So a little over a year ago, I wrote this post about the script I wrote to get your Twitter replies to your phone. You needed your own web host, database and a bit of knowledge to get that all working. The whole time though, my goal was to make a service that people could just sign up for.

Well, that day has finally come.

Introducing, MyMentions. MyMentions is a service that will search your twitter feed and send you a text message (SMS message) each time you are mentioned in a tweet. You don’t have to be the direct subject of the reply either. Pretty simple right? That’s not all though. MyMentions has a few other features under the hood that make it pretty cool (and not overwhelming).

Features:

• Blackout Periods: Yeah, getting tweets to your mobile device is nice…but you probably don’t want to get a text message at 3am because someone replied to your tweet about how crazy of a day it was at work. Right? Well, don’t worry. MyMentions has a blackout period so you can pause the service while you’re asleep. Then, when your blackout period is over, you’ll get any mentions that were missed.
• Whitelist/Blacklist feature: Maybe you’re one of those people that don’t like to get *all* your replies, but you sure don’t want to miss replies from some specific people. Or, maybe you want to make sure those tweet-spammers’ mentions don’t go to your phone. You’re covered either way. You set the usernames of those people. Mark them as either a whitelist or a blacklist and you’re set. Too simple right?
• Replies: So one of the things that can get annoying, is that when Twitter sends you a direct message to your phone, if you just hit “reply” you end up not sending a DM back to that person…but sending a public tweet. Which can have results that are less than desirable MyMentions lets you reply right back, and your message will be tagged with the person who sent you the message (without you having to type in their username).

There are more features planned for the service as well.

So how do you get in on this awesome service? Well right now, it’s in Alpha. Which means…very early testing. You can go to the site at http://mymentions.com and sign up to receive an alpha code. Codes are sent in batches periodically to those who sign up.

I should mention that right now, the service is only available to the United States.

So if you came here looking to get your Twitter replies to your phone, then you’ve come to the right place. Head over to MyMentions and sign up for an alpha code! You can also follow MyMentionscom on Twitter here.

—–

As always, thanks for reading…and if you have any comments please leave them below.

Hey there! Yeah, I’ve been gone for a while…a long while. I think I killed all my traffic which means that if you’re reading this you’re either one of my good friends or you subscribed a while ago and forgot about it (or both).

It’s ok. I don’t do this for the traffic. I do it for the fun of it…and for those that like what they see. Like my Top 7 Twitter Commands Everyone Should Know post. It was written a long time ago but a lot of people have either commented on the blog post or replied to me via Twitter that it helped them. That totally makes my day.

Anyway, if you’re back–Welcome back! If you’re here for the first time…Hello and Welcome.

The topic of this post is to kind of explain some of the social networks out there. What they do, how they’re most commonly used and hopefully, shed a small amount of light in case you’re curious.

Take the headline for a second.

I Took a Buzz Off Tumblr, Threw My Twitter Feed All Over My Facebook and Plurked My Posterous  - So Tweet Me.

A few years ago that would have been complete gibberish (as opposed to partial gibberish today).  We are still in the beginning to middle phases of the Social Media boom. So for those that haven’t had the opportunity to check them out or if you’ve seen these words and aren’t sure what they even are, here ya go:

Facebook

If you don’t know what Facebook is, then I’m amazed that you’re even reading this at all. Or, it’s 1,000 years in the future, the Earth has been destroyed and you’re an alien looking through the rubble to get a glimpse at what life was like and stumbled across this digital nugget by mistake.

Explaining Facebook is out of the scope of this post, but I noted it here because it’s in the headline and frankly, I just wanted to write that funny paragraph above.

Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging service that allows it’s users to post messages in 140 characters or less. It is a hugely popular service and one that I’ve written about several times. Twitter lets you choose which people you “follow” or see messages from (called tweets). In turn, people can “follow” you and see your tweets in their Twitter feed.

There is a common misconception that Twitter is just full of messages about what people had for lunch and what their pet’s just did. Granted, there’s a lot of that. With almost 50 million tweet’s a day, they’re not all…or even mostly…going to be gold. From thought leaders sharing their secrets to everyday people breaking big news stories, to businesses using it as a customer service and public relations tool, Twitter is much more revelant than what tv show person X is watching right now.

