10 Excellent Twitter Tools

Everyone, it seems, is getting on the Twitter bandwagon. That's great, because Twitter is an excellent service, if used properly. It's a good way to stay in touch with friends, but it's also an ideal tool for use in daily business activities.

There must be hundreds (if not thousands) of tools and services that can help you to use Twitter more efficiently and effectively. Below are 10 of them that should help you in that direction. Be sure to send me your favorites.

Netvibes: Yes, you read it right: Netvibes. If you use this Web portal, you can add your Twitter account right to the page. and, if you have more than one Twitter account, you can add them all. Once it is set-up, you will automatically be logged in each time you visit the appropriate tab on the Netvibes portal. You can even set-up a separate tab for them all, if you like. Or, place them on a related tab. It's very easy to do.

TweetBeep: This service will track keywords that you select and send you an alert whenever someone mentions them in a tweet. This is great for tracking important posts, like your company or personal name and subjects of interest. You can also use it to find potential clients by tracking words that relate to your business.

Twalala: Tired of all that Twitter traffic? This service will filter out all the stuff and people that you don't want to read about by using keywords, phrases and users names. And it doesn't need to be permanent. You can mute someone for a day, a week or longer or you can filter out specified keywords for a designated period of time.

Tweetake: Did you ever want to backup your tweets? Using this service you can do that, as well as all your followers, friends, favorites, direct messages, or everything all at once. The file format is CSV (comma separated value), which can be displayed in OpenOffice Calc, Microsoft Excel or most other spreadsheet programs. Very simple to use.

TwitPic: Share your photos through Twitter using this service. You can post pictures from your phone, the TwitPic API, or through the site itself. This could be very useful for showing pictures to clients on the run.

Tweet O'Clock! Not sure when the best time to tweet someone? Use this calculator to figure it out. How does it work? According to the Web site: "we simply work out which day and time they tweet most on, [which] gives you an accurate idea of when they'll be using Twitter."

Tweet Later: Have something you want to tweet but want to do it at a later time? Just schedule it and forget it using Tweet Later. You can also track specified keywords, send automated thank you notes to new followers and automatically follow them.

Sync Twitter and Facebook Status Updates: This tutorial will show you how to sync your updates between Twitter and Facebook. The status messages you enter on one site will show up at the other also. Simple to set-up and it can make your life a bit easier.

Twitbin: This Firefox extension lets you send and receive tweets right from your browser.

TwitterFeed: This service will allow you to send tweets from your RSS feeds every time your blog or feed is updated. Posts to Twitter, identi.ca, custom Laconica installations, and via HelloTxt or Ping.fm simultaneously.

Posted: March 12, 2009