Assuming Twitter Is Up, What Newbies Need to Know

Time for another guest post from my Twitter friend, Paisano, who looks disturbingly like my brother Peter and wrote the hotly contested Delicious post last month. My readers are half in the tech-early adopter group and half the general business person who wants to know more about the Web and the Valley. So with this post, I’m catering to readers who are just getting into Twitter and have basically thrown up their hands in utter confusion at the unending flow of new Twitter applications. For the last few months, people have asked me which apps are best and I honestly couldn’t answer because I’ve only used a few of them, so I asked Paisano to do it for me. We went for breadth instead of depth here, so ask him any follow up questions in the comments. And of course, leave your vote for best Twitter app. For more guest posts, hit the "guest post" category. To write one, drop me a line at sarah at sarahlacy dot com.

Twitter  has an astonishing amount of applications and services that allow you to do more than simply send 140-character messages. The list grows every day so it's nearly impossible to keep up with what's out there. Here's a breakdown of just some of the best twitter apps and services available today. They will be rated on a scale from 0 to 10, with 5 being average.

Clients
Sure, you can use Twitter's website to do what you need but there are many client apps that offer many bells and whistles. Here are some of the most popular right now.

(9) Twhirl is the hottest client today. Built on Adobe air and recently purchased by Seesmic which plans to add mini-video casting soon.

(8) Snitter is another solid adobe air client.

(8) AlertThingy is a little different. It's actually a social network aggregator adobe air client for FriendFeed that includes a full twitter client.

(8) Twitteriffic for Mac  is the most popular client for the Mac OS. [ed. note: Twitterific has gotten so buggy for me and my husband we never even open it anymore]

(9) Ping.fm lets you post not only to Twitter but to many other sites at the same time like facebook, myspace, etc.

Search Engines

(10) TweetScan has subplanted Terraminds (R.I.P) as the gold standard search engine for twitter.

(10) Summize is a newcomer and has quickly become very popular with the twitter community.
*Thanks to Mary Hodder for the reminder! Forgot all about this one!

(10) Twitter Hashtags Great way to find tweets based on tags/keywords. Here's a helpful explanation. 

(9)  TwitterLocal is an excellent way to search areas for twitter members and activities they are attending.

Conversation

(9) Quotably creates threaded conversations.

(7) GroupTweet create groups of friends with similar interests

(8) TweeterReply sends all replies to your email address so you'll never miss another tweet directed to you.

(7) TwitterSnooze Allows you to block people you are following for a short period of time without having to unfollow them

Stats & Information

(10) TwitterHolic is the leaderboard that tracks who has the most followers on Twitter and who follows the most people. iJustine and Robert Scoble used to duke it out for the most followed humans on Twitter but lately it's been Obama & LeoLapote duking it out for the top spot.

(9) TweetBurner lets you analyze how popular the links you've shared on twitter were. For example, here's my account on TweetBurner which will show stats for all of my most popular links that I posted on Twitter. I think marketing types would mostly care about this tool.

(9) TweetStats analizes your Twitter usage statistics. It includes TweetClouds which reveals your most often used words.

(9) Twitter Karma helps you identify who you're following. 

(8) TweetDumpr exports ALL of your tweets to a CSV file which can be viewed in Excel.

(8) Twitturly tracks the most popular tweets and links.

Productivity

(8) TwitterCAL lets you send appointments from twitter to your Google Calendar via Direct Messages to GCal.

(8) TwitterLIGHTS allows you to clip and share portions of any website via twitter very easily. 

(7) TrackThis keeps you updated on any package that has been shipped

(7) PollDaddy Twitter Polls awesome tool to conducts polling on twitter. 

Photo's

(9) TwitXR  shares your photo's on twitter

(8) TwitPic share photo's from phone cam or upload them on their site

Audio

(10) Utterz can send links to your audio or video messages automatically

(9)  TwitterFone shares audio messages on twitter via phone (Private Beta)

(10) Jott lets you record audio messages and share them on twitter

File Sharing

(9) TwitterShare lets you share files (pictures, audio, video, etc.) up to 10 MB on twitter.

(8) TwitPlus also allows you to share files on twitter

Badges & Widgets

(8) TweetThis adds a button to your blog that lets readers share your post or blog on twitter.

Fun & Useless Stuff

(10) TwitterVision  is more fun than the public timeline because it shows a map of the world and all new tweets and where they are coming from.

(8) MyTinyJesus could be offensive to religious types as JC spews public tweets in real-time.

Useful Links

Twitter fan wiki is the unofficial wiki for twitter fans. It's one of the most impressive collaborative wiki's you'll ever see. The Twitter Apps section has tons of new apps that are added all the time.

Twitter Apps Blog is the ultimate blog when it comes to following the latest twitter apps!
Follow @Infobunny to keep up with the latest updates!

Twitter Direct Message Bots Subscribe to useful bots here.

Paisano manages a blog called American Pai and can be found on twitter as Paisano

Comments

[mary hodder]

Sarah,
Of the search tools, you could also list Twemes.com and http://summize.com/. I like Summize the best as I seem to be able to find everything on it, whereas tweetscan.com and Twemes don't find the stuff I've been searching for recently.

But nice list. Helpful to have in one place.

mary

[Jeff C]

Helpful post ... bookmarkedl

[friarminor]

'The' essential Twitter Guide until the next downtime.

Summize does have better UI.

Best.
alain

[Ali A. Akbar]

I still remember your Web 2.0 BLUNDER with Zukerburg. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccLJnICdJGI

And this topped it. Never buying a book or a thing by/from/related to you.

[sarah lacy]

i have to say ali's comment made me LOL literally. i love that it's on one of the few posts i didn't even write! way to read the first graph, dude! haha. also he's soooo NOT supporting me he comes to my blog repeatedly. since i'm sure you'll be back let me just say thanks for the page views, ali! ;)

[remy wilders]

Hi Sarah,

this was an absolutely excellent post. I built a track from it with the new service I launched in june.

The track is quite successful so I thought I ought to thank you and show you the track, such a tool could come in handy for you if you have other lists of useful tools to share...

http://www.jogtheweb.com/reader/index.php?trackId=148

and the site to build such a track:

http://www.jogtheweb.com

Take care.