Buzz

Google’s Buzz is the latest service to dip it’s toe in the social media waters. At first, Google Buzz was thought of as Google’s version of Facebook or Twitter. While Buzz’s stake isn’t clearly cut out just yet, it seems that taking over Facebook and Twitter isn’t part of the plan. Google Buzz is more for conversations between groups of people.

While Twitter does have conversations, they’re typically limited to just a couple messages. Facebook has conversations of course, but Facebook is much, much more than that.

With Buzz, you’re not limited to 140 characters and if you use any of Google’s other services you’re not required to log into anything special. You can see conversations from people you “follow” (much like Twitter except that Google follows the people in your address book automatically) and have lengthy conversations in a threaded view. Google Buzz is much more like a message board in that respect.

Posterous

Posterous is a blogging service that takes pride on it’s ease of use. Like a typical blog, you can post anything from text to photos to video. You can post from the website, from email or from your mobile device. Post as little or as much as you like. Posterous can also send your content to many of the other social media services out there. This way, instead of having photos one place, video’s another, files someplace else and posts in yet a different place…you can have them all on Posterous, aggregate them out and direct everyone to a central location.

Tumblr

Tumblr is much like Posterous and has been around a bit longer. You can also post text, photos, links, music and video’s using Tumblr. While Tumblr has the ability to customize pretty much everything, it has the look and feel of a more traditional blog without the hassles of finding a host and setting up software.

Plurk

Plurk is a service that on the surface seems a lot like Twitter. You post short messages to your stream and you can follow people and people can follow you. Plurk takes a few different angles with the microblogging space though. First with it’s “actions”. When posting, you have  the options of choosing one of many actions like “is”, “says”, “thinks”, “feels”, “wonders” and many more. Plurk also introduces the concept of “karma” on microblogging. The more you interact with the service, the higher your karma goes. This makes it pretty fun (and challenging) to “keep your karma up.”

While Plurk is a microblogging service, it has more of a chat room feel than Twitter. It’s not a true chat room of course, but the speed and flow of the messages makes it feel more intimate than a pubic forum.

So hopefully, if you’re new to the area’s of social media, this post will help a bit in showing you what’s out there. Keep in mind, this is just a very small list of what is out there for you to explore. There are ton’s of other social media sites out there to explore and enjoy (they just didn’t fit into my catchy headline ).

If you have a favorite social media site, feel free to list it in the comments below.

Something that I’ve personally been waiting for has finally arrived. The Facebook 3.0 iPhone app is now available in the app store. I like being able to access Facebook on the go using my phone, but the 2.0 software was lacking a lot of features.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a screen shot of the new “home page” in Facebook. Well, I guess this is more the nav really…but you get the point. Bigger, easier buttons to get to.

I haven’t played with it too much, but so far, I like what I see. Getting to your friends’ pages is easier…and you can even add shortcuts to friends and pages right in that big nav menu. How cool!

Anyway, please let me know your thoughts on the new Facebook app. I’ll have more here after I’ve given it a good run. If you haven’t downloaded it yet…get to it!

The title of this post is taken directly (stolen if you will) from a post on TwiTip. Since I’m giving it credit right at the beginning and linking directly to the post…I’m going to say it’s ok

Anyway, the post makes two great points: Time your reading and Time your tweeting.

Specifically meaning, Twitter is a very simple tool…it’s probably the most complex simple tool you’ll ever use. It’s Twitter’s simplicity that makes it so dynamic. Everyone is free to use Twitter however they want (to a certain extent).For example, the linked TwiTip article makes the point

“Don’t waste your followers’ time, that is the quickest way to lose a reader.”

Well…ok, I get that…and if I’m following a business, website or authority in a particular field, yeah, that’s what I’m looking for. That’s some serious pressure though. If you’re just starting out and fall into any one of those categories, and you’re faced with that task, you may hesitate a little. Maybe you’re thinking “am I going to waste my followers’ time with this tweet?” It’s possible, but the more human you are the better.

