I recently read a statistic which said that over 50% of all tweets originate from the Twitter homepage. So half the tweeters out there are using Twitter.com to tweet rather than a mobile app or third-party desktop program.

Have you ever noticed how bad the official Twitter site is though? I mean, it gets the job done but as far as organisation, productivity and style go it’s way behind some of the popular alternatives.

However, I have found a cool add-on for your browser called MonkeyFly. What this add-on does is give you the ability to completely change your Twitter account homepage to have more than one column at once or have all of your incoming tweets (regular, replies, DMs and more) displayed on the one screen. And that’s just the beginning.

Start by downloading the add-on from here. It is supported on Chrome (only the beta version ““ this can be downloaded on the MonkeyFly Website alongside the add-on, or get it here) and Mozilla Firefox. It only takes a few seconds to download and install. Once it does you can go to Twitter.com and begin customizing your homepage.

Above your Twitter stream you’ll notice a red cross like the one pictured above. Clicking on that red cross opens a drop-down menu with some basic options to begin to change your Twitter account. All of the options in this menu will open a separate column for the selected tweets. So for example, clicking on Direct Messages will show a stream like the standard Twitter stream but it will contain only DM’s.

Other options include your own tweets, replies/mentions, favourites, retweets by others, retweets by you and specific Twitter Lists. The more columns you have open the wider your Twitter page will be. This can be alleviated by clicking a green arrow next to the sidebar which makes the sidebar disappear/reappear thus giving you more room.

Another great thing that I like about MonkeyFly is that it incorporates Bit.ly and TwitPic, two of the most popular services used for tweeting, right onto your Twitter page. When you start typing a tweet, the options shown below will appear. To tweet a photograph simply click ‘photo‘ and log into your TwitPic account right there. To shorten a URL, highlight it and click ‘URL Shortener‘. MonkeyFly shortens them to Bit.ly URLs.

Also, in the sidebar MonkeyFly has added some new features. Firstly, all your followers and people you’re following can be displayed in the sidebar by clicking on the downward arrow. MonkeyFly has also enabled shortcuts in Twitter, which can be viewed in the sidebar, to increase your speed. These take some time to get used to but quite a few of them come in handy. Here are the shortcuts:

By clicking on ‘MonkeyFly’ in the top right-hand corner of the screen you can display a menu. This menu enables you to turn on/off any of the services above and change the width of the columns for those of us who may want five or six open at once. For information on creating more desktop space, read Tim’s article on dual monitors.

Overall, this is a great way to change up your Twitter account and overall experience without migrating to an alternative.  What do you think about it?

Tagged: firefox addons • start pages • Twitter • twitter tips