tweet

#!/bin/bash

# file: tweet
# NOTE: make sure to put this file in '/usr/bin' and make it executable: sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/tweet
# usage: tweet "hello from CLI"

user="USERNAME"
pass="PASSWORD"
tweet=$1

echo 

curl -o /tmp/tweet --basic --user "$user:$pass" --data-ascii "status=$tweet" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json > /dev/null 2>&1

tweet_sent=$(grep -c "created_at" /tmp/tweet)

[ "$tweet_sent" -eq "1" ] && echo "Tweet sent" || echo "Error, not sent."

[ -f /tmp/tweet ] && rm -f /tmp/tweet

echo

Update: the script no longer works because Twitter stop supporting BASIC AUTH login.