In other words, Twitter is still growing and new businesses are jumping on all the time. The best way to get started is to just start doing it. Head on over and check out my Top 7 Twitter Commands Everyone Should Know post, then start Tweeting away. Be honest, be genuine and don’t try to scam or game your followers OR the system…because on Twitter, the commuity rules. If you piss off the community, then your sucess on Twitter is going to be minimal at best.

Back to the post on TwiTip though…I’m not saying that it’s totally off. In fact, I think it’s a great post, but a lot of my readers are new in the Twitter world, and I just wanted to point out that you shouldn’t think too hard about it at first. It takes time to get your groove on Twitter so don’t be afraid to jump in with both feet–just keep your eyes open when you do!

For the first time in a long time, Twitter is down. No Fail Whale, no slowness with the site barely loading and the css all messed up…nothing. Zip. Nada.

On their status blog (powered by Tumblr) they note:

Site is down
We are determining the cause and will provide an update shortly.

While it’s good that they posted that status, it is a bit odd. Most of their status posts (even posts that say there are problems) have a little more about what is going on. The lack of ant detailed information here suggests something is really wrong and they have no clue. Or…they do have a clue but don’t want to say because it could damage them as a company if word got out.

Either way. It’s interesting. Twitter has become a lot more reliable in recent months (dating back to 2008) and most of the downtime has been forgotten. Then “The Big One” hits.

Stay tuned.

By the way, this is the firs post I wrote with my iPhone. So please forgive any typos.

Update: So it turns out that today’s events were part of a DDoS attack on multiple social media outlets. Mashable reports that Twitter was not the only victim and that the incident will be investigated by Twitter, Facebook and Google.

DDoS attacks have been around forever, but this is the first one in a long time I can remember hitting this many high profile sites at once. There’s usually another reason for such an attack and it may not be known for quite a while. Of course, the attacks may not be over either. Stay tuned for more. As soon as attackers smell blood in the water, there’s bound to be more to come.

Did you experience the Twitter downtime? What did you do during the blackout? Where did you go?

Face it, Twitter is mainstream…and just because you have friends that are not on it doesn’t make it any less mainstream. I have friends that refuse to get on Facebook because they think it’s for “kiddies” or “geek’s” or “people who spend 18 hours a day in front of their computer” and don’t try to tell me Facebook isn’t mainstream.

I’m an avid Twitter user, I’m on in one way or another pretty much all day. Either on the computer or on my phone. Twitter is a great social networking tool, a great news feed, perfect idea generator, and more. I’m getting to realize though, that more and more, Twitter is unclean.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to start avoiding Twitter, quite the opposite actually. Because it’s now become unclean, I’m forced to spend even more time with the 140 character beast.

Let me explain.

When I first got on Twitter (just over two years ago) yeah there were a lot of people on it…but these were what you call “the early adopters.” The people who are looking for the next greatest Internet “thing.” These were the people who were shaping Twitter into the great tool that it became. The pioneers. They weren’t necessarily looking to pimp their own wares (mostly). Just looking to connect with people, share their thoughts and collaborate with people all across the Internet in short message bursts.

Fast forward to today. Twitter is a sea of marketing messages and deception. The fog of uncertainty would hinder most tech savvy people while they wade through the murky waters of what’s real and what’s not.

Two years ago, it was actually easier to find people you wanted to follow on Twitter, even without all the search tools we have now. More importantly though, it was almost automatic for you to follow someone who found and followed you. It’s called connecting.

Now, I’ll be honest, I follow about 2 of every 10 followers I get. Mostly because the majority are spam accounts, or people trying to game the system.

Example: There are three follower emails in my Inbox right now. The earliest one came in 2 hours ago. I haven’t even looked at them yet but I’ll check them out and tell you how it goes. (I’m not going to post usernames because I don’t want to give the spammers the credit.)

1st – xxxx (username is a ‘name’ followed by three digits) is following you on Twitter. 12 followers, 0 updates, following 699 people.

I don’t even need to click through to the profile. That right there is the blueprint for spammer. You might as well have spammer in your username. DELETE.

