Sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus have their Android and iPhone apps but there is no easy way to bulk upload photos to multiple social networks – all at once.

Bulk Uploads Photos To Facebook, Google Plus And Twitter Using Your Email Account

Here is how you can upload photos to Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, no matter which platform or device you are using.

You may be using an iPad, an Android phone, a Windows desktop or a primitive phone but as long as these devices are connected to the Internet and you have access to your email inbox – you can bulk upload photos to Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, all at the same time.

Another advantage of using email for photo uploads is when social sites are blocked behind corporate firewalls and you need a third party solution which just works.

1. Go to the Facebook mobile page, sign in with your Facebook account and grab your unique Facebook mobile upload email address. This email address will be in the form of [secret string]@m.facebook.com, as shown below:

It is quite difficult to remember this email address, so you should email yourself a copy by hitting the link “send my upload email to me now”.

2. Now that we are done with the Facebook part, it is time to set up email uploads for your Google Plus account.

Unfortunately, Google Plus does not allow uploading photos via email attachments, but we can use Picasa web albums to our advantage. The good news is that all the photos stored in our Picasa web albums are also accessible and viewable by Google Plus friends, as long as the visibility of a chosen Picasa album is set as “Public”.

Login to your Google Plus account and click this link. Choose the option “Allow photo uploads by email” and enter a secret word, as shown below:

Copy your unique Picasa upload email address and keep it handy.

3. A few months back, Twitter introduced their native photo sharing feature but sadly, Twitter is yet to enable support for photo uploads via email. Third party photo uploading applications are available in plenty, but lets keep things simple and restrict ourselves to using only one app – The email inbox.

Go to Flickr.com, sign in with your Yahoo account and open this link. Flickr also supports open ID logins via Facebook or Google, so creating a brand new Flickr account won’t be much of a hassle.

Once you have connected your Flickr and Twitter accounts, Flickr will give you a unique photo upload email address so that you can upload photos to your Flickr account from email. When you upload photos to your Flickr account, Flickr will automatically tweet a link of your photo in your Twitter profile.

So we are done with setting up secret email addresses for photo uploads to Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter.

Setting Up Your Email Account

I assume you are using Gmail as your primary email inbox, the following procedure should work for Yahoo, Windows Live and Hotmail accounts as well.

1. Go to Google contacts and create a new contact group. Name it “Photo uploads” and add all the three secret upload email addresses as Gmail contacts one by one. Remember to enter a memorable name e.g “Facebook Photos” for the Facebook upload email and so forth.

2. You are through. Now you can upload photos to Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter – all at the same time. It can be your android phone, your iPad or your desktop – email is universal!

On Your desktop: Simply compose a new email message, upload all the photos as email attachments and use the group name in the “To:” field.

On Your Android:  The email group wont work here, so you have to individually type the contact names one by one in the “To:” field. That’s easily fixed, as we have chosen very memorable names while adding the contacts e.g Facebook, Google Plus and Flickr

Some things to take note of before you hit “Send”:

1. The subject line of your email will be tweeted when your photo is uploaded to Twitter via the Flickr to Twitter service.

2. If the subject line matches exactly with the name of any of your Picasa photo albums, the photo will be uploaded to that photo album only. In all other cases, the photo will be uploaded in the default “Drop box” folder. This photo will appear in your Google Plus account, almost immediately.

3. On Facebook, your chosen photo will be uploaded into the “Mobile Uploads” album and will be automatically shared on your wall or timeline.

For the sake of a test, I tested the above procedure from my Android phone and it worked like a charm.

What is your preferred way of uploading photos to Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus? Share your ideas in the comments section.

Related: Bulk upload photos and videos to Facebook from Android

Bulk Upload Photos to Facebook, Twitter And Google Plus – All At The Same Time originally published on Ampercent

If you are already active on Facebook and Twitter, you know how difficult it is to manage both the social streams concurrently. Both Facebook and Twitter are so real time in nature that you just can’t afford to remain offline and check them at the end of the day, much like email. You have to participate in real time discussions, comment on posts, mentions, retweet stuff, and engage in the conversation.

Now here is another social network, which is also real time in nature and getting a lot of love from early adopters. You have already created your Google Plus profile but you are finding it extremely difficult to monitor these social sites and carry on with your routine workflow. There is no desktop client which lets you manage Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and other social sites, all at one place and neither there is an easy way to share posts on Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter – all from one place.

The problem is not with Facebook or Twitter.

