25 Twitter apps to manage multiple accounts… but don't forget about the security factor

There’s a great piece of linkbait advice for social media consultants and PRs on Mashable today, highlighting 25 top applications for managing multiple Twitter accounts. Just about every PR agency has now cottoned on to offering a Twitter management service, so these tools will no doubt be invaluable.

At my agency we have a pretty stringent IT policy, which means that downloading third party apps is a no no (an annoying but sensible policy), so the web-based apps such as Twittbot and Splitweet look pretty useful. I currently either login manually via the web or use the Netvibes twitter widget (although it’s pretty slow for more than a couple of accounts).

I do think people should be careful with these types of applications, however. They all require that you give up your Twitter password. You might think this is a relatively low risk for your personal account, I think it’s a bit risky if you’re tweeting on behalf of a company. Sure, the services above and the others highlighted are probably fine. Probably. But you’ve got to have confidence in the service you’re using. The likes of Tweetdeck have a strong track record, while I’ve been using Netvibes for years.

It’s one of the reasons why one of my clients (blatant plug alert) Jadu developed a Twitter application for its customers (a mix of local authorities, businesses and universities) as it saw an opportunity for communications managers who want to tweet (safely) on behalf of their organisations.  Since it’s built in to the content management system, the users intrinsically trust the technology.

As the number of Twitter scams continues to rise (the twitter porn names scam springs to mind for making unsuspecting people give up their personal details), along with the number of Twitter apps, the issue of trust becomes even more relevant.

Tagged as: CMS, content management system, Jadu, PR blogs, social media, TweetDeck, twitter