2nd – xxxx is following you on Twitter. 512 followers, 23 updates, following 1657 people.

The 512 followers is interesting, although you could probably get that many following people who employ the autofollow back (another reason Twitter is unclean). I’m going to click through to the profile.

The name really tells me nothing, other than it looks like a blog. There’s a website address…that’s ok, you’re supposed to promote there. The bio is just a re-wording of the name–no help there.

On to the posts. Each Twitter home page will show the last 20 posts from that user. In 20 posts, 18 have links at the end (probably to their blog), one has a single word followed by a mention and one (the most recent) has what looks to be a thought provoking post.

This doesn’t appear to be a hardcore spammer, but they are promoting themselves a lot. They’re not really using Twitter to engage people. Now, this isn’t exactly wrong. If it was a subject I was really interested in, I might actually follow. It’s not though so I won’t

3rd – xxxx is following you on Twitter. 23,397 followers, 1939 updates, following 23,840 people.

::sigh:: These are the people I don’t understand. I’m sorry, but you can’t follow 23,840 people and have any clue what “your community” is doing. My first thought on this account is “gamer”. I might be dead wrong there, but I’ve now been trained to think that way. Gamer or not though, until someone proves to me that they can follow, AND PAY ATTENTION TO, 20,000 people–I don’t buy it. Even if you have Tweetdeck set up and groups for everyone, there’s just not enough time in the day to follow and be engaged with that many people.

There are a few Tweeps out there that have the ‘celebrity’ status and have those numbers, but they don’t engage their audience very much as far as I’ve seen. They mostly post their Tweets (and some are very good at it and post great/informative Tweets) and have a core group of people they engage with but that’s about it.

However, then there’s the gamers. The ones that play the system to get these numbers. By either using some whacky pyramid scheme to get followers or some other method.

OK, let’s check out the profile and see what we’ve got here.

Yup, just what I figured. Of the 20 most recent posts, zero are replies or mentions. All 20 have links…and several of the links are repeated. There looks to be about 3 unique links there, repeated over and over again. Apparently, if I follow that link I’ll be rich beyond my wildest dreams in about 14 days. All from the  comfort of my home and even if I’m “new to marketing”. Awesome, where’s my delete key.

Well, there you have it. A brief trip through my Inbox as I’m writing this post. You see…Twitter is so huge now, people are all trying to “cash in”. Trying to get on Twitter, get thousands of followers and then magic happens.

Guess what…it doesn’t work like that.

Here’s the dirty little secret that no one wants to tell you, but what the hell do I care.

Ready…are you sitting down?

LIKE ANYTHING WORTH DOING…TWITTER TAKES WORK TO DO IT RIGHT

There I said it. Feel better?

Yes, Twitter takes work. I don’t care if you’re a guy or girl sitting in front of the computer looking to make contacts (friends) to share your ideas or if you’re the Marketing manager or CEO of your company and you’re looking for leads or just want to listen to what’s being said about your brand. Twitter takes work.

It’s work to sift through the noise and find the messages and people that you can connect with.

It’s work to get your message heard above all that noise.

Like the gold miners coming to California in search of something amazing, you have to now sift through a lot of dirt to find a nugget worth keeping.

Yup, Twitter is unclean. It’s not a horrible thing, it was bound to happen. Price of success.

For those willing to put in the time though, it’s totally worth it. Yeah, I’m bummed that I have to spend so much time sorting through what I think is good and what I think is crap. And sometimes I’m wrong, and it takes time to maintain. But what I get out of Twitter is really worth the effort.

So, if you’re new to Twitter just know this going in…it’s going to take time. You can’t just turn Twitter on and say “There, I’m on Twitter, I’m good”. You’re not going to get anything of worth out of it that way. Trust me though, if you have the time, and you stick with it, you’ll be glad you did. Just like I am.

In case you didn’t know, Twitter is mainstream. There’s no denying it anymore. One of the biggest reasons why it’s so mainstream, is all the different things you can do with it. Twitter itself is a simple application–post what you’re doing. Of course, those that “get” Twitter, know it’s a bit more than that. It’s all the ways that other people use Twitter that make it interesting. 

