Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you answer the question, "What are you doing?" by sending short text messages 140 characters in length, called "tweets", to your friends, or "followers."
The short format of the tweet is a defining characteristic of the service,
allowing informal collaboration and quick information sharing that provides
relief from rising email and IM fatigue. Twittering is also a less gated
method of communication: you can share information with people that you wouldn't
normally exchange email or IM messages with, opening up your circle of contacts
to an ever-growing community of like-minded people.
You can send your messages using the Twitter website directly, as a single SMS alert, or via a third-party application such as Twirl, Snitter, or the Twitterfox add-on for Firefox. (See below for links to Twitter tools and applications.)
Your tweets are displayed on your profile page, on the home page of each of your followers, and in the Twitter public timeline (unless you disable this in your account settings.)
You can receive tweets by visiting the Twitter website, IM, SMS, RSS, email or via a third-party application.
For more information about what Twitter is all about, see:
Twitter has many uses for both personal and business use. It's a great way to keep in touch with your friends and quickly broadcast information about where you are and what you're up to. For example, "I'm downtown and aching for some sushi. Anyone like to join me?"
For business, Twitter can be used to broadcast your company's latest news and blog posts, interact with your customers, or to enable easy internal collaboration and group communication.
To learn more about how you can make use of Twitter, see:
Visit the Twitter website and click "Join for free" to create your account. Consider using your real name as your user name to help your friends find you more easily.
Once your account is created, login and click "Settings." From here, you can setup your account details, manage your password, register your mobile phone and IM account, configure how you receive Notices, upload your photo and customize your account's design.
Your Twitter page is located at twitter.com/your-username
You can "tweet" from your Twitter page, your mobile phone, IM account, or via a third-party Twitter client.

Your tweet will be displayed to your followers, either on their Twitter page, mobile phone, or any other way they are setup to receive Twitter updates.
Finding and adding friends to your "Twitterverse" is easy.
See the Twitter website for a complete reference of Twitter Commands.
When you send a message with @username at the beginning, it's understood that your message is intended for that specific user, but all your followers can still see the tweet. Note that for the intended recipient to see your message on their home page, they must be following you, otherwise they will only see your message on the Replies tab.
To send a friend a private tweet, use the Direct command: d username message.
The following blog posts are aimed at bloggers and other professionals who would like to use Twitter for business.
Subscribe
to the Twitter Tools RSS feed and get notified of the latest tools added
to tweeternet.
Twitter-powered micro forum.
twitter client that provides advanced conversation filtering.
Create and share lists of your twitter friends.
Graphs Tweets and replies displaying hour-by-hour information. Also shows you all the @replies a person has ever used, sorted by person.
Graph trends in twitter.
Discovering trends, popular topics and popular people by tracking Retweets across Twitter.
Provides retweeting stats for articles on Twitter. It’s best for recent events.
Tracks statistics on multiple social media platforms. For Twitter, its Twitter Search graphs provide graphing of keyword mentions on an hourly basis. There’s also Twitter user stats available, and all of this information can be compared to things like blog mentions.
Graphs out information on how often you tweet, when you do it, and your @reply habits. Useful for understanding how you, or anybody else, uses Twitter.
Send direct messages to specific groups of friends on twitter.
Greeting card twitter app.
Gift registry twitter app.
Simple travel organizer twitter app.
Coupon manager for businesses. Create twitter coupons for your business!
Business directory for Twitter.
Simple event manager twitter app.
twtpoll is a simple survey/ poll twitter app.
Ask questions via Twitter in different categories such as sports, travel, health, business and finance.
Ask a question of your Twitter followers and easily gather all their answers in one spot. Powered by Squidoo.
Twitter mashup that will help you get your questions answered quickly; think Yahoo! Answers meets Twitter.
Searches Twitter for phrases such as "does anyone know?" and "why does?" and collects them in one place. There's an option to answer the questions but you'll have to follow tweet paths to find posted answers.
