How To Use Facebook And Twitter From Your Email Client

So you’re a big fan of Facebook or Twitter, but you’re stuck on a browser-less mobile phone, or if your work blocks sites like Facebook and Twitter, you can still use them over email with free services TheFriendMail and Tweetymail.

Facebook and Twitter already have a few little email or SMS features built-in, but if you really want to be able to make the best of their networks over email, TheFriendMail and Tweetymail are perfect replacements. They’re super easy to use, too: just sign in with your Facebook or Twitter account and start sending emails.

TheFriendMail

Facebook already has a few built-in email features, but TheFriendMail is far more feature-filled. When you first link TheFriendMail with your Facebook account, you can choose whether you’d like to give it high or low permissions. If you give it high permissions, you can do nearly anything — share links, photos, status updates, comments, send messages, “like” posts, view profiles, and even see your news feed — all without ever leaving your email client. You just have to send an email to one of their designated email addresses, like [email protected], and it will post it for you. You can even schedule posts to go up at a certain time in the future, which is something Facebook can’t even do yet.

Unfortunately, this all means giving TheFriendMail quite a few permissions on your account, which we know some people aren’t comfortable with. For you, there’s a low permissions version that lets you update your status, request your news feed, and get notifications only. You can grant higher permissions later if you so choose. Right now, TheFriendMail is in beta and is completely free.

Tweetymail

Tweetymail works in much the same way as TheFriendMail: Instead of signing up for a new account, you just link your email address to Twitter and start tweeting. To tweet, you just email [email protected] with your tweet in the body and it will post it for you. You can also request your timeline via email, send and receive direct messages, get notifications of mentions, and follow other users.

Tweetymail is a free service, but it also has paid options that give you more features, like directly replying or retweeting posts you view from your email. Of course, you can always just stick with the free version and manually “@” mention people to reply or use the old “RT @” format for retweets.

Hit the links below to check out both services.

TheFriendMail and Tweetymail [via OneThingWell]