The most creative name WordPress Dashboard Twitter in fact represents a Dashboard Widget for WordPress, that turns your Dashboard into a Twitter Client.

Twitter is everywhere. So why not in your WordPress Dashboard? There are lots of Twitter plugins for WordPress around, so why another one? Let’s answer this by listing the main features:

  • Adds a Twitter Client to your WordPress Dashboard only
  • Display Mentions, Direct Messages, Sent messages and Favorites in a tabbed interface
  • Reply to a Twitter status or Direct Message from within the Dashboard Widget
  • No dedicated page in your WordPress admin panel
  • All customization can be done through the Widget’s Configuration
  • No impact on your blog’s frontend or other backend pages
  • Shortening URLs with wp.gd (new!) or tr.im
  • One-Click-Image-Upload for TwitPic
  • Whenever you check your incoming links or WordPress News in the Dashboard, you can check your Twitter Status as well

To point that out once again: WordPress Dashboard Twitter does not post your new blog entries to Twitter, it does not display your tweets in your blog’s frontend and it does not add a “Twitter This” button below your posts. WordPress Dashboard Twitter is made for those who want to stay up-to-date with their twitter account quick and easily when they login to their WordPress Dashboard. It was made for that one purpose only.
If you’d like to have more, go for those other great plugins like Tweetable, which entered the contest as well. (Good luck, btw!)

Screenshots:

Tabbed Interface
The tabbed interface

Status update form
The status update form

Status update form for sending a DM
The status update form, changed submit button label when sending a DM

The options panel
The options panel

Introducing a new URL shortening service – wp.gd:

WordPress Dashboard Twitter comes with its own URL Shortener Service wp.gd! It’s not public, but you can use it in WordPress Dashboard Twitter as much as you like. If – for whatever reason – you don’t like wp.gd, just switch to tr.im in the options.

Video:

Introducing WordPress Dashboard Twitter on Vimeo.

Coming soon:

  • Hashtag filtering & search
  • Viewing timeline
  • User-based Twitter accounts (a.k.a. every backend user can use his own twitter account)
  • Create favorites from within the Dashboard Widget
  • Block users from within the Dashboard Widget

Download, Support & more

The plugin can be downloaded here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-dashboard-twitter/ Support is given via the official plugin homepage (email only at the moment) or the wp.org support forums.