Now, I use Twhirl for tracking and responding to Twitter too.

Lack of Thread Monitoring

My biggest compliant or frustration with Twitter is the lack of "thread monitoring".

Here's the issue:
I'm following @smazurov on Twitter, and I see that he's posting comments on Twitter to someone that I'm not personally following. Example below is @smazurov is posting to a comment made to @xbrowne:

Now, since I'm NOT following @xbrowne, I can't see the original post that @smazurov is responding to unless I go directly to @xbrowne's twitter post.

I relate this to the equivalent of buying a movie ticket and only getting to listen to one actor in the movie. You miss all the other conversational context in which that actor is relating too.

Personally, I use Quotably.com to track conversations on Twitter. This is what Quotably is able to do for the conversation mentioned above:



Now I can see what Twitter post @smazurov was responding to, in addition, I can see what other people are involved in the quac-blocked conversation.

So the killer app for Twhirl is to provide the conversational thread monitoring in Twitter on Twhirl.

In the meantime - it's Twitter Me Insane. I'll keep spending my day between Twhirl, Quotably and Summize to try and get a real picture of what's happening on Twitter.

BTW, you can follow me on Twitter at:

http://www.twitter.com/jamesoclark

and stalk me Friendfeed at:

http://www.friendfeed.com/jamesclark

One part of our strategy was to get their co-founder Jon Gaskell signed up on Twitter and start posting updates, conversing and reaching out to influencers and consumers interested in SmartyPig.

Just recently Bailey posted on Twitter, that he liked the SmartyPig idea, but had reservations about it.

Jon responded immediately by adding the person as a friend and direct messaging them about SmartyPig's service.

The next Twit that was made by Bailey: "Just found out that SmartyPig co-founder is on Twitter - that takes away any worry that I have."

Winning over the customers, one client at a time. The idea is for Jon to speak to as many individuals one-to-one as possible. So rather than using mass broadcast media to reach millions, reach out to one person who will then reach out to 1,000s.