In fact, the problem lies with Google Plus. The social site has not allowed support for any API’s which external applications or websites can use. Since Google Plus is still learning it’s baby steps, there seems to be no application which can migrate your entire Google Plus stream on a desktop app or third party online tool (TweetDeck for example).

However, here is a useful workaround that will let you use Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, all from one place.

Using Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter – All From One Place

The idea is neat.

We can’t move our Google Plus stream and access it from a third party application or a desktop client. However, we can surely move our Facebook news feed and Twitter timeline using their API’s.

You have got it – a simple browser extension called startgoogleplus lets you use Facebook and Twitter directly from your Google Plus account. You can post status updates on Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter all from the same page and save yourself from the frustration of updating multiple social sites, recursively.

Following are the steps involved:

1. Go to StartGooglePlus.com and download their Chrome extension. Firefox users can grab the add-on here.

2. Click the extension button and login to your Facebook and Twitter accounts one by one. Next, grant all the necessary permissions to Facebook and Twitter that you want to use this extension to integrate your Facebook and Twitter accounts within your Google Plus account.

3. All done. Your Twitter and Facebook accounts will be directly accessible from your Google Plus account and you can read the updates of these social sites from your Google Plus stream. There is more, you can post status updates on Facebook and Twitter from Google Plus, without having to open your Facebook or Twitter account at all.

Reading Your Facebook News Feed And Twitter Timeline from Google Plus

Login to Google Plus and you should see two new links in the left sidebar –  Facebook and Twitter.

Clicking them will load the respective timelines directly into Google Plus, so now you can check Facebook and Twitter updates directly from your Google Plus account. Your Facebook news feed and Twitter timeline will automatically load in the background and reading the updates on these social sites is now just a click away.

Here is how my Facebook news feed looks inside my Google Plus account:

And here goes my Twitter timeline in Google Plus

From the above two screenshots, observe that you can also comment on status updates or mention someone on Twitter directly from your Google Plus account. The only catch here is that unlike Twitter, the extension won’t be able to show you mention, retweets or direct messages.

Post Status Updates On Facebook And Twitter From Google Plus

Previously, we have discussed an automatic way to sync status updates from Google Plus to your Facebook account using Facebook mobile email address. While this method works great for all the updates, it might not be convenient on specific occasions.

On the other hand, the start Google Plus extension gives you much more control on how your Google Plus posts get shared on your Facebook and Twitter profiles. Whenever you want to share a specific post from Google Plus to Facebook or Twitter, all you have to do is choose the corresponding icons in the “compose message” box.

When you have posted your update on Google Plus, the same post will also be posted on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. This is a lifesaver and I have been searching for something like this since Google Plus was released. I can choose whether a specific link or update from Google Plus gets shared on my Facebook account but not on my Twitter profile.

Wait There Is More! You Can Also Check Your Gmail Account From Google Plus

This is icing on the cake.

Start Google Plus lets you check Gmail mails from Google Plus, without having to open your Gmail account in a new browser tab. The extension adds a sleek Gmail notification column at the left top of Google’s navigation menu bar, as shown below:

Whenever, you receive a new email on your Gmail account that’s tied to your Google Plus profile, the Gmail icon will turn red and will show an unread count of Gmail emails. Clicking the icon will pull down a menu with the subject line and a brief preview of the message body. You cannot compose an email from Google Plus but the real time notifications are definitely going after.

All in all, this extension is by far one of the best utilities on Google Plus and we highly recommend giving Start Google Plus a spin. Tell us your thoughts and ideas in the comments below and be sure to read our Google Plus tips collection.

Using Facebook, Twitter And Google Plus From A Single Browser Tab – A Complete Guide originally published on Ampercent

Only a few users (including me) were able to get a Google plus invite and most of the web traffic is still in the waiting queue. If you have successfully created your Google Plus profile and want an easier way to cross post updates and links from Google Plus profile to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, here is a Google Chrome extension which will come in handy.

You don’t have to copy paste status updates or links from your Google Plus profile to your Facebook or Twitter accounts. Simply install the Extended share for Google Plus chrome extension and you are good to go.

After the extension has been installed, compose your update in Google Plus, choose the circles with whom you want to share the update and hit the “Share” button. As soon as you share your post on Google Plus, you should see an overlay window popping up, as shown below:

To post updates from Google Plus to Facebook or Twitter, click the links one by one and it will open a new browser tab. You will be taken to your Facebook and Twitter account where your status update or link will be automatically copied to the “compose” box Now all you have to do is hit the “Share” or “tweet” button and it will be posted. Pretty neat!

