitter Pro Forum.
• You could get yourself into a lot of trouble should the developers find out you are using an illegal copy.
• Last but not least, it’s wrong!

To some of you, this will fall on deaf ears however for the rest of you, I hope it convinces you that it isn’t worth downloading an illegal copy, particularly since you will probably be using a very old version of the script.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this review

Kevin

Are your tweets precious to you? If so, you might be interested in backing up all of your tweets using a Twitter Backup Service. Something which could prove valuable one day if for some reason your account is suspended or hacked.

In this post I will look at 3 services which will help you back your tweets up. I hope you find them useful

Twitter Backup

A good script from Johann Burkard, Twitter Backup is a downloadable tool which backups all of your tweets in XML format.

Link : Backup Twitter Tweets with TwitterBackup

Tweetake

Tweetake lets you backup your Followers, Friends, Favourites, Tweets, Direct Messages or everything. All you need to do is enter your Twitter username and password and then hit the ‘Get Em’ button.

You may take a little time to download, depending on how active you are on Twitter. I have just under 1,000 tweets and it took a minute or so before it let me choose the download location. The file was 1.3mb in size and was in CSV format so you can view the data easily on a spreadsheet application like Exel.

Link : Tweetake

TweetBackup

TweetBackup is an online service which doesn’t require you to download or install any files. It downloads backups for your account daily. You can export posts in RSS, Text and HTML format but unlike Tweetake, you cannot export friends or follower lists.

The only requirement they have is that you need to follow @tweetbackup. If you don’t your account will be deleted (their words, not mine!).

Link : TweetBackup

Overview

I’m not sure how necessary it is to back up your tweets but if Twitter is important to your business it might be prudent to backup occasionally. I thought Tweetake was the most pracitcal as it lets you download tweets, friends, followers, messages and more. With it’s daily online backups, TweetBackup is probably the easiest to use.

Another service I came across was TwitterSafe though it’s been down for maintenence for a week or so now (I will review it once it goes live).

Which backup service do you prefer?

Kevin

Google Alerts is a very useful site which a lot of webmasters use to track references to their websites, products or themselves. TweetBeep is the Twitter equivalent.

It emails you with hourly or daily updates with any reference to a specific keyword you are tracking. You can make your keyword alert as general or as specific as you want. You can choose whether a specific person references a keyword, whether there is a link included and even exclude alerts if a certain keyword is included in the tweet.

It’s a great service for tracking a product or website you are running and one which I’m sure a lot of you will find useful

Link : TweetBeep