We have disabled the site until a worm going around Twitter is blocked.
A nasty worm is sweeping through Twitter this weekend. Up till now iTweet.net has been immune to the attacks, but a newer, trickier version was causing browsers to redirect to the spammer's website.
In response I've temporarily disabled the site while I work on a fix. Thank goodness I seem to have caught it within minutes of the new version spreading through the Twitterverse.
IMPORTANT: The worm was not able to spread via iTweet, nor was any data compromised (usernames and passwords are well-encrypted). The worm was exploiting actions specific only to twitter.com and causing people to automatically tweet deceptive links which caused itself to spread as others clicked those links. This didn't work with iTweet's different structure, it simply caused the page to redirect to their script where it stopped. I do recommend clearing your browser cache and cookies as a safety measure, and avoid using web-based Twitter clients until this worm is dealt with.
Please check back here on my blog for updates about iTweet, and check the Twitter status blog as well as their main blog for up-to-date information about the worm.
One of my personal favorite iTweet features is the "in reply to" links that show what tweet a person was @replying to inline - so you can follow conversations without leaving the page you're on.
Previously if no particular status was specified, Twitter assigned the "in reply to" link to the last tweet of the person who was replied to. As of this week, they are only assigning that link if a particular tweet was specified - otherwise there will be no "in reply to" tweet marked. This will help make conversation threading much more clear, but it also required that Twitter API clients get on board with the new method to ensure that threads are clearly designated.
(In case you're wondering, @replies to you will still show up in your Replies tab if no tweet was specified - but there will not be a particular thread attached.)
Here's how I've decided to handle this change - when you click the @ button to send a reply, a small box above the tweet input will show you the tweet you're replying to. If you don't want to mark your tweet as a reply to that status, simply click the "cancel" button.
One bonus of this is that you don't necessarily need to begin a @reply tweet with "@username" - the tweet will get marked as a reply (and appear in the user's Replies tab) whether you use that convention or not.
The only thing you'll need to be careful of is accidentally marking a tweet as part of a conversation if you changed your mind about the original @reply - so don't forget to click the "Cancel" button if you're not going to reply to that tweet.
One idea that occurred to me would be to also tie the "RT" retweet button to this behavior, so that if you retweeted someone they would see that retweet in their "Replies" tab - kind of a nice way of letting them know you liked their tweet enough to retweet it. Does that sound like a helpful addition?
Let me know in the comments, or tweet or email me with your thoughts!
Adding and using this bookmarklet is simple. Just drag the above link into your Safari bookmarks and sync your iPhone to transfer the bookmarklet to your iPhone.
Then, from any Web page that you would like to post on Twitter, just go to your Bookmarks, locate the "Post via iTweet" bookmarklet and select it. A new web page will be opened to http://itweet.net, the link will be shortened using bit.ly, and placed in the Post field ready for tweeting.
I thought about putting the original page's title into the tweet as well, but then I realized I would usually rather make up my own caption. However if the general consensus is that adding the page title to the tweet would be more useful, I can make that change - leave your opinion in the comments here, or email me, or contact me on Twitter.
Thanks to Matt Teske for providing the motivation to make this bookmarklet - I will definitely find it useful and I hope you will too. :-)
One of my personal favorite iTweet features is the "in reply to" links that show what tweet a person was @replying to inline - so you can follow conversations without leaving the page you're on.
Previously if no particular status was specified, Twitter assigned the "in reply to" link to the last tweet of the person who was replied to. As of this week, they are only assigning that link if a particular tweet was specified - otherwise there will be no "in reply to" tweet marked. This will help make conversation threading much more clear, but it also required that Twitter API clients get on board with the new method to ensure that threads are clearly designated.
(In case you're wondering, @replies to you will still show up in your Replies tab if no tweet was specified - but there will not be a particular thread attached.)
Here's how I've decided to handle this change - when you click the @ button to send a reply, a small box above the tweet input will show you the tweet you're replying to. If you don't want to mark your tweet as a reply to that status, simply click the "cancel" button.
One bonus of this is that you don't necessarily need to begin a @reply tweet with "@username" - the tweet will get marked as a reply (and appear in the user's Replies tab) whether you use that convention or not.
The only thing you'll need to be careful of is accidentally marking a tweet as part of a conversation if you changed your mind about the original @reply - so don't forget to click the "Cancel" button if you're not going to reply to that tweet.
One idea that occurred to me would be to also tie the "RT" retweet button to this behavior, so that if you retweeted someone they would see that retweet in their "Replies" tab - kind of a nice way of letting them know you liked their tweet enough to retweet it. Does that sound like a helpful addition?
Let me know in the comments, or tweet or email me with your thoughts!
The response to iTweet 2's web interface has been truly extraordinary and now WAY surpasses usage of the original iPhone interface. It is so wonderful to see a larger user community developing and producing great stuff like this video. Thanks everyone! Leave comments on this blog, or let's talk on Twitter or Facebook.