Please note that the extension is still in it’s experimental stage and there are some bugs. You might not see the sharing buttons of Twitter and Facebook right away, after updating your post at Google Plus. In that case, refresh the page once and you will see a “send to” link attached at the bottom of the post.

The extension works like a charm and if you want a really fast way to share Google plus updates on Facebook and Twitter, this is the tool you need.

Note: If any of your updates at Google plus contain an internal link of Google plus, some of your Twitter and Facebook friends might not be able to view the link. This is obvious, as they will need a Google Plus account to view the internal page at your Google Plus account.

Share Google Plus Posts And Updates On Your Facebook And Twitter Account originally published on Ampercent

Although Twitter has it’s own URL shortener at t.co, there is no way you can shorten links directly from Twitter’s web interface. Desktop Twitter clients e.g TweetDeck allows you to auto shorten links and post tweets that are more than 140 characters but both these features are still missing from Twitter’s main web interface.

Well not anymore, because Twitter is planning to implement the ability to shorten links directly from Twitter’s main interface. With the new link shortening feature, users can copy paste a link in the “Tweet” box of Twitter’s web interface and the link will be automatically shortened when you hit the “Tweet” button.

Here is how the new link shortening feature of Twitter’s web interface will look like:

This feature is not live for everyone yet and Twitter is currently testing it with a small percentage of users. Twitter says in a support topic that websites who use their own link shortening API will continue to work as normal. For example: If you copy paste a YouTube URL, the link will be shortened using YouTube’s own link shortener and not Twitter.com’s URL shortener.

Of course, users can skip this auto shortening feature, use their own preferred URL shorteners and manually paste the shortened links. So if your website has it’s own branded URL shortener, you can use it without any problems as such.

One of the advantages of this upcoming feature is that Twitter will cross check each shortened link against a list of potentially dangerous or phishing sites. Users will be warned with a short waning message that the link they are posting might be unsafe to their followers.

It’s interesting to note that the Bit.ly extension for Google Chrome works quite similar to Twitter’s upcoming auto link shortening feature. I am a Google Chrome user and always prefer using Bit.ly for shortening links from webpages. This is because Bit.ly allows me to track shortened links whenever required, unlike t.co. However, the ability to auto shorten links from Twitter’s main web interface will be helpful to a lot of people who use Twitter from multiple computers and mobile devices.

Twitter’s Web Interface Will Soon Auto Shorten Links For You originally published on Ampercent

These buttons are actually very handy for sharing content or webpages with your Facebook friends or Twitter followers. It’s a Win-win situation for website owners and users, the former gets free publicity while the latter saves time in copying the title and web address of the page in question.

These are all known facts.

The interesting part here is that Facebook and Twitter can collect data about the user who is visiting a website which has their buttons installed.

According to a study performed by Wall Street Journal, these social widgets can notify their owners that a person has visited a specific website, even if they don’t use the installed buttons on the target sites. Let’s take an example to understand this situation.

Suppose you receive an email from a friend regarding a blog post which has some interesting information in it. You click that link from that email message (not from Facebook or Twitter), arrive on the website, read the blog article and leave after 20 seconds. If the website has Facebook social plugins or Twitter buttons installed and you were logged into your Facebook or Twitter account while reading that page, the social sites were notified that one user visited this website at this time.

So it appears that both Facebook and Twitter knows when a user is reading an article on a particular subject. For this to work, the user just needs to be logged into his Facebook or Twitter accounts and it doesn’t really matter whether or not they use those widgets on the target sites. WSJ further reports that the social sites can continue to collect browsing data from your computer, even if you close the Facebook tab. Unless you completely clear your browser’s browsing history or log out from Twitter or Facebook, you are passing along usage information through websites who have Facebook social plugins and Twitter widgets installed.

Now what is the use of user behavior data? There are many possibilities.

First, Facebook can show you relevant advertisements and content directly on your Facebook account. It makes perfect sense, if you were reading a webpage about “Home loans” every other week, Facebook or Twitter might use this data to show relevant advertisements or other promotional content. Not to forget that both Facebook and Twitter’s news timeline works in real time and hence contextual targeting of ads or other promotional stuff is little difficult, if not impossible.

Second, since Facebook can recognize a user on any website (as long as they are logged in), they can collect the data and use it on their future products. Facebook comments is just the tip of the iceberg and I believe more such services will evolve in the coming days.

