5 Ways to Use Twitter on your iPhone

BY Jason

Published 28 Sep 2007


It has been almost three months and it would have been inappropriate on my part if I had not written about how to use the ultra popular social networking and micro blogging service aka Twitter on your iPhone. So let me address this today by writing about the various options you have of using Twitter from your iPhone.

Having a choice is always good and in case you are addicted to the fast-paced social network then you will happy to know that there is not one but 5 ways to use Twitter on Apple’s iPhone in case you didn’t already know. Do you know all the 5 ways? Maybe you can find out after the jump.

Twitter, the free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users can be accessed using the iPhone and you have 5 ways to use Twitter on the iPhone. Don’t forget to take the poll to tell us which one of the options you
prefer to use or you are already using to access Twitter from your
iPhone.

SMS

All you need to do is register/verify the number of your iPhone on Twitter’s website, and simply SMS your messages to 40404 (in US). But do remember that depending on your tarrif plans, you will be using up free monthly SMS for each Twitter updates you send using this option.

Instant Messenger

Twitter supports Jabber, AIM, Gtalk, and Livejournal chat addresses and we have already seen quite a few web-based instant messaging clients such as Mundu IM iPhone Edition, JiveTalk for iPhone that have brought instant messaging to the iPhone and support AIM and Gtalk so verify your IM address in case you have not already done at Twitter and using one of the above clients you should be able to send Twitter updates using your iPhone. For instructions on how to verify Instant Messenger follow this link.

Twitter Mobile friendly website:

In case you didn’t already know another option and like the SMS option this one too is available for mobile phones having a browser, is Twitter’s mobile browser friendly site over at http://m.twitter.com/. All you need to do is point your iPhone’s Safari browser to the above address and use it like you normally do on the website on your computer.

Email:

TwitterMail:

TwitterMail lets you tweet using email from your iPhone as simple as that. So all you need to do is to register at TwitterMail to give them your Twitter credentials and they will inturn supply you with a TwitterMail email address eg. [email protected]. If you send an email using iPhone’s email client to the email address that they have provided while registering then it will be posted to Twitter.com. Other than sending and receiving updates TwitterMail also provide other features. Click here to get more details on TwitterMail.

It is safe to assume that you didn’t come to an iPhone specific site to read about the above four options, so if you are looking something which is specially optimised for iPhone’s interface then read on.

Web-based Twitter Client for iPhone:

There are two web-based Twitter clients for the iPhone already they are PocketTweets and Hahlo 2.0. I know I could put this under the Twitter Mobile friendly website but I felt that it is important to differentiate between a website and web-based client as they are expected to provide better user experience.

PocketTweets:

PocketTweets is a web-based Twitter client optimized for the Apple iPhone. Using PocketTweets you can see the latest tweets from your contacts, update your status remotely, or see what’s happening around the world by viewing the public timeline using either AT&T’s Edge network or over Wi-Fi.

Visit http://pockettweets.com/ using your iPhone’s Safari browser to check out the Twitter client developed for the Apple iPhone.

Hahlo:

Hahlo is another web-based Twitter client for the Apple iPhone. It would have been a little premature to write about Hahlo v1.0 earlier but with v2.0 just released it is probably perfect timing as Dean says over at his blog says:

"version 1 had ended up probably doing more harm than good, and while the basics worked well enough it had a few failings which unfortunately resulted in many people switching to other alternatives. Now with Hahlo 2.0 a lot more thought has gone into how things should work, and how they should fit together. On top of that there are also a huge pile of new features and enhancements which will hopefully bring those that had left back to Hahlo".

With Hahlo v2.0 you can now do just about everything that is available from Twitter’s website, and the good news is that there are still more features expected in future versions. I could write all about Hahlo but think Dean has done a great job in detailing out all that you need to know about Hahlo for the iPhone so follow this link to find out more.


Don’t forget to take the poll to tell us which one of the options you prefer to use or you are already using to access Twitter from your iPhone, that way a new iPhone owner will know which option to check out first. In case you find the poll limiting due to just one option or there are other good options out there which I missed out feel free to share your tweeting habits using your iPhone in the comments.