I was looking over my various links of Twitter applications, tools and plugins I had scattered about…and decided to put them into one place while adding a few more. The idea was to come up with a good list that people could reference when they needed to. It took a lot more work than I thought, but I’d have to say it’s a pretty good list.

Now, this isn’t (by any means) a complete list. In fact, I’m sure there are many that I either haven’t found, missed or mistakenly omitted. So if your favorite isn’t listed…leave a comment and I’ll add it. Also, if you think I got a description wrong or it needs to be expanded on…let me know. I’ll be happy to give credit to those that help make this list bigger and better too

A couple of other notes: Some of these services I use, some I don’t. This isn’t meant to be a list of all the tools I use (can you image using them all??). Some of these tools are for more than just Twitter. That’s fine. This is a Twitter list so I focused mainly on that aspect of the service.

OK, well enough of that…on to my list of 115+ Twitter Applications, Tools and Plugins!

• Advertising
  • Magpie – Pays you for putting advertisements in your Twitter stream.
  • twitad – Lets you place advertisements on your twitter profile and pays you a percentage of the cost.
• Application | Desktop
  • Destroy Twitter – A desktop application for Twitter
  • digsby – Digsby is a multiple service messaging client. Use with Twitter as well as other social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, or IM services like AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ, Gtalk. You can even receive email notifications through digsby.
  • feedalizr – Another desktop application that brings together Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Flickr and more all in a single application.
  • Seesmic – A desktop application for Twitter (with Facebook support). Organize your stream into columns, share links, photos and videos and group your followers.
  • Splitweet – A desktop application for managing multiple Twitter accounts. If you have several accounts, you can use them all from this software tool.
  • TweetDeck – A desktop client for Twitter. Allows you to group your followers for good organization of your Twitter stream. Includes several popular URL shorteners and even lets you post and see Facebook status messages.
  • tweetPad – Software used to visualize Twitter feeds in a new, dynamic fashion. The idea is to not only be on the receiving end of these feeds but to be able to manipulate them; to react and to interact with what we are reading. This is done by deconstructing the text: scrambling the letters or words, breaking sentences apart, replacing words,combining multiple entries into one, etc.
  • Twhirl – Twhirl is a desktop application for Twitter. It has a good, clean interface. It’s being replaced by the Seesmic Desktop client, but I prefer Twhirl over Seesmic at the moment.
  • Twitterrific – A MAC Client for Twitter
• Application | Mobile
  • Twinkle – Twinke is another Twitter application for the iPhone.
  • Twittelator – A Twitter application for the iPhone
  • Twitterberry – Twitterberry is a Twitter application for Blackberry’s. It uses the data network so you don’t need to use SMS to interact with Twitter.
  • TwitterFon – TwitterFon is a simple, clean, easy to use, and is a superfast Twitter client for your iPhone and iPod Touch.
• Application | Web/Browser Plugin
  • TwitterFox – A small addon Twitter client for FireFox
  • GroupTweet – A way for you to broadcast tweets to a group of people. The idea is, you create a ‘broadcast account’ and people who want to get the messages follow that account. When one person sends a DM to that account, a DM is sent to each of the other people following that account.
  • Hahlo – Hahlo is fully featured web interface intended for mobile phone usage.
  • Hoot Suite – Schedule Tweets, track links sent in Tweets and use multiple Twitter accounts with one Hoot Suite account.
  • Matt – Matt is a tool for letting you post to multiple Twitter accounts at the same time.
  • EasyTweets – Track keywords, receive SMS alerts, Manage Multiple Twitter Accounts, Schedule tweets, Automatically Post RSS Feed Content, Auto Follow, Share Links and a few more features.
  • PeopleBrowser – An advanced online client for Twitter. See your stream in stacks, perform searches, see threaded conversations and post all from the PeopleBrowser interface.
  • Tweetree – Puts your Twitter stream in a nested form so you can see conversations better. Much like forum posts.
  • Twittfilter – Twittfilter is a web based application to help manage your incoming tweets and twitter followers/friends.