If you’re too concerned about your privacy, you can go ahead and block all Facebook social plugins using a browser extension. But that’s just you, consider the fact that most web users are really novice and don’t care about the background details it doesn’t makes much difference.

Facebook And Twitter Buttons Can Track User Behavior originally published on Ampercent

But what about analyzing the traffic which you get from Twitter ?

How about measuring the impact of Twitter traffic and finding out how well your website performs with the Twitter audience ?  Some questions to ask

1. Are the visitors clicking through the pages on my site or simply reading the landing page ?
2. How well the incoming visitors are converting ? Are they clicking the subscribe button ?
3. How many of them are going to my landing or sales pages ? What is the exact funnel path ?

And so on….

If you do a lot of social media marketing on Twitter which may include sharing your pillar articles, promoting linkbait posts or generating the “Buzz”, you should also spare some time analyzing the traffic your website gets from Twitter and how well the intended audience engage with your content or service.

In my previous article, I wrote about a simple Google Analytics tip which shows how to find the traffic distribution of your site by hour and time of the day. The same trick can be used to filter referral traffic from Twitter and find out which Twitter profiles are sending you maximum traffic or hits.

Analyzing Twitter Traffic On Your Website

1. Login to your Google Analytics account and switch to the newer version of Google Analytics by clicking the “new Version” link at the top of the page.

2. In the left sidebar, click “Traffic Sources” and then choose twitter.com from the values that appear.

What you are doing here is simply filtering the referral traffic obtained from Twitter.com for a particular period of time.

3. Now you will see the complete data about which Twitter profiles are sending more traffic to your website, how many people are clicking the bio link on your Twitter profile and how many readers are finding your website through Twitter search

The above image is the traffic distribution and since my site does not have a product sales page yet, I am only concerned about the bounce rate, time on site and other factors which decide visitor engagement and loyalty.

Here are some observations I obtained by looking at the data:

1. Most people on Twitter arrive at this site from their home timeline (see the number 1 entry), by clicking the link of a new blog post.

2. This is followed by folks who arrive at my Twitter profile page and click the bio link to check out this website.

3. People who arrive at this blog by clicking the bio link are much loyal, when compared to the people who arrive in this site from their home timeline (through a new blog post). This is proved by the data in the bounce rate column.

4. This site performs poorly at Twitter search; one of the reasons might be the number or nature of posts that we publish on a daily basis.

5. Although we are using a mobile optimized theme for Android, iPhone and other tablet users, Twitter traffic from mobile devices is yet to pick up a decent level. This is proved by filtering the secondary dimension of “screen resolution”. See example

Filtering Landing Pages For Twitter Traffic

It’s also a good idea to filter the landing pages for Twitter traffic and find out the pages on your site where visitors are landing. With this data, you can find out which type of content on your site is popular among Twitter users. You will also be able to find out those “Thin content” who are performing poorly and needs tweaks or updates for better performance.

To filter all the landing pages, simply select the “secondary dimension” value to “Landing pages” and you should be able to download the data as a CSV file for Excel or as a PDF document. Here are the landing page stats for this site:

Similarly, you can combine more Google Analytics custom segments and find out detailed information and analytics of visitors coming to your website from Twitter.com. This may include finding traffic sources by region, country, language, browser, screen resolutions etc.

Another good idea would be to find out who is retweeting your blog posts is to use BackTweets.com but the only downside is that Backtweets shows the data for recent 7 days and you have to sign up for a premium account for more advanced Twitter analytics.

Which Twitter Profiles Are Sending Maximum Traffic To Your Site ? Find Out With the New Google Analytics originally published on Ampercent

Although more enhanced than the older Twitter UI, the newer Interface of Twitter still lacks a couple of features which should have been incorporated anyways.  Common features like uploading photos, shortening links, expanding the short URL’s and inline media streaming is still missing in Twitter.com’s new interface.

That’s when the Power Twitter Extension for Google Chrome comes in handy. The extension adds a couple of useful features to Twitter.com’e new interface which lets you quickly shorten links, upload photos, expand short links and more.

Shorten URL’s directly from Twitter.com

I am a big fan of desktop Twitter clients like Tweetdeck but use it only once or twice a day. Basically, I use Twitter’s main web interface during casual web browsing and use Tweetdeck to filter Tweets, track lists, hashtags, keywords or maintain my site’s official Twitter account, Facebook fan pages and so on.

So while I am using the main web interface of Twitter – I miss some of the features of a full featured Twitter desktop client. The most common ones are shortening URL’s, uploading photos, expanding long links and so on.

