I think of Twitter as a loose series of conversations just like at any social gathering, but with the advantage that if you go out for a few minutes you can catch up on what happened while you were away by scanning the messages.
But Twitter followers are constantly developing new resources to measure metrics and to connect.
These are Twitter resources I have come across. The words in blue lettering are links – click on them. Once you have visited a link and come back here, the link will be in red lettering. That way you know which links you have visited.
However, before you get into the following list, there is a fanwiki that has lots of everything. I strongly suggest you check this out. It’s twitter.pbwiki and it has lots of connections and links and tools.
UPDATE: Feb 12, 2009
I heartily recommend this site for resources:
http://hyder.me/social-media/14-tools-of-highly-effective-twitter-users/
OK – Here begins my list:
Click here – this is the link to Twitter itself.
TIP: Use the search facility.
click here for the link to Twitter’s own search facility. It is a neat way of catching up on what you missed while you were away.
The fact is that unless your eyes are glued to the screen 24 hours a day you are going to miss tweets that are addressed to you. And you probably want to know what they are.
I am not talking about Direct Messages – messages privately addressed to you specifically – which you will see because they are delivered to your Direct Messages box and you will see them when you click on Direct Messages.
I am talking about general tweets that are addressed to you and can be seen by anyone who looks at the tweets, and which just slip down the list and on to the next page and out of sight.
One way to catch up on the ones you have missed is to put your own Twitter name in the search box of search.twitter.com and see who wrote to you while you were away, and what they said.
OK – now for the resources:
2.
Ping and send your posts to twitter and other social media outlets in one fell swoop
3.
Usequitter – shows you who stops following you and when and maybe why
4.
Twitterbacks – twitter backgrounds from Jim Kukral
5.
Justtweetit – lists people by interests or specialisms – add yourself
6.
Twellow – get yourself mired in searching for people on twitter and elsewhere
8.
This is a Twitter Photoshop template by Fabrice Epelboin You can use it to make your own page background – handy if you don’t feel comfortable making one yourself from scratch or just want some ideas.
9.
Twitterfeed posts your blog entries to Twitter
10.
brightkit allows you to manage multiple twitter accounts for more insanity
11.
Journalists, Bloggers & Media Outlets on Twitter – add yourself
12.
Trim – shortens urls and sends them to twitter
Well those are the twelve resources but I keep hearing about more of them and there will probably be more which I’ll add when I find them.
13.
GroupTweet enables private group twittering that doesn’t show up on the public timeline
14.
This suite of tools at Tweetlater does everything except boil eggs. Maybe the egg boiler is the next thing they’ll do. Meanwhile it:
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Emails you with details of how the keywords you chose have turned up in Twitter (you can do this manually via search.twitter.com)
Gives you your own personal Twitter where you can direct tweets to your blog or have it available as an RSS to subscribers
Allows you to schedule and publish your tweets to Twitter when you want, so they catch the busy times when everyone’s online.
Sends thank you tweets to your new followers and sets it up so you automatically follow them.
15.
If you are a Wordpress.org blogger then Wordpress to Twitter might be for you. It is a plug-in that automatically publishes your blog updates to Twitter. I posted details HERE on this blog – and yes, I am using it.
16.
I have no idea how this works but it may pick out happy words. However it works, if you want to see how happy you are according to your tweets, try happytweets
17.
And if you want to see who is following you that you are not following, and who you are following who is not following you, then try friendorfollow, which is a miracle of speedy results. [With thanks to Wayne Smallman of blahblahtechnology for this one.]
18.
And having used all these resources, if you want to know how much time you have spent usefully on Twitter, find out at Tweetwasters
19.
SocialToo is in its own words
working to complement your social experience by providing you with all the tools you need to get the most you can from those you follow on the web. We’re automating the processes needed to make this experience as easy as possible, and providing you with tools to reach your audience to its fullest potential.
This translates into Social Surveys, Profile redirection, Auto-Follow, Auto-Unfollow, Blacklisting, Direct Messages to new followers, and daily stats by email. It doesn’t actually write your tweets for you but perhaps it will provide a service like that, randomly choosing from a list:
- Jack is happy,
Jack is sad
Jack is out
Jack is jac…
20.
I came across this one at einfo.
Twibs is a directory of businesses that have a Twitter presence. If you are a business and you have a following and you want to be on the Twibs list, just tweet @twibs to add your business.
At Twibs I read that as of January 12, 2009 there are more than 1,400 businesses listed with Twibs and there are a lot of well known names on their ‘featured businesses’ page.
21.
This is one I like. It’s called MyCleenr and once you log in and give it your Twitter details it provides you with a list of the people you are following. The individuals are listed together with the length of time since their last post. Those with the longest time since their last posts are listed at the top. You can click to see their Twitter pages or you can just go ahead and click to stop following them. I like it.
22.
Twitip is a blog of Twitter tips, and it’s worth a look.
23.
Measure your influence as a Twitterer across the twittersphere at Twinfluence. The site says
social network analysis teaches us that there is a “horizon of communication” that extends beyond your own direct contacts, and this is demonstrated whenever somebody “retweets” a message. The significance is that not all followers are equal.Imagine Twitterer1, who has 10,000 followers – most of which are bots and inactives with no followers of their own. Now imagine Twitterer2, who only has 10 followers – but each of them has 5,000 followers. Who has the most real “influence?” Twitterer2, of course.
24.
Does Jimmy love Peggy Sue, does Jane love Patrick? Does X follow Y? Find out at doesfollow. (from MariSmith)
Post Script
There was a time a few months ago, when Twitter would go down regularly because it could not handle all the messages coming in at one time.
The problem eased shortly after they hired an engineer to deal with scalability or lack thereof. I cannot recall his name but I will insert it here when I find the video interview he gave when he accepted the job.
So when Twitter was down a lot, they showed a holding page. It was a whale being held up by little birds – and here it is.
The Fail Whale
I made a variation by taking the whole page and rotating it within a larger page which had the whale page stuck at the bottom of the sea with birds rescuing it. And here it is.
Tweet Rescue
When I originally wrote this post – on the 23rd December 2008 – I wrote “Twitter seem to have dealt with the overload problem successfully, so the problem has flown away.”
Well it seemed that it had, but over the past few days in these first weeks of January 2009 it seems to have flown back into town – though it usually corrects itself very quickly.
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Very useful. Thanks.