Service that brings recruiters, hiring managers and job seekers together on Twitter. Major cities and job types have Twitter Channels, and there's an easy-to-use interface that allows you to subscribe to those channels. Instant notifications of new jobs are sent as text messages to your mobile.
Full featured Twitter client for Blackberry smart phones.
An intuitive and efficient application that allows you to organize followers.
PHP / MySQL / AJAX application to auto-schedule tweets.
A visual dashboard that lets you manage your activities on a host of social applications, such as twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and upcoming. Think TweetDeck but as a web application.
Measure the power and authority of your twitter profile.
Tracks the 100 most popular URLs shared through Twitter during the past 24 hours. Your vote is cast when you share a specific URL.
Analyzes Twitter conversations and extracts the topics that are popular. Then, using sentiment analysis, assigns a rating of positive, neutral or negative.
A unique tool to evaluate the activity of any Twitter user and report on relative influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity, clout, and other useful measures of success in social media.
Pre-define which Twitter follower notifications you'd like to receive.
Enhanced Twitter follower notification service.
Provides more user details in Twitter follow email notifications.
Twitter Job Search Engine
When you use the TwitPwr short url service, clicks you drive are tracked and you'reawared a Power Rating. Your Twitter Power shows how effective you are at getting your followers to take action (in other words, CTR.)
Find and Follow Top Business Execs on Twitter
Who do you talk to most often on Twitter? Who are your closest friends? What does your social network look like? Analyze your Twitterverse.
Tweetizen is a simple web-based tool designed to help you filter the daily influx of tweets, and easily find the ones that are relevant to you. Use Tweetizen to create twitter groups, and you'll be able to stay on top of what's happening in all your areas of interest.
Twe2 is Free Twitter SMS alerts in Europe and beyond.
A User Powered Twitter Directory
Tweetree puts your Twitter stream in a tree so you can see the posts people are replying to in context. It also pulls in lots of external content like twitpic photos, youtube videos and more, so that you can see them right in your stream without having to click through every link your friends post.
StockTwits is an open, community-powered idea and information service for investments. Users can eavesdrop on traders and investors, or contribute to the conversation and build their reputation as savvy market wizards. The service takes financial related data - using Twitter as the content production platform - and structures it by stock, user, reputation, etc.
New search engine for Twitter focused on links. available in both French and English.
DestroyTwitter is a robust but compact Twitter application built to run on Mac, Windows, and Linux using Adobe AIR.
The Twitter message scheduling platform
Who's not following you back? Who aren't you following?
SocialToo complements your social experience by providing you with all the tools and automated processes you need to get the most you can from those you follow on the web.
Twemes.com follows Twitter.com tweets (messages) that have embedded tags that start with a # character. These are sometimes called hashtags but we like to use the term twemes.
Filttr aims to enhance your Twitter experience with a client that automatically filters content from your followers using an algorithm dubbed FLAI (Filttr Artificial Intelligence) and offers a slew of additional features.
TwitterBerry is mobile client for posting updates to Twitter. It works over the data network, so you don't need to use SMS.
Detailed statistics for your twitter account.
Custom Twitter Background Image Creator
Expand your Twitter experience by sharing links, using tags and allowing other peeps to follow you and join your group. Create a new Group or Join an existing group. Follow people with the same interests as you. Find new people to follow. Let people follow you. Share your favorite articles, deals, photos, videos, blogs, websites, links and more! Create and promote your own groups... It is that simple...
TweetChat helps put your blinders on to the Twitter-sphere while you monitor and chat about one topic.
TwitterGadget is a clean, robust, web 2.0 style client for Twitter.com, designed to eliminate the need to install third-party applications to monitor and submit status updates to Twitter via your iGoogle homepage.
THE Directory for Twitter Users
Auto follow - Enabling you to automatically follow the conversations that are important to you. Tell us what you like, and we do the hard work of finding the conversations that you should be involved in.
Follow a big list of users with a single import.
