UPDATE: Twubs acquire Twylah in 2014
If you're looking for a way to get more from your Twitter stream and show your followers and potential followers what you're really all about, then Twylah could be the answer. I've been following the development of this new Twitter interface for more than a year. In fact, I first reviewed it over on another blogging site, but a lot has changed since then. Twylah started as a way to give tweets ‘context, perspective and agility' to quote creator Eric Kim, and now it's a tool that also gives publishers their own Twitter fan page. If you're a blogger who's active on Twitter, then this could be a great tool for you.
Using Twylah
Using Twylah is as simple as signing in via Twitter and waiting for your page to generate. The Twylah page has a crisp, clear design (sort of like Paper.li, but with just your own tweets). It features your top 10 Twitter topics, along with the latest tweets you sent on them. Click on a tweet to see a page dedicated to that sub-topic with a longer list of tweets. Click on a tweet with a link to see a brief preview of the content you are linking to as well as replies to your tweets. You can retweet or reply from the Twylah page and you can also send a Power Tweet from the top menu. This means sending a tweet which will automatically have its own Twylah page. All Twylah pages within your profile include your Twitter bio, a Facebook Like button, a tweet button and a follow button so that people who see the page can connect with you and share your content easily through the major social networking platforms.
Interview with Twylah Founder, Eric Kim
The best way to understand what Twylah offers is to hear it from Eric himself, so I asked a few questions about the latest version of Twylah.
1. Eric, what exactly is Twylah and why do we need another Twitter interface?
Twylah creates engaging, dynamic Fan Pages out of your Twitter content. These pages are organized by your trending topics, they are shareable on Twitter and Facebook, and they beautifully showcase your content and your content alone. You get true engagement with your fans and a real brand presence out of the tweets you're already creating.
As far as why we need another Twitter interface, I'll say that no one really needs another Twitter interface or even Twylah for that matter. It is all about your goals. If your goals on Twitter are to have fun, to discover content serendipitously, or to make connections, you don't need Twylah. If you want to have a deeper level of engagement with your audience or to have more control over that engagement and traffic, Twylah is for you.
2. Can you sum up the changes between original Twylah and new improved Twylah?
The alpha version of Twylah incorporated a reader of your inbound tweets as well as an outward facing presence. In other words, you could both show the world your trending topics as well as read your inbound stream in the same topical format.
For our beta, we decided to focus solely on your outbound tweet stream and to create a real brand presence and custom Fan Page for publishers.
3. How does Twylah help with SEO?
Thanks for asking. This is one of the biggest discoveries we've made so far. On Twitter, tweets are fairly disposable. A tweet is gone in a matter of minutes to an hour. This is not a defect of Twitter, it's just the way it is. But with Twylah we pull in all your Twitter content around a certain topic, so that your older tweets on topic are pulled in, which makes them more durable and findable through search.
And not only are our Fan Pages search engine friendly, they are more easily understandable to the people who find them. Only 8-10% of Americans are on Twitter because it is not necessarily the most intuitive experience. Our pages were designed so that when the 90%+ of the population not yet on Twitter find you, they'll stay for a while and engage with your content.
As a function of time spent with your tweets, we're increasing engagement by 400% on average, which is pretty incredible.
4. What's next for Twylah?
We're in the process of rolling out two very exciting features — monetization and analytics.
“Monetization” is whatever it means for you as a publisher. Maybe that means an email opt-in for your newsletter or maybe it means a coupon download or selling an app of some kind. Whatever it means for you, we are soon going to allow for you, the publisher, to “monetize” your tweets by making available to you an ad space on your Twylah.
And our analytics are fantastic. We've put together some actionable analytics that are very understandable. We're going to tell you which topics your fans are engaging with the most, which times of day and day of the week your particular audience is most likely to engage with them, and which types of tweets are most likely to get which kinds of responses.
It's all very exciting and we're looking forward to getting these out in the next few weeks.
Thanks, Eric.
More Twylah Goodness
Another great feature that hasn't rolled out to everyone yet is the ability to hook your Twylah page into your own domain, so that effectively it's part of your site. After a little bit of tweaking, my Twylah page now appears on tweets.sharonhh.com. This has great potential, especially if long term you can brand your Twylah page to fit in with the rest of your site.
How I Use Twylah
One of the ways I've been using Twylah is to see whether the topics that appear in my Twitter stream are the ones I really want to be known for. As a writer and blogger, I'm happy when my Twylah page reflects my interest and expertise in those topics, but occasionally some random elements creep in. For example, when I looked at my secondary topic list (in a drop down under the top list), I saw the word ‘life' – that's a big topic, but apparently that's there because of my interest in lifestyle design.
Twylah's also a good way to check back on my own recent tweets on a certain topic, which is something that's difficult to do via the Twitter web interface. As a blogger, this is particularly useful, as it's a tool I can use to build post content.
Finally, linking to my Twylah Twitter fan page is a great alternative to linking to my Twitter web profile in the places where I promote that account. That's because it gives a more rounded picture of what my Twitter followers can expect.
So how about you? Have you used Twylah yet? What did you think?
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Hmm. I can’t wait to give it a try then. I guess Twylah would be a great experience for everyone out there. Thanks for sharing this Sharon.
You can probably tell that I love Twylah, Argie. It’s definitely worth a try to give a new view of your own undiluted Twitter stream.
Well, it requires an invite Sharon .. Can you please invite me ? 😀 Please…
Sorry, Argie. I don’t have invites to give away; your invite will come from Eric.
By reading about ” Twylah”, a desire has developed in me know about it. I am very hopeful that it will be a great experience.
Sensational review of Twylah, Sharon!