The power Twitter extension for Google Chrome allows you to upload photos directly from Twitter.com, without having to use any third party photo uploading service like TwitPic, Yfrog and so on. You are also shown a URL shortening Text box, so that you can quickly shorten URL’s directly from Twitter’s new interface and do not have to use a third party custom URL shortener.

Upload Photos And Expand Short links

To upload a Photo, there is no need to head over to TwitPic or any other photo sharing website, upload the photo, grab the link and come back to Twitter to share the Photo. Simply select the “Post Photo” link and upload a photo from your computer.

The extension also auto expands short URL’s and presents the Title of the article, instead of showing the default shortened link. This is very useful because you don’t have to click the link, go to the target page and know what that page is all about. You can preview the Title of the webpage directly from your Twitter timeline, as shown in the following screenshot:

Inline Photo And Video Embeds

Okay this one is already present in Twitter’s new web interface by default but there is one sharp difference. Twitter supports embedding images, videos and other media objects from third party services like YouTube, Flickr but one has to click the tiny arrow icon beside a tweet and preview the ionline embedded media in the tweet.

The extension however, automatically previews all media, images, videos directly on your Twitter timeline so that you can watch the video or the image, without having to click the more option placed at the right of the Tweet.

Give this a try and let us know your thoughts and ideas in the comments section.

Power Twitter For Google Chrome Adds Useful Features To Twitter’s New Interface originally published on Ampercent

But tools for scheduling status updates to Facebook are pretty limited and most of us are not aware of them. So here is a list of some very useful utilities and clients that allow users to update and schedule their Facebook’s status, share links and send information automatically.

Greeting Scheduler: Schedule Status Updates On Facebook Profile or Friend’s Wall

It is a dedicated Facebook app that schedule Facebook updates in a different way, the service not only schedules Facebook status updates of a user but it also allow users to post the scheduled updates on the walls of their Facebook friends.

So if you are one of those who forget things often and don’t want to miss the opportunity of wishing your friends and family happy birthday or other stuff on Facebook, this is a perfect app for you.

How to use Greeting Scheduler?

Here is what you need to do in-order to use this app:

• First, select the friends from your list to whom you want the message to be posted to.
• If you want to schedule update to your Facebook profile, then select your wall
• Schedule the date and time of the update
• After date and time, enter the status update or message that you want to schedule before proceeding to the next step
• After that you can select whether you want to share or post an elaborate message with detailed text formatting or you just want to share a simple link

Posting a link using Greeting Scheduler is very much similar to what you see when you post a link from Facebook itself.

LaterBro

This particular web app allow users to update and schedule their Facebook and Twitter status simultaneously, the app does exactly what it claims to do in a simply yet effective manner.

Although there is a limit on the number of characters per update and schedule, for Facebook the app allow users to have an update of almost 420 characters while for the Twitter the status update is limited to only 120 characters. Users can include links to their updates but the provision for adding images is not there, plus LaterBro also has a native URL shortener.

Free Tools To Schedule Status Updates On Facebook and Twitter originally published on Ampercent

You might have observed that every Facebook and Twitter update is accompanied by a “via source” field which can be used to brand your website, service or company on the social sites. When your fans and followers see that you’re tweeting or posting from a branded Twitter application, they might get curious about it and check your website, blog or whatever service you’re providing.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create your own Twitter and Facebook status updater using PHP and oauth.

Demo: Web Based Facebook And Twitter Status Updater

Before trying this project, you can try a demo of the status updater here

Simply login with your Facebook and Twitter account, grant the necessary permissions and you are all set to post status updates and tweets on your social profiles. The app uses oauth for verification and never asks for your Facebook or Twitter account password.

Things You Will Need

You will need the following things to setup your own web based Facebook and Twitter application in your own website:

1. A Web hosting account which supports PHP5
2. A Facebook account
3. A Twitter account
4. The Source Code of the Facebook And Twitter Status Updater

Step 1: Register Your Facebook And Twitter Applications First

First you have to register your Facebook and Twitter application which will be used in the Twitter and Facebook status updater for sending updates to your  Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Setting up a combined Facebook or Twitter application is fairly simple, just follow these simple steps:

A. Register Your Twitter Application

1. Go to twitter.com/apps/new and enter a name and description for the application which you’re going to create. You can also upload a small thumbnail image but this is not mandatory

2. Next, enter the following details in the respective fields:

Application website: Enter the URL of your website where you would be hosting this project. So if you would be uploading all the files at domain.com/projects/twitterapp, enter the same in this field.

