Getting Started with PeopleBrowsr

We recently covered PeopleBrowsr and described the 3 levels of service they offer. I’m going to walk you through a few options I use in setting up PeopleBrowsr’s advanced mode to help keep an eye on what’s important to you. The first thing you want to do is fire up PeopleBrowsr. You can login with your Twitter account. The next thing you want to do is switch to Advanced mode. You’ll find the “Mode” menu on the bottom left.

Setting Up Your Stacks

PeopleBrowsr is a very powerful interface for keeping track of your social activity. Visually, it’s similar to Tweetdeck of Seesmic desktop, but there are definitely a few differences. Each column is known as a “stack” and the ones I keep around at all times are:

• Following – everyone you follow on Twitter
• Replies – Your Twitter replies and mentions
• DM – All your Direct Messages

This should all seem very familiar to you as this is the basic information every Twitter client provides by default. Some things to look out for here.

• The small scrollbar located at the bottom center of your screen will allow you to resize the width of all columns so that you can see more columns at once or see just a few columns in detail.
• Hovering the header or footer of each stack will show you more options, including Condensing/Explanding the items in the stack and sorting the stack.
• The are also a couple of dots at the bottom center that will help you switch pages once you start adding more stacks.

Adding More Stacks

Across the top of the screen, you’ll find a bunch of links and buttons. The links will open new stacks for stuff like Sent Tweets, Favorite Tweets, and Scheduled Tweets (yes, PeopleBrowser allows you to schedule tweets).  The two buttons you may want to pay attention to are Reports (purple icon with an image of a report/page) and Helicopter View (orange with an image of an actual helicopter).

Reports – this button will show you a huge list of specialty stacks you can use to enhance your experience. Some of the options include “Top Twitterers”, “People Retweeting Me”, and “VIP List”.

Helicopter View - this will show you an overview of all your stacks. The latest item from each stack is easily visible on the left side of the screen.

Groups and Searches

PeopleBrowsr has very detailed grouping features, but I usually keep it simple by taking advantage of the Vip group. Go ahead and open the VIP List from your Reports menu. Now, Anyone you see in one of your stacks that you feel is worthy of a little special attention can easily be added to the vip group. Simple hover their avatar, hit the arrow to expand actions, and click VIP.

Posting Updates

To post a new update, you can use the ‘P’ shortcut key or click the conversation balloon at the top of the screen. Once you’ve added your various social media accounts, you’ll have to option to pick what services your update will go to on a per update basis. Simply hover the “To” button and check off which services to include. You can also add Ping.fm if you really want to get the word out about something.

The clock will allow you to schedule a tweet (even recurring tweets, which I don’t recommend). The camera lets you post a photo via Twitpic or Posterous. The down-pointing arrow will shrink your tweet via TweetShrink.

There are just so many options with PeopleBrowsr that I could never cover them all in one post. These basics should get you started in the right direction, though. Feel free to post your questions or comments below.