TweetDeck is an Adobe Air desktop application that is currently in public beta. It aims to evolve the existing functionality of Twitter by taking an abundance of information i.e twitter feeds, and breaking it down into more manageable bite sized pieces.
TwitPic lets you share photos on Twitter
Twitter Influence Analyzer
TwittAd was formed to give Twitter users and advertisers the opportunity to meet for product placement & website promotion on a Twitter user profile. Our goal is to not fill Twitter with ugly & obnoxious advertisements. We give advertisers templates and ideas to help keep the integrity of Twitter background images.
An Open-Source Twitter Client for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.
Film reviews by twitter users.
@twanslate is a Twitter Bot capable of translating anything you throw at it. Great for on the go translation when all you have is your phone.
Twiddict, a new Twitter support service, allows users to check whether Twitter.com is up and running or not. As soon as Twitter is back on its feet, Twiddict sends the users a message letting them know is well once again in Twitterland. While the site is
Twitzu is a new Twitter application that makes creating events and sharing them with your Twitter world a breeze.
Twizon is a Twiiter + Amazon mashup. Twizon lists all the tweets referencing Amazon deals. Find out what’s popular, and where to get it.
MadTwitter is a Windows application that lets you read “twits” written by your friends and publish your own. It’s inspired in Twitterrific, a really nice application for Mac.
Through an automated algorithm, Twitscoop crawls hundreds of tweets every minute and extracts the words which are mentioned more often than usual, displaying the results in a tag cloud.
Allows you to create a "board" showing you all the tweeters you want to see at once.
Twitag is a #tag finder for Twitter, facilitating and organizing the most recent content tagged by users.
TweetLists organizes the most recent links found on the public timeline on Twitter based on various criteria.
TweetSmart is a real–time, ever–evolving link blog and running commentary on the best of the Web.
Twellow.com collects, analyzes, and categorizes tweets, creating niche-specific categories that you can search to find Twitter users with similar interests.
Receive updates from FriendFeed, send and receive tweets with Twitter, and post photos to Flickr all from one desktop app.
Find up-to-the-second tweets about a given topic, then analyzes the attitudes expressed in those tweets, and displays them using colors, providing an at-a-glance view of sentiments expressed on Twitter.
Schedule future-dated tweets, auto-follow and send automated notes to new followers.
Directory of Twitter applications, organized categorically, with user comments.
People post links in their twitter feed. We grab 'em, visit 'em, count 'em, score 'em and list 'em. Since we only show the latest tweets, this list changes constantly. Very much a "what's buzzing" on twitter.
Enter a Twitter user name and get taken directly to their page.
Twitter + Autoresponder. Setup unlimited messages to be delivered to your twitter page when you want.
Desktop application that allows you to send and receive to/from FriendFeed and Twitter.
Intwition watches internet chatter to discover breaking news and the topics people are talking about.
Get your lifestream on your desktop. Post videos, images or text messages to twitter, friendfeed and flickr.
Doesfollow is a simpler way to find out if someone is following you on Twitter.
Your Twitter Ratio is the ratio of your followers to friends (or people who you follow). It is measured with the TFF Ratio (Twitter Follower-Friend Ratio). The higher the ratio, the more Twitter heat you pack.
Realtime tracking of Twitter hashtags.
Terraminds micro is a search application for Twitter messages and users.
Input two Twitter user names and see their conversation via @ replies!
Allows you to create and direct message your own groups by simply stringing together twitter usernames with the plus sign (twapper?u=user_a+user_b+user_c)
Tag your followers into different groups, then you can send a message to those groups without needing to send the message to each person one at a time
Tweeq is a little Twitter application that allows you to discover which cliques, aka tweeqs, you or anyone else is a part of in Twitter.
Twitter Digest lets you read Twitter updates in a more manageable fashion. Just pick the usernames you'd like to generate a digest for, and you will see all updates made by them during the past full day, available as both a webpage or as an Atom.
Tweetcube allows you to share files on Twitter. Blast out your images, videos, music and more with just a couple of clicks.
