SmartBrief Editor Rebecca Pollack is taking it all in at SXSW and bringing back the stuff that matters to SmartBrief on Social Media readers.
Fresh out of the Monday keynote, the disappointment over the conversation between Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab, was palpable in the Austin Convention Center. But the mood shifted when the crowd in the Twitter Indispensable Tools Seminar got an afternoon pick-me-up from Guy Kawasaki and his handpicked panel of experts, who joked around while sharing their top Twitter tools.
Laura Fitton, CEO and founder of oneforty.com, has reviewed 2,558 Twitter tools. The three she uses most often?
- SimplyTweet, an iPhone Twitter client that is “fast and lightweight.”
- Twhirl, an oldie-but-goodie desktop client, based on Adobe’s AIR client.
- Brizzly, a feed of “live news from people who know what’s going on.”
John Yamasaki, community evangelist at Seesmic, says he prefers:
- Tweetie, a mobile app that lets users manage more than one account and is noted for usability. Tweetie was mentioned by almost all experts on the panel.
- Seesmic, his company, which is a Twitter client for desktops, the Web and mobile platforms. He also said Seesmic is developing more apps for the iPhone.
Nick Halstead, CEO of TweetMeme, says he likes:
- FriendOrFollow.com, a tool used to find out who you’re following who’s not following you back. Nick says he “can’t cope with following more than 300 people,” and, personally, I don’t blame him.
- CoTweet, for corporate tweeters, allows multiple users to stay in sync while managing accounts.
- Echofon, another oldie-but-goodie iPhone Twitter app.
Amita Paul, founder of Objective Marketer, says she uses:
- Objective Marketer, software developed by Paul’s company as a campaign-management system for social marketing.
- TweetMeme, a tweet aggregator that shows popular links.
Bonus panelist Robert Scoble of Rackspace, an IT hosting company.
- Listerious, a tool to find the “best-of” accounts to follow by subject.
- Redux, a site called “a FriendFeed/Twitter/YouTube mashup” by Mashable.
As moderator, Alltop founder Guy Kawasaki didn’t share his favorites at SXSW, but we already know his Twitter secrets, which were shared last summer at SmartBrief’s Buzz2009 event in Washington, D.C. You’ll definitely recognize one of them![youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnYs6H9B9LQ[/embed]
Image credit, jmarkow, via Shutterstock