Twitter Gmail Gadget Brings Twitter Right into Your Gmail

The Twitter Gmail gadget isn’t really new. A recent client was interested in finding out if there was any way to keep up with his social media accounts while he’s doing his daily routines. Since he uses Gmail a lot, this is something that is working out great for him. I thought I’d go over this for you in case you haven’t been using it or maybe never heard of it. It is very convenient if you use spend a lot of time in your Gmail account. Your Twitter updates are fed right into the side panel of your Gmail account. You’ll have to enable labs in your settings and get it set up, which only takes maybe 5 minutes. Don’t know how to do that? No worries. This step-by-step guide will have you up and running with your Twitter Gmail gadget before you can say hashtag!

Step One:

If you don’t already have labs enabled, you’ll need to go do that in your settings. Not sure if you have labs? If you do, there would be a green chemical lab bottle in the menu shown here. On this email account, I didn’t have labs enabled so you don’t see the icon here. Click on that “Settings” link.

Step Two:

Once you get to that page, click on “Labs” on the top menu. When you get there, you’ll need to enable “Add any gadget by URL”. Your top menu will then have a “Gadgets” link.

Step Three:

Now that you have it enabled, you need to have the URL for the Twitter Gmail gadget. You can use either of these:

• http://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml
• or https://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml

If you want to grab it right from the site then go to http://twittergadget.appspot.com/gmail Just so you know, you can also add Twitter to Facebook, Orkut, or MySpace. For those go to their main URL at http://twittergadget.appspot.com/ It will look like this…

Step Four:

Now go back to your Gmail and click on the “Gadgets” link that appeared on the top menu earlier. Paste in the URL for the gadget.

That’s pretty much it! Once you do that, you should see the Twitter box show up on the side bar in your Gmail. You’ll have to connect it to your Twitter account, which is easy. Just click on the link in the Twitter Gmail gadget box and it will take you to a screen where you’ll have to “allow” the connection. Then it will take you back to Gmal. Just reload and you’re ready to roll with your new Twitter Gmail gadget – Have fun!