Be the first to know who's twittering about you, your products, your company, or your website. TweetBeep.com gives you twitter alerts by email when a tweet matches your search.
Twitpress is a wordpress plugin which submits a user definable tweet to your twitter account notifying any twitter followers or friends that a new blog entry has been published on your blog.
Send virtual gifts to your Twitter friends.
The unofficial Twitter community and forums.
Create lists with Twitter.
Connects your Twitter account to your Google Calendar.
LoudTwitter posts to your blog your daily tweets.
HelloTxt enables you to update your status across all of your social networks and microblogs--including Twitter--with a single click.
Search Twitter conversations in real-time and discover what people are talking about right now.
TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends' statuses of Twitter.
Where the community recommends fellow Twitter users by topic of interest or geographical area.
Temporarily unsubscribe from chatty Twitter Friends.
Tweeterboard is a way of looking at who is influential on Twitter based on their conversations with other Twitter users. There are other services, like Twitterposter, that base influence on how many followers you have.
A Twitter users directory.
Commuter Feed is a free service that lets you post reports on traffic and transit delays in your local area using Twitter or Pownce.
Twitter + Google Maps mashup that displays latest tweets in your geographic area.
Twitterrific is a Mac application that lets you both read and publish posts or "tweets" to the Twitter community website.
Top 100 Twitter users.
Twitterverse is a mashup and visualization project which mines and archives the data from the public timeline of Twitter and provides a visualization of the most commonly used words in a given time period.
A service that enables you to take a twitter tweet to tumblr or embed in other pages/blogs or send to email. tweetshots are tweet screenshots, automated.
A content filtering service that tracks and follows the latest popular links, conversations and people on Twitter.
Easily Twitter any event, conference, or meeting in real-time, and then reuse the coverage in a blog post, email, newsletter, etc.
See trends in Twitter, find out what is hot and what people are saying about it.
Send private Twitter messages to specific groups of friends.
Twubble searches your friend graph and picks out people who you may like to follow.
A Flash application that displays your friends and followers with pagination, sorting and filtering functionality.
An easy way to turn your Twitter-verse into a grid view. Visualize your conversations in a clean layout.
Make a word cloud from a public Twitter stream.
Find new friends on Twitter who share similar interests.
Create surveys for the twittersphere.
Graph your Twitter stats, including tweets per hour and per month, and tweet timeline.
Generate an RSS or XML Feed to filter out Tweets around a certain geographic area.
Tweetburner lets you track what happens with the links you share on Twitter.
Create a group twitter feed for your company, industry or community.
Feed your blog posts to your Twitter account automatically.
Real-time Tweitter analytics.
Real-time search engine for Twitter.
A desktop client for twitter, based on the Adobe AIR platform.
Real-time view of tweets overlayed on a Google Map.
Follow Twitter conversations using Quotably's clean layout.
Track keyword search volume on Twitter.
Send your Flickr photos to Twitter.
A service that lets you tweet with pictures or video, and also privately send files to your Twitter friends.
Highlight internet snippets and twitter them. On any web page you are reading, just right-click and click Twitter This!
A service that maps out where your Twitter friends are in respect to each other or a geographic landmark.
An Adobe AIR-powered Twitter client for Mac and Windows.
Pull your tweets into your WordPress blog and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.
Twimbler is tumble blog that gets updated via Twitter.
Inner Twitter asks what is in front of you? To answer you must stop and turn your attention to immediate reality. The Zen of Twitter.
To suggest a tool, app or resource just add me to your del.icio.us network and share the link!
Subscribe
to the Twitter Tools RSS feed and get notified of the latest tools
added to tweeternet.
The easiest way to educate your site visitors and clients about
Twitter?
Link to this page!
Tweet me with feedback and suggestions for improvement. I want tweeternet.com to be clear, concise, and accurate.
tweeternet.com is not affiliated with Twitter, LLC.
tweeternet.com is © Samden Joshua
Stevens, 2008. All rights reserved.