Jon Upchurch

So I’m becoming more acclimated with Twitter, and I make use of some tools that are out there to manage my account.  I use a service that automatically sends a Direct Message greeting new followers.  That same service also automatically follows people who follow me (I’m going to address this in another article to come soon since it’s been a topic of discussion lately!). That same service wants $30 monthly to automate posting (and scheduled posting) of tweets!  I check a service that tells me who I’m following that’s not following me and who’s following me that I’m not following.

Now, I use my Twitter accounts (and I have several @jonupchurch, @1upwebdev, and I manage a few for clients as well) for multiple things.  I’m not spamming about Multi-Level Marketing, 2647 ways to get a bajillion followers in just 3 days on Twitter, or anything like that.  I use it first as a way to connect with people.  If you look at my posts, most of them are interactive, not just broadcasting my agenda.  I do, however also use Twitter as a tool to reach potential clients and to drive traffic to my sites. So my account is used both for business and for social purposes.

After looking around at all of the available tools, I have found a client that does *almost* everything I need it to – TweetDeck.  For a client it’s very fully featured (although I wish I could silence tweets from certain people and a few other features) and I’m very happy with it.  What I do need is a single application (or suite)  that can manage following follwers and sending direct messages. I need something that will track users I’m following that aren’t following me and see how long I’ve been following them that they’re not following me.  Aside from a few people, non-mutual follows are of little meaning to me. Socailly I want a dialogue, so someone not following me is pointless and from a business standpoint non-followers are dead weight!  This is especially true now that I can’t @reply to someone who’s not following me and have them get it!  This was one of the dumber moves I’ve seen Twitter make, but I’m not here to complain.

And on to the Purpose of this post!

So, I know what I want the app to do, and it just so happens I’m a computer programmer.  My goal is to create an application that not only works for me, but can work for others as well. I want to create an application (versus a wen site) first because a web site is expensive to run this way and would require a subscription price which I don’t want to do, and second because I know myself that I’m not happy giving other people my Twitter password. With an application like this you’d have more control and more security!

Now, knowing that I can put something together I want to make something that works for as many people as possible.  I can create programs in a number of different languages, from Microsoft’s .NET languages which will only work on Windows machines or people running some sort of emulation (Parallels, Wine…), I can write something in Java so it will be platform independent… I could even write it in PHP for people to put up on their own web sites.  What I’d like to know (in comments or emails) are the following pieces of advice:

• What platform would people like to run an application like this on? Is my audience Microsoft users, or should I look at Java?
• If I developed somthing like this would you be willing to pay a (small) one time price to purchase it, or should I just make it open-source, and why?
• Bearing in mind that this is not a client but a management application, are there any features that you’ve been unable to find in an application that you’d like to see?
• And if you’re responding, does an application like this even interest you?

Feel free to reply here, or if you prefer you can email jupchurch (at) 1upwebdevelopment.com!

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

- Jon

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