In This Chapter
Staying in touch with the world through Twitter services
Organizing your Twitter life
Keeping up with the folks on Twitter
With events like the Hudson River plane crash, and Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, and Oprah coming to Twitter, buzz about the service is making Twitter go mainstream fast. Because of that, many businesses, causes, and people are creating Twitter-based presences, and hundreds of innovative Twitter-based services are emerging to support that. Some have separate Web sites, and some you just use directly through Twitter. In no particular order, here are ten that stand out because of their usefulness and overall appeal to Twitter audiences.
@BreakingNews http://www.bnonews.com
News. This simple feed gives you ongoing breaking news from around the world. Actual humans maintain and update it, not an automatic RSS feed. It has a good track record of beating many of the major news outlets for breaking news — and it has a good track record for accuracy, as well.
@StockTwits http://www.stocktwits.com
Type: Financial. Cofounded by Howard Lindzon, best known for mashing up Wall Street with video podcasting to create the highly successful WallStrip, StockTwits plays off the fact that investors who tweet like to tweet about stocks. StockTwits is essentially a community and social exchange of snippets of conversation about stocks, using Twitter as the conversation medium at its core. You can use StockTwits at its Web site, by following @stocktwits, or by using the TweetDeck plug-in.
http://friedcell.net/tweecious/get
Type: Publishing. If you post links to Delicious (http://delicious.com; a social bookmarking service that allows you to share links with your friends), this little tool makes it easy for you. Now, your posts to Twitter that include links can also automagically go to Delicious. Tweecious even looks at the rest of the tweet and automatically tags the link with relevant categories or keywords. Once you have a Delicious account, Tweecious takes only a moment to set up, and it even reads shortened URLs and extracts the original link.
Tip
People who like to keep track of a variety of Web pages and tend to lose them on Twitter may find this tool very handy.
@Tweetworks or www.tweetworks.com
Type: Social threading and conversation tracking. This service, a creation of Mike Langford (@mikelangford) helps you track your Twitter use by group or thread, online or on your iPhone with the use of public or private groups.
Tip
Tweetworks allows you to engage in fully threaded conversations, join and create groups on any topic imaginable, and share media with single-click tagging.
www.exectweet.com
Type: Networking. Like millions of other people, Laura pretty much laughed at Twitter when she first heard about it. Turns out that's pretty normal. But what made the difference for her was noticing that she could use it to surround herself with successful, interesting people who would motivate her as a homebound working mom.
Nowadays, we have ExecTweets to let you easily follow the tweets of some of the world's smartest, most successful executives. Richard Branson? Check. Jack Welch? Check. Dive in and find inspiration, leadership, ideas, and resources from some of the brightest business minds in the world.
www.tweetgrid.com
Type: Search Utility. TweetGrid is a powerful Twitter Search Dashboard that allows you to search for up to 9 different topics, events, conversations, hashtags, phrases, people, groups, etc., in real-time. As new tweets are created, they are automatically updated in the grid with no need to refresh the page.
TweetGrid supports Boolean Search Operators and other advanced search techniques. An example: Boolean Operator AND
If two or more words are specified in the search, "AND" is assumed, meaning you do not need to type "AND" into the search. The search results will include all of the search terms by default. However, if you wish, you may still type AND (in all capital letters) between search terms.
http://linkbun.ch
Type: URL shortener. In Chapter 7, we discuss that you can use Twitter to link to one URL, but Link Bunch offers a URL shortener for bundles of links. It takes several links and shortens them into one minimal URL that people can click to access the links. When the user clicks the Link Bunch link, he's taken to a page where he sees all the links you bunched together and can click on whichever ones he's interested in.
www.tweetree.com
Type: Reading. This little service threads your tweets into a tree, which includes inline links, videos, and other files. If you think the Adobe Air application that you use to view Twitter leaves your stream looking cluttered, or if you have a hard time following conversational "threads" back and forth, Tweetree might be your answer to making your Twitter conversations easier to read.
http://twitter.grader.com
Type: Directory. This Twitter-based service ranks you using a secret formula developed by its creators at HubSpot. The system takes into account not only how many followers you have, but how you converse and engage, who follows, talks to, and retweets you, who you follow, and more. Your TwitterGrade of ## is a percentile, claiming that you are more, well, gradeable, than ##% of other twitterers. The service helps you see how you measure up to other tweeters around the Web and specifically in your area, and helps you find people whom you may want to follow because they mesh well with your ranking, interests, and location. Ultimately the grade doesn't mean a whole lot, but it will definitely show you who is active in your area.