Twitter Broadcasting
With 97% of the writers at Agent Genius actively using Twitter, we can tell you that a group messaging system is sadly lacking. In July when we were in San Francisco, we were all direct messaging like crazy that we’d won the Inman Innovator award and if we had a way to send one message to all the writers with one private message, it would have been very helpful. When we were at the Tech Crunch party in September, it would have been awesome to tweet all of our close Austin tech friends that we were ditching the party and heading to The Belmont afterparty, instead we relied on a few of us to spread the word of mouth.
So, the solution is Group Tweet, a group broadcasting system designed by Aaron Forgue. Because it’s an opt-in system for private messages only, the spam factor is minimized and administrators can always block people should they abuse it. Here’s how it works:
- 1. Create a new Twitter account specifically for your group (e.g. AGwriters or austintechpeeps). If you want to make this a private group, make sure that updates are protected in the settings.
- 2. Register your group’s new Twitter account at GroupTweet.com.
- 3. Tell all group members to follow the group account you created at Twitter. Note that the group account must also follow the group members. (If updates are protected, you will need to approve each follow request.)
- 4. Members can broadcast a message to the whole group by sending a direct text to the group’s Twitter account. For example: ‘D austintechpeeps this party sucks, going to open bar at Belmont, DM if u need us to get you in the private bar.’
- That’s it! GroupTweet is constantly listening for direct texts sent to your group’s Twitter account. When a direct text is received, GroupTweet instantly publishes it as a tweet from the group account.
Get Goin’
So try it out for your brokerage, your Association or your social group- let us know how you will use Group Tweet. If you’re new to Twitter or you have a buddy who wants to learn, here is a super easy crash course in Twitter, just follow the links for more directives.
Lani is the COO and News Director at The American Genius, has co-authored a book, co-founded BASHH, Austin Digital Jobs, Remote Digital Jobs, and is a seasoned business writer and editorialist with a penchant for the irreverent.

Brad Hanks
October 11, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Thanks again Lani for some excellent info! Tryin’ it out right now, before I start in on the chili dogs and tots!
Pete
May 7, 2009 at 8:36 am
The problem with group tweet is that people have auto-responders that are sent via DM. When I was using this for @umphreaks group it would constantly brodcast “thanks for following me i look forward to tweeting with you” or whatever peoples auto DM messages were. I eventually went with a different option.