I happen to follow a lot of people, it gives me a view into their stream of consciousness in a way that otherwise I would never have access to.  One issue I find hardest to handle is discovering the people that I followed when they followed me, but have since stopped following me or have gone dark. These next links are great tools.

• http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/ Find out who follows you, who you follow (sometimes there are too many), and the differences in those groups. Mass block, follow, and unfollow tool too.
• http://friendorfollow.com/ Who are you following that’s not following you back? Who’s following you that you’re not following back? Find out!
• http://ewanleith.com/idlefriends/ Sometimes people just quit using Twitter, so quit following them.
• http://socialtoo.com/ Is a great service for auto-following those who follow you. They offer much more too…

This next site, Twitter Fan Wiki, is so large and contains so much information, that I will simply list a few of the sections and let you discover it for yourself.

• http://twitter.pbwiki.com/apps Community compiled list of applications used on, around, for, and with Twitter.
• http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Bots Bots are where it’s at. If you think of Twitter as a massive command line operating system, then you can do anything you want with it. Example: http://twitter.com/timer – send the following ‘d timer 30 conference call’ reminds you in 30 minutes that you have a conference call.
• http://twitter.pbwiki.com/NonHumanNonIndividuals Non-human non-individuals is a list of companies, organizations, and services that tweet.

One of the most important decisions to make with Twitter is which applications you use.  I use a couple for different reasons.  HootSuite.com is a great tool to handle multiple Twitter accounts from within one tool.  Perhaps the most valuable aspect of HootSuite is that it gives you a tool to track how many people click on the links you provide with an excellent stats view.  This statistical view is a fantastic tool for any organization that is trying to measure the value of their Twitter efforts.

While I use HootSuite on the web, I have chosen to use TweetDeck on the desktop.  Tweetdeck is a Adobe Air application that offers a lot to the user.  It notifiys me when someone I am following tweets, and in one view shows my replies to me, direct messages to me, and a great search pane as well.  It shortens URLs on the fly, translates tweets I tell it to, and even uploads images to TwitPic for me too.  If it had a built in stats package it would be close to perfect…

Oh, on my iPhone I use Twittelator which is a free app, and fits my needs well.  It gives me most of the same tools that TweetDeck offers on the desktop, but in a tiny little iPhone package.

Perhaps the most powerful tool to use with Twitter is the search tool that Twitter offers you.  Using search tools you can find people who are thinking about things you think about, shared common interests are a huge draw on Twitter.  You can find experts in any field, you can find information about almost any person or company, any event, any application, and even any place.

• http://search.twitter.com/ For instance, search on your company, yourself, an old friend or even a prospective employer.
• http://tweetgrid.com/ TweetGrid allows you to build an ad hoc dashboard of the entire Twitterverse on the fly. Very powerful.

But actually, the most powerful thing about any search tool that has access to the fire hose of information that is the Twitter feed is something called immediacy.  Twitter knows about events within moments of them happening.  As they happen.  A plane goes into the Hudson, Twitter knows.  Google is powerful, without doubt, but not even Google tells me something as it happens.

More to come as I find them.

Matt
twitter.com/mattwilliamson