WHAT IS TWITTER AND WHY DOES IT KEEP FOLLOWING ME AROUND?

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."


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."


WHY TWITTER IS USEFUL
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.

HOW TO USE TWITTER

GETTING STARTED

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

SENDING MESSAGES

You can "tweet" from your Twitter page, your mobile phone, IM account, or via a third-party Twitter client.



From your Twitter page: S imply enter a message in the text field at the top of the page and click "Update."
From your mobile phone: Send an SMS message to 40404.
From your IM account: Send a message to either twitter@twitter.com (Jabber/GTalk) or TwitterIM (AOL).
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.

FOLLOWING OTHER TWITTER USERS

Finding and adding friends to your "Twitterverse" is easy.



From the Twitter website: Login to your account, visit your friends' Twitter pages and click "Follow" underneath their photo. If your friend's account is public, you will immediately start seeing their tweets on your page, otherwise your friend will need to approve you before you can see their updates.
From your mobile phone or IM account: Send the command follow username.
See the Twitter website for a complete reference of Twitter Commands.

@REPLIES AND DIRECT MESSAGES

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.

HOW TO NETWORK WITH TWITTER

The following blog posts are aimed at bloggers and other professionals who would like to use Twitter for business.

How to Get More Twitter Followers
5 Tips to Grow Your Twitter Presence
Building Your Twitter Presence Part 2 - Pre-Prepared Tweets
Building Your Twitter Presence Part 3 - TweetBaiting
8 Tips for Power Networking on Twitter
14 Ways To Get Unfollowed on Twitter
TWITTER IN THE NEWS

Twitter Implicated in Break Up Between Aniston and Mayer (03/29/09)
Twitter's Tweet Smell Of Success (03/18/09)
The Future, Growth and Monetization of Twitter (06/11/08)
Twitter refuses to ban abusive users (05/22/08)
Why Twitter Matters: Can the fledgling microblogging service become a social media powerhouse to rival giants like Facebook—or will it be gobbled up? (05/15/08)
Twitter Emerges as Key Communications Channel in China Quake (05/13/08)
Twitter Gaining Momentum But Still Niche (04/29/08)
TWITTER TOOLS

Subscribe to the Twitter Tools RSS feed and get notified of the latest tools added to tweeternet.

Twittfilter
Pre-define which Twitter follower notifications you'd like to receive.
Twimailer
Enhanced Twitter follower notification service.
topify
Provides more user details in Twitter follow email notifications.
TwitterJobSearch
Twitter Job Search Engine
TwitPwr
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.)
ExecTweets
Find and Follow Top Business Execs on Twitter
Top Twitter Friends
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
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
Twe2 is Free Twitter SMS alerts in Europe and beyond.
WeFollow
A User Powered Twitter Directory
Tweetree
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.com
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.
Peeckr.com
New search engine for Twitter focused on links. available in both French and English.
DestroyTwitter
DestroyTwitter is a robust but compact Twitter application built to run on Mac, Windows, and Linux using Adobe AIR.
Twaitter
The Twitter message scheduling platform
FriendOrFollow.com
Who's not following you back? Who aren't you following?
SocialToo - Your Companion to the Social Web!
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
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
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
TwitterBerry is mobile client for posting updates to Twitter. It works over the data network, so you don't need to use SMS.
TwitterCounter
Detailed statistics for your twitter account.
twitbacks
Custom Twitter Background Image Creator
Twitter Groups
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
TweetChat helps put your blinders on to the Twitter-sphere while you monitor and chat about one topic.
TwitterGadget
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.
Just Tweet It
THE Directory for Twitter Users
Twollo
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.
Bulk Twitter Import Tool
Follow a big list of users with a single import.
TweetDeck
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
TwitPic lets you share photos on Twitter
Twinfluence
Twitter Influence Analyzer
Twittad
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.
Spaz
An Open-Source Twitter Client for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.
TwitterCritic
Film reviews by twitter users.
Twanslate
@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
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
Twitzu is a new Twitter application that makes creating events and sharing them with your Twitter world a breeze.
twizon
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
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.
Twitscoop
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.
Tweet Boards
Allows you to create a "board" showing you all the tweeters you want to see at once.
Twitag
Twitag is a #tag finder for Twitter, facilitating and organizing the most recent content tagged by users.
TweetLists
TweetLists organizes the most recent links found on the public timeline on Twitter based on various criteria.
TweetSmart
TweetSmart is a real–time, ever–evolving link blog and running commentary on the best of the Web.
Twellow.com
Twellow.com collects, analyzes, and categorizes tweets, creating niche-specific categories that you can search to find Twitter users with similar interests.