• Events
  • twtvite – An online way to organize a tweetup and notify your followers about it.
• Photo Sharing
  • picktor – Picktor lets you share your photos on Twitter. Alpha features are being worked on to let you share on multiple networks like flickr, FriendFeed, Facebook and more.
  • pikchur – Pikchur is a simple service that updates your social networks / micro-blogging platforms with pictures. You can post to Twitter, tumblr, jaiku, Facebook, FriendFeed, identi.ca, flickr, brightkite, and more.
  • SnapTweet – SnapTweet is an easy to use service which makes it simple to post your latest Flickr photos to your Twitter stream.
  • tweetPhoto – tweetPhoto is a service for sharing photos on Twitter. It lets you see who’s viewed your photos, geo-tags them, lets you post your photos to Facebook at the same time and a few other features.
  • twitgoo – Twitgoo is a quick, easy, reliable, and safe way to share images for Twitter.
  • twitpic – Twitpic is a service that allows you to post photos and share them through your Twitter stream. Users can make comments on your photos (which also get posted to Twitter).
  • yfrog – From the ImageShack folks, yfrog is another simple way to share photos with your friends on Twitter.
• Photo and Video Sharing
  • twitc – Twitc is a free photo, video, and file sharing application for social networkers. Upload, manage, organize, search, and download over 180 file types, including videos and content from third party sites such as YouTube, Hulu, Yahoo Video, Spike, Jumpcut, and LiveLeak.
  • TweeTube – TweeTube is a way of sharing videos and photos on Twitter. You can upload your media, use a webcam, or post links.
  • twit Lens – TWITLENS is a picture and video sharing service primarily for Twitter users.It lets you upload video and photos. You can also easily tag your friends in each photo.
• Tools | Followers
  • DoesFollow – Simple, see if a person is following another person
  • Follow Cost – Shows you ‘how annoying’ it will be to follow a specific user. Gives you Average updates per day and average updates per day based on the users last 100 tweets.
  • Friend or Follow – A follower management tool that breaks down your tweeps in three screens. People you’re following that aren’t following you back, people who follow you that you don’t follow back and friends.
  • Less Friends – Less Friends lets you see who you’re following, who’s following you and mutual followers. Links are provided to each users’ profile you can follow or unfollow them.
  • Mr. Tweet – Mr. Tweet will analyze your Twitter network, help you discover great people, and recommend you to others.
  • My Cleaner – Log in with your Twitter credentials and My Cleaner will show you which of your followers haven’t posted in  a long time. You can unfollow those users right from the My Cleaner interface.
  • My Tweeple – Follower management tool for Twitter.
  • Nearby Tweets – Lets you search for Twitter users within a given radius of a location you enter.
  • Quitter – Sends you email notifications when a Twitter user stops following you. Included in the email is the last tweet before that user stopped following you.
  • SocialToo – Lets you create surveys and polls to use on Twitter. Tools to let you autofollow, auto unfollow and block auto DM’s from others.
  • socialwhois – See a users profile and interests. Shows their profile based on their Twitter and/or FriendFeed profiles. Nice tool to see if you share similar interests in a particular user.
  • Topify – Replaces the Twitter notification emails with more in depth information emails.
  • Twellow – Twitter Directory
  • Twibs – Directory of businesses on Twitter. Search their directory or view featured and most popular businesses.
  • Twitter Karma – A flash follower management tool that lets you sort and view your followers and fans.
  • twitter mass – A tool for automating following in Twitter. Auto follows people for you based on keywords, your followers, locals and other things like #followfriday. It’s a Twitter “gaming” tool and probably shouldn’t be used.
  • Twitter Twerp Scan – checks the number of followers of everyone on your contact list, the number of people they are following, and the ratio between those. If the person is following more than (n) people (can be customised), and has a followers-to-following ratio higher than 1:(m) (can be customised)
  • TwitterFriends – Shows you stats about your “network”. Who you converse with on Twitter. Visual stats broken down in a few different ways.
  • TwitterSnooze – Let’s you put a Twitter user on “snooze” or…not follow them for a few days.
  • Twtrfrnd – A way to see common followers between two Twitter users
