Ken Yarmosh – Product Strategist and Technology Connoisseur

Tweeb is a Twitter analytics app for the iPhone. It’s my longest ongoing iPhone creation that I’m finally ready to unveil.

Initially codename “Nerdy Birdy” — Tweeb provides a simple, digestible, and yet comprehensive view of how someone is doing on Twitter. It currently looks through four lenses – tweets, followers, buzz, and clicks. Yes, clicks too! A secondary function, which is continuing to mature is follower management. Today, however, I’ll be focusing on the analytics and iPhone aspects of Tweeb.

Twitter Analytics?

Before diving in more, I understand that Tweeb is not for everyone. There are many users on Twitter, some exceptionally active ones that may even think about Twitter as a professional tool, who just don’t care about their “Twitter stats.” They tweet just to tweet and the numbers are just numbers. Tweeb is not for these types of people and I’m OK with that.

There are others, however, that are actively trying to grow their Twitter audience and provide value to their network. These types of users really have no easy way of assessing engagement other than the more rudimentary follower count. More savvy individuals might use a variety of disparate Twitter-related tools to gain insight into their Twitter performance. Many of these tools are clunky, difficult to understand, typically don’t include the most fresh data, and often aren’t tailored to individuals.

Of course, I wanted to change all that with Tweeb.

My driving philosophies with Tweeb have been simplicity, usefulness, on-demand stats, and catering specifically to individuals and small brands. In part, I built Tweeb to solve or perhaps automate my own Twitter analysis. My thinking on Twitter stats was influenced by my background in web analytics and search marketing. I also spent considerable time discussing the right type of data to surface with many different folks ranging from power users like Steve Rubel and Laura Fitton to more casual tweeps. I feel like Tweeb started with a strong set of stats but I definitely gained valuable insight from testers and contacts along the way. I expect to continue that trend by listening to those of you who are using Tweeb.

You can learn more about the Twitter analytics and statistics in Tweeb at the Tweeb website or on the App Store.

iPhone?

One of the first questions people typically ask me about Tweeb is, “Why the iPhone?” A major reason is that being mobile is a key aspect of what Twitter is all about. I wanted users to be able to check their Twitter stats wherever they are and felt that the iPhone platform was the best place to start doing that.

I was also inspired by many of the extremely well done iPhone Twitter clients, including Tweetie, Echofon, Birdfeed, and others. While Tweeb itself isn’t about tweeting, it supports posting a tweet from these clients, as well as several others.

Finally, I believed starting on the iPhone was a way to test demand for this particular vision of Twitter analytics.

Going Forward

While others have helped along the way (including the talented Thanny Young on design), ultimately it was the team at Mobomo that brought Tweeb to life and into the App Store.

We have some big plans and a large backlog of some really neat features for Tweeb. Whether we pursue them all will largely be up to how you, our hopeful users, respond to what we’ve done thus far.

Check out the Tweeb site to learn more. You’ll want to keep tuned here and to Twitter (@tweebapp) to share thoughts, feedback, or just say hey. If you are loving Tweeb, be sure to rate it on oneforty and definitely leave us an iTunes review.