55 Twitter Tots

Can I Please Have Some Ketchup With My Twitter Tots?

Twitter is making big waves these days and has been throughout 2007. If you haven’t heard of Twitter, it’s kind of like Instant Messaging but different and better.

In their own words:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!

And I’ll just add - THE WHOLE FREAKIN’ GLOBAL COMMUNITY!!

You have 140 characters to answer the question, “What are you doing?”

So what’s the point?

Well, people want to know what you’re doing, what you think, where you’re at, what you’ve found, what you’re watching on TV, what you’ve written, what you’re listening to, are you awake or sleeping, are you going out or staying in, what you like or dislike, answering others questions, on and on.

How Do I Tweet?

You use a computer or mobile device. It’s all at http://www.twitter.com. You have four tabs on your Twitter home page - Recent - Replies - Archives - Everyone. The default tab Recent will list the recent tweets from the folks you follow. Replies are people who have sent you Tweets. Archives list everything you’ve typed in the 140 character text box and sent. Everyone is, well, everyone on Twitter, and it helps you find other interesting people and what they’re Twittering about.

How Do I Follow Someone?

Start with your friends and family or go looking for Tweeters in the stuff you’re interested in or not interested in, which can turn out to be something you’re interested in. If you read a blog or blogs and admire the blog’s author, maybe the blogger has a link on their blog to their Twitter profile. Click on their profile to follow them. Or you could just start tweeting to no one and get a feel for it. Then go out and find tweeters by using the tools listed in this article.

Your first Tweet in the 140 character box could be:

• Hello Word or
• Hi my name is or
  
• Good morning Tweets or
• I’m in L.A. anyone available for lunch or
• I found this cool link if you like or
  
• Does anybody have this type of phone that I have? It’s a Fabulous Phone 500 and I think it’s broken.
• I think you get the idea.

How Do I Enhance My Twitter Experience?

Here are 55 articles and tools that will assist you with your Twittering:

1. TweetVolume
2. Help at Twitter
3. Tweet like a Pirate
4. Twitter saves lives
5. Extra Super Tuesday
6. Bring lists to Twitter
7. Twitter through Skitch
8. A game at Wordy Birdie
9. Quit smoking with Qwitter
10. See who’s Tweeting locally
11. The Twitter FAQ at Twitter
12. Photos and Videos on Twitter
13. What is Twitter Doing Today?
14. Follow a daily poll at StrawPoll
15. Post to Twitter with TwitterMail
16. Another Firefox add-on - TwitterFox
17. TwitStats - More stats for your Twitter
18. Politweets - When Twitter gets political
19. Show some appreciation using tweetgift
20. Twitter on your iPhone at thincloud.com
21. Have a question? Check out Dearlazy.com
22. Virtual Assistant Sandy works over Twitter
23. Your Twitter stats provided by TweetStats
24. Visualize your Twitter feeds with tweetPad
25. A List of News Organizations using Twitter
26. Make your feelings known with plusplusbot
27. Eavesdropping on Twitter using overheard.it
28. Follow Snoop Dogg and check out the badge
29. What have you tweeted in the last 24 hours?
30. Look for more people to follow using Twubble
31. What Twitter Does For Me by Remarkablogger
32. Do real-time Twitter searches with Tweet Scan
33. Create a crowd with CrowdStatus (alpha status)
34. Create groups of private tweets with GroupTweet
35. Why I Deleted My Twitter Account by GapingVoid
36. Need more than 140 Character? Twitzer for Firefox
37. Follow a conversation using Quotable. Very Nice.
38. The Big Juicy Twitter Guide by Caroline Middlebrook
39. Use Commuter Feed for you local traffic incident reports
40. TweetCloud - Creates a tag cloud of your Twitter words
41. Send your latest Flickr photo to Twitter with SnapTweet
42. TwitterShare allows file sharing reported by ReadWriteWeb
43. Twittown - The Unofficial Twitter Community (alpha status)
44. Summize offers a better Twitter search reported by Mashable
45. Twitter: A Valuable Marketing Tool & Much More by ClickNewz
46. Foamee tracks who you owe beer or coffee to (and vice versa)
    
47. A real-time geographic visualization at twittervision. Just plain fun
48. A new kind of Social Portal called Gridjit reported by The Blog Herald
49. Write Text Longer Than 140 Characters in Twitter by Digital Inspiration
50. Twitter Meter queries all indexed words sent to Twitter’s public timeline
51. Harvest On Twitter - A Future Twitter Business Model? by ReadWriteWeb
52. Turn your Twitter status into an email image signature or for your website
53. Five Reasons Twitter is an Essential Social Media Tool by Search Engine Guide
54. 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners by Dosh Dosh
    
55. Twhirl - A Twitter client that runs on your computer using Adobe AIR to run it. I’m currently using Twhirl in addition to Flock for my Twittering. It’s pretty darn nice.

For more information on the tools above and how you can use them please be sure to check out Demo Girl and Twitterholics.

Final Thoughts

Twittering is like having everyone in a big room from around the world and everyone is walking around talking with each other. Pretty cool.

Although, I have this vision that there’ll be a huge Twitter convention where everyone will be in the same conference room, and it will be completely quiet except for some clicking sounds, actually a lot of clicking sounds. Why? We’ll all be sending Tweets via our mobile device and too busy to look up and start talking to each other.

Here’s my Twitter profile - http://www.twitter.com/BillS2000

Feel free to leave your Twitter profile in the comments so everyone can becomes followers and followees.

Tagged as: Social Networking, twitter