At first glance, I thought this is could be the least secure way to pay someone but a very innovative way to pay someone. They are calling the payments a “promise” to pay. When someone sends a payment through a tweet, Paypal send the money from the Tweeter’s account to the Tweet recipient’s account. From there, the two parties work out the transfer (payment) on Paypal and that is it. So, the payments aren’t direct payments but an offer (promise) and then the acceptance.

I have a few worries about Twittpay:

First, Twitter accounts have been hacked left and right since the launch in 2006, so these Tweets can be of Hijacked accounts and your money can be drained quickly. The safeguard to this problem is if the user only has a very small amount of funds in their Paypal account.

Second, all payments are public with a direct (@) Tweet. If I see a user giving out thousands of dollars a week I would worry about the safety of that person. I would worry about his person and his account.

Lastly, each user needs a Paypal account to make this work. If they don’t… where does the money go? I mean, you can just Tweet to a user a promise to pay, but why make it public? How about a Direct Message (private) to the person for an email address to transfer the money? They have to go through the Paypal steps anyways.

Though, there is a clever way to send money on Twitpay. On the Guide page is shows users that they can Tweet a beer or tea to another user. For example, you can tweet me (@tskaggs twitpay a beer) and it will send $3 to me. This gives Twitpay a lovable charm and brings more realism to the Twitter world.

Check it out for yourself. I think it’s a good start to a good idea.

**All Twitpay logos are propery of Twitpay

I tested the app by copying and pasting a test proposal from Microsoft Word into the WYSIWYG editor and it formatted perfectly. I had to upload the images into the image placeholders and that was about it. I couldn’t find a feature to add a header or footer, but I’m sure that is coming soon. The simplicity of using this web app is outstanding.

Oh, did I mention that there is an analytics feature to measure the times the proposal was viewed, the total time , first view date, last view date, and a pie chart showing the sections clicked or viewed. The analytics are crazy cool! I’ve been in the business with proposals and it’s a pain to wait for a client to notify me that they viewed the proposal. Deep down I know the client looked at it but they are just too busy to let me know. Now, I’ll know that a client viewed it and much more… I feel sneaky.

Proposable is an excellent application developed by Sproutbox and the brainchild of James Kappen.

Let me know what you think of Proposable!

**All logos are property of Proposable

#1. HootSuite : In my past post about the web app, you will notice I have a real attraction to the User Interface. Its so easy to manage your Twitter account in the HootSuite interface by scrolling left and right and inputing your message. Also, there is a feature to watch keywords used by users on Twitter, this is great to keep track of trends.

#2. Ow.ly : This is a URL shortener for those long-pesky URLs. This also works with HootSuite to keep track of your click-throughs. What an excellent way of seeing what your followers like and dislike. Don’t be afraid of the URL shortener, its good.

#3. WeFollow : This is the best Twitter directory out right now. There are a few other directories that are good but not great. Sign up is easy: Username, Password, Keywords and submit. Now when someone searches a keyword on WeFollow your username will appear on the list. You are ranked by followers or influence. So, go and get noticed!

#4. Twitpic : Submit your pictures and share! This is an excellent geo-tracking web application that works like flickr but its just for Twitter. This also places a geo-tag on your photo so it can be found by region, city, or town.

#5. Friend or Fellow : Do you have trouble finding the people who you are following but they’re not following you? This is the web app that will easily make the list of people that are not following you, so you can either suggest that they follow you or you can remove them from your follow list. Twitter has a give/take etiquette and if you follow someone they should follow you back, but you can use Twitter how you want because I follow about 50 people that will probably never follow me back.