Organization and Website: Enter the name of your company and the URL of your company’s website. You can also skip these two fields, they are not mandatory.

Application type: Since you’re going to create a web based Twitter and Facebook application, choose the application type as “Browser”.

Callback URL: Enter domain.com/projects/twitterapp/twitterauth.php. I am assuming that you would be hosting all the files at domain.com/projects/twitterapp

Use Twitter For Login: Select this checkbox “Yes, Use Twitter For Login”. See example of my settings for this Twitter app

3. All set, now save your application settings and you will be given a unique consumer key and consumer secret (see example).

Take note of these two values, you will need them later.

B. Registering your Facebook Application

1. Go to Facebook.com/developers and click “Set up a New App”.

2. Enter a name of your application and a custom description. Remember to enter a good name because this name will be sent to your Facebook status update when you send a new status message. Example: Posted at 22:43 via Your Facebook App

3. After registering your application, click “Edit Application settings” and enter your project URL in the “Website” tab.

Note: You need to enter the same URL of your website where all the files of this project will be saved.

4. Note down the Application ID, API Key and Application secret, as shown in the above screenshot.

Step 2: Set Up The App And Upload To Your Website

1. Download this package which consists all the necessary files required for the status updater to work.

2. Extract the package and open the config.php file with notepad or an HTML editor application like Microsoft Frontpage or Adobe Dreamweaver.

3. Now enter the following details, as shown below:

• $config['base_url']: Enter the address of your website where you will be hosting all the files of your project.
• $config['callback_url']: The same address as above but followed by a “/index.php” (without quotes). See screenshot above.
• $config['fb_api']: Enter your Facebook application’s API Key which you received during registering your Facebook app.
• $config['fb_secret']: Enter your Facebook application’s secret Key which you received during registering your Facebook app.
• $config['twitter_consumer']: Enter your Twitter application’s consumer key which you received during registering your Twitter app.
• $config['twitter_secret']: Enter your Twitter application’s consumer secret which you received during registering your Twitter app.

4. All set, now upload all the files in the same directory of your website as specified in the $config['base_url'] field above.

5. Congratulations, you have just finished creating your own Facebook and Twitter status updater that works with PHP and Oauth.

One of the limitations of this project is that there is no support for an integrated URL shortener. But that’s fine considering the fact that you can always create a branded URL shortener and combine these two projects together by embedding the URL shortener page with an <iframe> tag.

Disclaimer: This project is inspired from the Open source Twitter and Facebook updater available at Google Code. Please refer to the original documentation if you want more customizations and are facing any problems setting it up.

If you have any questions or need help, please leave a comment below and we would be glad to help you out.

Create Your Own Web Based Twitter And Facebook Status Updater Using PHP And OAuth originally published on Ampercent

Go800 allows users to link their Twitter account to a phone number. You can use your cell phone, your land line, or even a Google Voice or Skype number. The only caveat is that the number you use must be toll free. The idea is that you can give friends or colleagues your Twitter handle, and with that they can get in touch with you via the phone.

Setting Up Your Go800 Account

Getting started with Go800 is really easy. Head over to their homepage and click the blue ‘Sign Up’ button.  Fill out the information requested and then hit the ‘Create Account’ button towards the bottom of the page.

The next page you see will be the page where you connect your Twitter profile. If you have ever connected your Twitter profile to another service before, you are familiar with the process. Press the button, provide your credentials, and select Allow.

The last step in the sign-up process is to provide the phone number you will use with Go800. Fill out the information required, and hit the ‘Save’ button below the form.

Possible Pitfalls of a Twitter Username Phone Number

As I see it, the most blatant issue with Go800 is the fact that anyone will be able to call you if you set up this service. Go800 saw this issue as well, and has included a great set of security features with their service. You can set up a whitelist of users that are allowed to call you, and anyone not on the list will not be able to call your number through Go800.

Beyond that blatant problem, I see very little that could go wrong here. As long as you are careful about who you add to the service, you will not have any real issues. My suggestion is to only use it for friends and possible co-workers that may need to find you, but don’t know your phone number. Go800 has a free option that includes 100 minutes of calling a month. There are other paid plans available.

What are your thoughts on Go800? Do you like the idea of having a phone number attached to your Twitter handle? Leave your comments in the section below.

Forgot Your Friend’s Phone Number? Call Their Twitter Name Instead originally published on Ampercent