Posted by Trey Baird. Follow me on Twitter!

Yes, I’m a Twittley Fan!

Last week, I installed a plugin called Twittley at the suggestion of my blogging colleague, Sire. He’s one of my blogging friends who keeps me on my toes and gives me good, honest, feedback, and is just a good honest person who doesn’t BS around when it comes to what he does.  I know that he doesn’t fool around when it comes to his blog, which is why he caught my eye when he recommended a new plugin called “Twittley”.

First of all, I am NOT a bandwagon jumper.  I don’t sign up for everything that comes around.  For both Myspace and Facebook, I didn’t sign up until I was sure that neither one was going to be a passing trend.  I signed up for Myspace in 2006, and Facebook in 2008.  I didn’t even start using Twitter until very recently!  But with Twittley, I knew that I had come across something that is only going to skyrocket with popularity, and I wanted in on the ground floor this time!

Why I’m A Twittley Fan:

The people behind Twittley are some critical thinking folks, because they have solved most of the problems that I have with bookmarking sites such as Digg and Stumble Upon.  These are things that have prevented me from investing time into getting onto these social bookmarking sites.  For me, it’s more about building a community with my readers and being real with them, instead of just sending traffic from a bunch of brain-dead internet browsers, such as the ones who frequent Digg and Stumble Upon.

One of the main problems that I have with those sites is that it is inconvenient for the blogger, and the reader for that matter, to have the reader taken to another site whenever vote for your article.  I mean, come one!  Don’t punish them for voting!  Make it quick, easy, and painless.  With Twittley, the reader never leaves the site!  All they do is click the button, and they have instantly shared the joy of your written work to all of their followers!  This is accomplished by Twittley’s system of keeping you logged on at all times.

The Power Of This Plugin…

This brings me to my next point.  Twittley taps into the powerful userbase of Twitter.  Twittley is seamlessly integrated into Twitter, and when a Twitter user Tweets your article, it is seen by each and every one of their followers.  And if one of those followers decides to check out the article and retweets it, the link is seen by each and every one of THEIR followers.  (And there’s a LOT of Twitter users out there).  This instantly makes Twittley more powerful than any other social bookmarking site out their, in my opinion.

Another issue that I have with other social bookmarking sites is the capacity for abuse.  Some of those sites count individual votes while Twittley counts unique votes.  Some of those sites have simple formulas and are able to be easily manipulated by sites that have a large and loyal fanbase, in other words, the sites who DON’T EVEN NEED THE ATTENTION!  Twittley, on the other hand, uses a proprietary algorithm to determine the popularity of each article, and even weighs the users’ karma rating to determine who “deserves” the attention and who doesn’t.  I also like how Twittley goes to great lengths to prevent spam abuse.

The Good People At Twittley

Lastly, I’ve heard nothing but good things about the people who work on Twittley.  They participate in the blogosphere and engage people in conversation about their product!  They care very deeply about what the users think of Twittley, and want to integrate as many features and suggestions as people have!  One of them even personally responded to my email and gave me helpful advice for how to configure the button for this site!  SO I can personally vouch for their helpfulness.

A lot of bloggers have gotten sucked into a brand war between Twittley and Tweetmeme, claiming that one or the other is superior.  Personally, I don’t care to get involved with these sorts of things.  Lots of people have benefitted greatly from using Tweetmeme, and I don’t have anything bad to say about it.  Twittley simply appeals to me more.  What I will say is this:  If you are blogging, and not using at least one of these plugins, then I seriously don’t understand why.  It’s time to get on board for the next step in social media!

This is simply a review of a plugin that I have tried and liked.  I have not been paid or compensated in any way to write this.