I love Twitter, but hate the way the company is heading. Nevertheless, it is a treasure trove of information that flows over the brim every passing second. Therein lies the problem. The sheer volume of tweets showing up in a timeline makes it impossible to assimilate, comprehend and act in an informed manner.
SocialBro is a tool to manage and analyze your Twitter community. With SocialBro you will be able to learn more about your community thanks to different search criteria and filters that can be applied to your followers and friends. Come let’s check it out!
Pricing
Pricing
SocialBro is available both on the web and on desktop (via Adobe AIR). There are four different plans starting at $6.95. The number of accounts, contacts and sources vary with pricing. All plans come with a free trial period of 15 days.
Getting Started
I have been following SocialBro for the past few months. Over this period, the app has managed to add features at a breakneck pace. If you can think of some social analytic functionality, you can be sure that it already exists in this app. To start with, you’ll need a SocialBro account. I signed up for it from the web app and even got a welcome email from them.
However, I couldn’t login with the same from the desktop app. I was informed that no such email address exists when trying to reset the password. So, I signed up again using the same credentials and this time, I was able to get in. Weird!
User Interface
User Interface
After a quick detour to associate a Twitter account, you’ll land on a feature rich user interface. As I noted earlier, there are so many things you can do with this app and the developers have managed to keep user experience smooth even with a boatload of features. SocialBro sports a two column layout, with the left column dedicated to filters and search options. On the right column, we have all the numbers and graphs presented in a meticulous manner.
The use of arrow marks and plus, minus signs help you take a quick stock of things. Some might feel that there are just way too many boxes of data, but since they can all be deleted easily, it’s no big deal. Did I mention that you can drag and drop the info boxes in an order of your liking?
How it Works
SocialBro’s technology allows you to download all your community to your PC and browse them even if you are offline. It took just a few seconds for the app to download, analyze and present my data.
Dashboard
Right the top is the Scorecard of your Twitter account in one look. Observe the progress of your Twitter account seeing your new followers, recent unfollows, who isn’t following you back, etc. Be aware about what’s happening in your community by viewing all your followers, friends and the community by clicking on the prominently placed buttons.
Browse Your Twitter Community
In a snap, you can quickly check the follow status of both your friends and followers you are connecting with. From another info block, find out when your best time to tweet is and take advantage of every tweet you send. Get the best tweet time from a custom sample of users and learn when your audience is online. Smart thinking indeed!
More Tools
More Tools
The info blocks offer a ton of data about your Twitter community. If that’s something that hasn’t surprised you yet, pay a visit to the Tools section just under the Dashboard. From here, you can take your Twitter analysis to a whole new level.
Cool Graphs
Want to know the quality of your Twitter community? There is a report for that! Use the Insight chart to pull timezone charts, language charts, users by number of followers, users by recent activity, etc. in neatly illustrated pie charts. There are few more tools like this in the section to blow your mind!
Using Filters and Search Options
Filters and Search
With an entire column dedicated to filters and searching, you can be sure that you can find anything in Twitter in no time. Thanks to the easy to use drop downs and sliders you can get precise search results even when using multiple search criteria.
The use cases for these powerful filters could be anything from finding potential customers to competition research!
Final Thoughts
The only issue one can point out about SocialBro is the presence of so many features. I was a bit taken aback seeing so many features divided into various sections in the copy on their homepage. Power users will rejoice at the sight of all the available functionality, no doubt.
But, I’m not sure if the average user will be as receptive. In an era where single purpose apps like Buffer are succeeding fabulously, SocialBro faces the risk of appearing bloated. That said, set that concern apart for a while and I have to admit that the developers have come up with one of the most comprehensive social analytics tool ever.
The web app is a great alternative to the sluggish Adobe AIR app on the desktop. To conquer this space real quick, SocialBro needs to focus on building native apps.
