Gmail Tip: Twitter Gadget
Twitter is has become a crucial part of my online life: I use it for my personal brand management, as a news source, and as a resource for answering any questions I might have. When I’m on the go, I use the popular Twitter client Tweetie on my iPhone,but when I’m sitting at my computer I use the Twitter Gadget for Gmail. I prefer using the web interface simply because it’s extremely lightweight — and I have yet to find a desktop client that I like.
Having Twitter inside Gmail is awesome. It’s a simple text box that sits in the lower left-hand corner of my Gmail window. I keep Gmail open in a tab all day, so whenever I want to tweet something, I simply pop over to my Gmail tab, scroll down and type in my message. I end up using other computers a lot, and it’s much easier to log into just one account, Gmail, instead of two separate accounts, Gmail and Twitter.
I also have a URL-shortening gadget installed in my Gmail that resides directly above my Twitter gadget, which makes tweeting even more dreamy. I can shorten a link and post it without ever navigating to a new window.
The gadget’s feature set is everything you need (from its site):
- OAuth authentication, your Twitter account password is not required.
- Supports multiple Twitter accounts*
- Mark all as read (like Google Reader)*
- Automatically refresh
- Reply, Re-tweet inline
- View reply to inline
- Gmail look and feel
- SSL support*
- Share tweets with your friends(your Gmail friends group’ contacts)*
- Twitter Search
(*These features are awesome!)
To install the Twitter Gmail Gadget:
- Navigate to the “Settings” section of your Gmail
- Click the “Labs” tab
- Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to the “Add any gadget by URL” and click the “Enable” radio button
- Click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page
- In the “Settings” of your Gmail you should now have a “Gadget” tab. Click on it.
- In the “Add Gadgets by URL” box paste: “http://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml” and then click the “Add” button.
- You should now have a Twitter gadget on the left-hand side of your Gmail. Enter your Twitter username and password, let it authenticate, and you’re good to go.
What Gmail gadgets do you use?
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
I’m not sure I should try this — could adding twitter into Gmail make it tempting to twitter too often and not get work done?
@Meryl yeah it might actually cause a distraction. have to have willpower to have it in there
Oh, I’m SOOOO tempted. Meryl & Jenny, I understand all too well. Can’t…tear…self…away!!!!! It’s sounding like I need a Twitter support group
@Meryl no more distracting than twhirl popping up a notification every 5 minutes :)
@Grouptivity and Jenny — That does it. I am not loading the gadget in Gmail. I am in Twitter enough as is without any help from apps. Only time I use Twitter apps is when I participate in a chat.
@Simon, that’s why I don’t use Twhirl, Tweetdeck or anything outside of Twitter web. I learned my lesson the first time I downloaded them.
I much prefer the “real” TwitterGadget, http://www.twittergadget.com, much more polished, with a much more advanced feature set (including integrated URL shortening, media upload, inline media preview, reverse short URL lookup, integrated search, follow, unfollow, keyboard shortcuts, @ reply autocomplete), to name a few ;-)
http://www.twittergadget.com/how_to_install.html
Which URL shortening gadget do you have setup?
You can check out one more useful tool – CloudBerry Twitter plug-in for IE and for FireFox that helps you to post excerpts from the websites you visit with a click of the button and attach a short URL to the source page http://twitter.cloudberrylab.com/
@jerrykidd i use bitly’s url shortner gmail plugin and love it
Great post. Can you share how you configure multiple twitter accounts with this gadget?
Thanks again.