That is it! Let me know what you think of the list…

Foursquare is a smart phone app. It uses GPS or signal triangulation to find where you are in a city. With your location found, the app will find a list of nearby restaurants, book stores… anything that can be named and located. So, I go to my favorite coffee shop, Pour House Cafe in Bloomington, and I click ‘check-in’, the app finds me and gives me the list. On the list I select Pour House Cafe and complete the check-in. This gives me points and I compete with my friends who are on my Foursquare social network. You can manage your friends and information via smart phone app, but the web app is bigger and easier to manage. You can not ‘check-in’ on your computer (or at least I haven’t found how) which is a down side, but it’s fun and you can keep track of your friends favorite places. Oh yeah, you get ‘badges’ for checking-in the most or at a number of different places. Lastly, there are Mayors of places on Foursquare. This means they have been there a lot.

Try it out! Have fun with friends and family, and let me know what you think about Foursquare.

Here are some screenshots:

Collabtive is an open source project manager that can be placed on your server. This project manager allows you to create projects, timelines, schedules, add/remove teammates, and adds a progress bar. Teammates can message each other about the project they are assigned and also upload files to the database. Installing is easy with Linux and MySQL and starting is a matter of creating an Admin account.

Here is the complete list taken from the site (http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/about.php):

Core functionality

• Unlimited projects, milestones, tasklists, and tasks
• Unlimited members with user profiles
• Role-based permission management
• Messaging and instant messaging
• File management
• Timetracking

Reporting and notifications

• Timetracker reports, activity logs and messages in PDF format
• Export user profiles as vCard
• RSS feeds for messages and tasks
• Synchronization of calendars via iCal task export
• Excel files from activity logs and timetracker reports
• E-mail notifications

Other

• Search, tags
• Basecamp import
• Fully themeable
• Available in more than 25 languages
• Full UTF8 support

Let me know what you think of this program! I love it and makes project management easy.

HootSuite makes managing your Social Media easy, much like Brizzly, by offering an interface to manage your feeds from Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. It’s easy to post new statuses and updates via the interface to just one account or all the account that you linked to HootSuite . The accounts are separated by tabs, so navigating the feeds are very simple! The Twitter account manager is split into five different sections and at a glance you can view the Twitter feed, Mentions, DM (Direct Messages), your profile feed, and Pending Tweets. The Pending section is offered to all accounts and this section is what sets HootSuite apart from the other web apps because this will allow you to post tweets or statuses at a different time. Why is this important? Keeping your account up-to-date will help build your brand by Social Media.

Lastly, HootSuite offers stats! It is very important to understand what your followers are clicking on your feeds. I can’t stress how important this feature is to your success on Social Media accounts. The stats will show your views by region, clicks, and links clicked. Analyzing the stats on your postings is huge! Did I mention signup and usage of HootSuite is free?

Please try this app and let me know what you think of it?

Now, I’ve reviewed other Social Media managing web applications in my other posts (Gist and Brizzly) and you know they have their pros and cons which I will highlight in a roundup article very soon.

1. Facebook App : Facebook did a great job on this iPhone app. It simple and gets the job done. You can update your status all day and manage your profile in the simple to use app. Check it out here.
2. Gist App : After my review of Gist. in a previous article, you know I really enjoy their web app. So, it’s at no surprise that I would recommend their iPhone App. The ‘importance‘ feature let me quickly control the list of people/companies on the feed from an importance ranking from 1 to 100. I can narrow down to just tweets, emails, or blogs. It’s very similar to the web app, so it pretty awesome! Check is out here.
3. Twitterific App : Iconfactory made another pretty app that is simple and to the point. Twitterific only works with Twitter and gives you the power to manage your contacts, tweets, and feed. They did add a geo tracking feature that lets you view tweets near your iPhone geo location. Check it out here.
4. Skype App : This is basically the Skype desktop application in the palm of your hand. Chat and voice is allowed through the app and it works on 3G. I recommend this if you are working on the go. Check it out here.
5. Wordpress 2 App : For all of you using Wordpress 2.7+ or a Wordpress.com account for blogging, then this is the way to go! Create new posts, edit old posts, and review comments on your iPhone. Nothing beats that! I do recommend not using the app when writing any longer than a paragraph. Check it out here.

So, there you have it, my top iPhone apps for managing your social media on the go.  If you have any other apps you want to recommend just comment on this post or email me. Let me know what you think!