There are hundreds of applications to help you interact with others through Twitter. Some are designed for broadcasting, some for finding people to follow, and some for listening. Some are web-based, some are for the desktop, and others are for mobile phones (see Twitter’s recommendations).
Of course you can just use Twitter.com “out of the box” right after you sign up and interact with people well. But if you want to be more effective, you’ll need an application or two or four.
[UPDATE: The Guardian in the UK just published that "only 20% of its traffic comes through the Twitter website; the other 80% (logically) comes from third-party programs on smartphones or computers. "]
Below are what I usually recommend (or use myself) to others who want to take the next step. Under each category I put a line about “How Twitter Does It”. This is meant to show what is provided for you if you don’t use any applications or services. Many of these tools are not necessarily exclusive to the category in which I placed them. Also note I listed them in order of importance in my personal opinion (find interesting people, listen to them, then say something).
Find People
How Twitter Does It - Find People by searching or Find On Other Networks by cross-checking your online email contacts to see if they are on Twitter already.
- FriendOrFollow – See who is following you that you’re not following so you can decide if you should follow back.
- MrTweet – Follow @MrTweet and it will direct message you after a period of time with recommended profiles to follow.
- SocialToo – If you feel you need to follow everyone who follows you, this will do it for you for free or catch you up for a small fee.
- Networking – I do this often: find a relevant person to follow, then go through all of the profiles they follow. As you click through each list, you’ll probably discover another nework to check out. Yeah, it’s pretty old-school but it works.
Find People in a Niche
How Twitter Does It - they do not provide a way to search by niche.
- WeFollow – List of twitter profiles by category when users tag themselves or add themselves to the service.
- Twellow – List of twitter profiles by category maintained by an organization. “The Twitter Yellow Pages”
- What The Hashtag – See who is twittering posts tagged with particular #hashtags.
Find Local People
How Twitter Does It - they do not provide a way to search by geography.
- Twellowhood – List of twitter profiles by category maintained by an organization sorted by geography.
- Twitterhholic – List of twitter profiles rankings. Search for a twitter profile and click on the location to reveal top profiles in that location.
Listen to Others
How Twitter Does It - Text Message – Link your mobile phone’s texting with Twitter. Receive direct messages as text messages on your mobile.
Also Twitter Search (or use searchbox in right column of your twitter profile) – Live search for current and trending topics. Perform search to see what tweets mention your twitter name “-from:TWITTERNAME TWITTERNAME”. Perform search to follow a #hashtag “#TAG”. Save a search if on your Twitter profile or grab the RSS feed if using search.twitter.com.
- Topify – Email notification of new followers. Ability to reply inside email or click link to follow, block, report as spam, or direct message the person.
- TweetBeep – Email alerts for predefined search terms. Provides link to reply, retweet or view the original tweet.
- BackTweets – Scans and alerts you when someone tweets a domain you specify. Receive email alerts or grab the RSS feed.
- Monitter – Web-based, follow tweets in real time based on search keywords you choose.
Broadcast on the Web
How Twitter Does It - Twitter.com - Straight-forward website to publish a tweet!
- FriendFeed – Add your Twitter profile to FriendFeed so when you publish a status update, check the “CC: Twitter” box.
- TwitterFox – Small Firefox addon that notifies you of your friend’s tweets and allows you to publish quickly.
- HootSuite – Still testing it – Manage multiple twitter accounts at one time, tweet RSS feeds, and scheduled publishing.
Broadcast from the Desktop
How Twitter Does It - they do not provide a desktop application.
- Twhirl – Single column monitoring with easy publish box. Can use multiple twitter accounts.
- Tweetdeck – Allows easy search, sorting, and publishing tweets in multi-column format for one multiple twitter accounts.
- Seesmic Desktop – Still testing it – Robust like Tweetdeck and allows multiple twitter accounts as well.
- Digsy – If you use Instant Messaging chat on your desktop, Digsby is a great way to combine most IM clients (including Twitter and Faceook Chat) into one place.
Broadcast from your Mobile Phone
How Twitter Does It - Text Message – Link your mobile phone’s texting with Twitter. Send text message to Twitter.
Also remember that if you can get online from your mobile you can use your web browser to use many web-based services like Twitter Mobile.
- TwitterBerry – Tweet and read from a Blackberry. Note: I do not use a blackberry.
- Twitterrific – Tweet and read from an iPhone. Note: I do not use an iPhone.
I have learned a lot of this by experimenting with three twitter profiles I use regularly plus others I’ve created or used on behalf of clients. The three I use currently are @orangejack, @clemsonfootball, and @lostsoup ranking in the top 30,000, 82,000, and 49,000 accordingly by Twitterholic. Ha! I laugh because I couldn’t care less how my personal twitter accounts rank overall.
