Tweets Don't Roar With Twitilla Lite

Twitilla Lite, as you might guess from its name, is all about Twitter. This free, cloud-based service offers a host of Twitter management features, ranging from the ability to simply post tweets to tools for finding new followers and tracking the impact of your tweets. While it offers plenty of useful tools, Twitilla is, unfortunately, held back by its hokey interface and the questionable advice it doles out.

Lite is Twitilla's free (but ad-supported) version. A Primo account, which adds more business-focused management tools, costs $5 per month, and a Primetime account, which is designed for teams of users, is $20 per month. All three versions offer help for business users looking to get more impact out of their Twitter accounts, but businesspeople are likely to be taken aback by Twitilla Lite's black-and-green design. The colors are jarring, but manageable. I can't say the same about Twitilla's Godzilla-like dragon mascot; he appears on almost every page, occupying valuable screen real estate while offering little in return.

The mascot's there on your Twitilla home page, which displays the basic info about your Twitter account. All of the information about your account--including the number of followers you have and how many people you are following--is used to calculate your Klout score, which indicates how much of an impact Twitilla thinks you have on Twitter.

To improve your Klout score, you can use Twitilla to find new followers. Here's where things get a little, well, gray. You can purchase credits (and each account comes with a certain amount of credits to start) and earn more by referring users to Twitilla and by following suggested users. These credits can be redeemed to "buy" followers and Web site visits, which can then increase your Klout. It's not the most organic way of growing your Twitter account, and I'm not sure that gaining followers you purchased through Twitilla is going to help you in the long run.

Twitilla also advises you on which Twitter users you should continue to follow and which ones you should unfollow, and I can't quite figure out how it makes that determination. It suggested that I unfollow Conan O'Brien, who has a high Klout score, as well as several co-workers who I follow now. But it advised me to keep following other co-workers with lower Klout scores as well as several fun accounts that I follow. When I asked the company, the explanation I got was "Twitilla runs a calculation on each friend and follower you have and bases the recommendation on following or dropping on the result of that calculation." However you explain it, it's still a mystery to me.

Twitilla has other features, such as the ability to listen to your Tweets if you're using an HTML5-compatible browser. But this business-focused product needs to look and feel a lot more like a business-ready service if it's going to be worth your time.