First it was Myspace, then Facebook, now Twitter is the place where everything on the internet goes down. Forget MTV News, you hear everything first on Twitter. Though the micro blogging site that started as a service for employees at Odeo has been around since '06, it really took off last year as droves of people including celebrities and politicians all signed up for the service.
And now that you're probably signed up and Twittering away, we thought we'd give you a couple hints and tips to make your Twitter experience that much better, because you're gonna want to get the most of it before the next thing comes along and makes Twitter obsolete. Check out five tools to help you Twitter better below...
Name:TWEETDECK
• Purpose: If you're a Twitter celebrity (even in your own mind) and your main page is being overrun with replies and updates, TweetDeck may bring some sanity to your world. This Adobe Air based program allows you to separate your tweets into topic or subject based information feeds so that you can easily manage, read and reply to them.
Name:TWEETBEEP
• Purpose: Nowadays as soon as you read something on a blog or a news website, it's already made the rounds all over Twitter. TweetBeep acts like a Google Alerts system for Twitter. if you have some popular terms you'd like to keep an eye on, say, "Paris Fashion Week" or "Joe Budden" or "Kobe Bryant", TweetBeep will alert you when someone writes a post about or mentions one of them. You'll never be late on anything again.
Name:TWITTERLESS
• Purpose: The good thing about the internet is the ability to instantaneously check your statistics. If you run a traditional website or blog, you can use sites like SiteMeter or Google Analytics to see how many people are hitting up your site. Now, you can do the same with your TwitterFeed. Using Twitterless, you can see how many people are actually checking into see what you gotta say in 140 characters or less through a number of graphs and charts. You can also see who has stopped following you, in case you wanted to hit them up ask them what you did wrong.
Name: TWITTERCAL
• Purpose: We know you spend all your time checking your Twitter page, so much so that you probably don't pay attention to the important shit in your life, like your schedule. Now with TwitterCal you really don't need to. All you have to do is enter an appointment or date into a message and send it to a specialized Twitter account. From there it gets entered directly into your Google Calendar.
Name:PING.FM
• Purpose: Everytime a new social networking service hits the 'Net, the masses slowly but surely jump ship and hop on the band wagon. We don't blame 'em, it's hard to keep track of and update multiple profiles. But for those of you that do stick with numerous networks, Ping.FM lets you up date every site and blog you're on at once.
