How to Use Twitter as a Personal Alert Service

Elon Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it as X after I wrote this article. I’m not going to change “Twitter” to “X” in this article.

Using a smartphone to schedule alerts and reminders[/caption]Smart phones are nice devices that are fast becoming personal assistants but some of their features leave something to be desired. For example, you can set an alert through your alarm clock widget but it will go off on a regular basis and you won’t know much about what the alert was for. Twitter provides an interesting way to write personal notes to yourself that can be delivered at precisely the correct time. Here is how you do it.

First, you do need a Twitter account. But you’ll want a second account that is set to private. This second account is where you will schedule Tweets with little notes to yourself.

Second, you’ll need to download and install the Twitter app if you haven’t done this already. Sure, there are other smart phone apps for Twitter but Twitter has a very bad track record for supporting the third-party vendors who made their service great. So just install the Twitter app.

Third, set up an account with a service like Twuffer. You use this service to schedule Tweets. Set the Tweets to post from your private account TO your public account. No one will see the Tweets but you (although you must have your regular account follow your private account).

So what happens? When the scheduled Tweet is posted your Twitter app will alert you that “someone” just Tweeted at you. You can then read the Tweet and remind yourself of exactly what you needed to get done.

You can log in to your private Twitter account later and delete the Tweet.

Don’t use this method to schedule recurring reminders because Twitter does not like it when you try to schedule something you have already Tweeted. You’ll need to write a unique message for each reminder.