I just clicked over and entered my email address to request an invitation. 🙂
Thanks for sharing this with us. I think a Twitter Fan Page that helps with SEO and also helps you engage better with your target audience is awesome!
Wonderful guest post! Thanks, Ileane, for inviting Sharon to be your guest author.
Melanie
It’s a tool with wonderful potential, Melanie. Glad you enjoyed the review. I’m looking forward to testing out the analytics as well as some of the custom branding features.
Hi, John. Once you start the signup process, you’ll get that message, then Eric will send out an invite. When I originally signed up, mine didn’t take long.
Excellent review Sharon! I’ve already heard about Twylah before but never got a glimpse about it and based on your review, the features are quite promising. It is very helpful to have a Twitter fanpage, SEO tool ang analytic in one site. Very cool!
I think the ease of presenting your Twitter face to the world is one of its main advantages, John, but the features on the horizon are also very exciting. What always surprises me, when I look at my Twylah page, are the sub-topics I’ve been tweeting about without even fully realizing it.
I went there but don’t like having to ask for an invitation. It looks interesting please update us when we can sign up.
Will do, David.
Sounds very interesting and I just went over there to request my invitation and allowed my Twitter account via OAUT. I like the sound of having a Twitter fan page. Once I get my invite, I will have a lot of exploring to do. Thanks for the review. First time I heard about it.
Hope you enjoy using Twylah, DiTesco. I’m hoping to try out the customized branding soon.
Sharon,
This sounds sort of like a twitter meets facebook type of thing. I think it could be great. I am especially interested in the SEO aspect of it. Eric is right though, a tweet is basically there and gone within a minute if someone has a lot of people they are following. It is basically impossible to see even a good portion of the tweets that actually come in.
I don’t even really look at the twitter stream anymore. It is all I can do just to keep up with the mentions. So having a page like this makes some good sense. I will have to check it out.
Twylah’s a good way to focus on what you’re all about, Damon. That’s it’s strength. If you want a tool to focus on your entire Twitter stream, then Paper.li is good, or Summify for just hitting the highlights.
I like services like this! I think the site has a lot of potential. Sharon is there anyway I could get an invitation to join the community? I seen you told Argie that Eric woudl have to send it. How does Eric get our contact info?
Request an invite on the Twylah site, Brian, and you’ll get one eventually. It doesn’t usually take long.
Thanks so much I’m on the waiting list now!
Hi Sharon,
Thanks for sharing Twylah. Two reasons you mentioned resonate with me:
(1) “If you want to have a deeper level of engagement with your audience or to have more control over that engagement and traffic”
(2) ” to see whether the topics that appear in my Twitter stream are the ones I really want to be known for”
These would be my primary reasons for adding YATRT (yet another Twitter-related tool) to the toolbox. I hope you can share whether Twylah actually helps you meet these goals.
On another note, can you share the technical method you used to integrate Twylah into a subdomain on your site?
Hi Vernessa, I’d be happy to.
1. On the topic of engagement, I got some stats today via my Crowdbooster account that showed that my best performing tweet of the week was the power tweet I sent via Twylah. I offer that for what it’s worth, as it’s too soon for me to say whether this will hold true every week. The Power Tweet is a relatively recent Twylah feature. According to Twylah’s analytics, though (I don’t have access to those yet, but I’ve had emails from them about the stats), people are sticking around longer once they land on a Twylah Twitter fan page.
2. This was a biggie for me and I’ve already tweaked my Twylah page a bit since they released the ability to manage your topics. There were a couple of topics I tweeted about one day and links I shared that were about another site that I like, but I chose to hide the site name because it’s not an area of expertise. At the same time, I’ve moved writing topics to the forefront, as this is what I want to be known for.
3. Site integration isn’t widely available yet, but here’s what I did. I set up a subdomain in the DNS manager (adding a CNAME record); I pointed it to twylah.com; Eric did some behind the scenes wizardry to make it link to my Twylah page.
Ah ha! Behind the scenes wizardry is good! Maybe if I find Twylah to be a fit, Eric will do a bit for me, too. 🙂
Thanks for sharing what you’re seeing so far, Sharon. This is good, actionable info. I’m guessing you’ll pen a follow-up down the road. I think you’re in my feed reader, but I’ll check. (I do more reading on blogs than reading blogs in the feed reader. *shakes head*) 🙂
Glad you’ve found it useful, Vernessa. You might not have me in your reader because my own blog is about writing. My posts on shiny new web stuff are usually on other people’s blogs. Still happy to connect with you, though. 🙂
Actually, I took a quick look and … you’re in there! I visit your site from time to time and always enjoy whatever you’re serving up. What I *don’t* have in my reader are very many gadget blogs … I tend to read the writers, coaches, and small business blogs. 🙂
Happy to connect with you, too.
That’s great, Vernessa. That’s pretty much what my reader looks like too. 🙂 This site is an exception to the rule.
It’s nice to see Sharon over here. I’m weary to use another SM platform there are so many, but it helps with SEO, so it may be worth looking into.
Hey Ivin, the feeling is mutual. 🙂 I’ve been following Ileane’s posts quietly for a while and I’m happy to be part of the community here.
NICE! I just checked Ileane Twylah page.. will Create mine once I’m free 😉
thanks for the post Sharon
Glad you enjoyed it, Faissal. Come back and share your page when it’s done.
Good find! Twylah sounds like it could make my life easier :).
A fast and easy way to make following me and my business more fun.
Everybody appreciates the value of Twitter and how this platform helps carrying out SEO strategies. Anything that could enhance the experience of both the users and followers is good.
hi,
how can i add new keywords for my twylah page
The keywords are generated from the content you tweet, Prasanth, but you can go into the settings and remove some from visibility and make others more prominent.