  • twubble – Another Twitter suggestion tool. This one requires you to give your Twitter credentials.
  • we follow – we follow is a directory for Twitter. It tags each user for better searching of the directory.
  • Who Should I Follow? – Suggests users for you to Follow on Twitter
  • Twiffid – Twiffid shows you the headlines of the websites your Twitter friends have listed in their profiles
• Tools | Followers and Search
  • Twalala – you can filter tweets out of your stream by keywords and phrases or mute individuals who get a bit too chatty.
  • Tweet Pro 2.0 – Tweet Pro enables you to quickly and easily find Twitter users who are interested in your products or services by allowing you to search through posted messages and profile information.
  • TweetSearch – Search the bio’s of Twitter users given a keyword you specify. Or, give a Twitter user and pull up all their followers with bio’s.
  • twitter hawk – TwitterHawk is a real time targeted marketing engine that will find people talking on twitter now by your chosen topic and location
• Tools | Followers and Stats
  • Top Twitter Friends – Shows people you converse with most often in a neat little graph. Also gives you suggested people to follow based on other people you follow.
  • twInfluence – twInfluence is a simple tool for measuring the combined influence of twitterers and their followers, with a few social network statistics thrown in as bonus.
• Tools | Links
  • bit.ly – URL shortener with stats
  • is.gd – URL shortener. The FireFox plugin for this tool is awesome.
  • MicroPlaza – MicroPlaza looks at your Twitter network and displays all the links shared by the people you follow with associated tweets.
  • TinyURL – URL shortener
  • Tweetburner – Shorten URL’s and tracks clicks.
  • Twit this – A URL sharing service for Twitter
• Tools | Links and Search
  • backtweets – lets you search for links on Twitter and tells you who tweeted the links.
  • OneRiot – OneRiot crawls the links people share on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing services, then indexes the content on those pages
• Tools | Links and Trends
  • Re:Tweetist – Tracks and ranks URL’s posted on Twitter. You can retweet URL’s you like in a Digg-like format.
  • repeets – Tracks the ‘hottest’ retweeted links on Twitter.
  • Tweetmeme – View popular links on Twitter sorted into categories. Retweet links you like. Kind of like a Digg for twitter links.
  • twitt(url)y – Tracks and ranks URL’s posted on Twitter. You can retweet URL’s you like in a Digg-like format.
• Tools | Location
  • brightkite – Brightkite is a service that allows you to post your location as well as share posts and photos. The service can also post to your Twitter account.
  • loopt – Loopt shows users where friends are located and what they are doing via detailed, interactive maps on their mobile phones.
• Tools | Plugins
  • PowerTwitter – PowerTwitter is an addon for FireFox that extends the Twitter website. Including: search and recent searches, search scoped to a specific user, status history peeking on mouseover, Facebook status updates, inline YouTube, Flickr, TwitPic, Google Maps, song.ly, and more, url expansion, url translation to page titles, open web update (news feed) mapping, custom settings, @mentions, photo uploading, link shrinking, #hashtags
  • Twinbox – A plugin that turns your Outlook into a Twitter client.
  • Twitter Keys – TwitterKeys is a small tool that provides you with a floating window with all several funny symbols you can use in Twitter. Like a star, heart, smiley’s, etc.
  • headup – Headup is a Firefox add-on that helps you find cool content related to the stuff you’re interested in.
• Tools | Posting
  • HelloTxt – HelloTxt lets you update your status and read your friends’ status across all main microblogging and social networks all at once.
  • Ping.fm – Ping.fm is a service that allows you to post one message to a variety of different social networks all at the same time. It saves you time from going to each one to post.
  • Plodt – Let’s you track tweets that you tag. Rate things when you tweet and Plodt will track them for you. Like a star rating system for Twitter.
  • Tweet Later – A tool for scheduling and posting tweets in the future. Also has an autofollow feature.
  • twitter Mail – lets you post to Twitter by giving you a unique email address. They post your tweet on your behalf when you send an email to the address they give you.
  • twitterfeed – Twitterfeed servers will check your blog’s feed at the specified interval and post any new items to your specified service (Twitter, identi.ca, HelloTxt or Ping.fm
  • twitzu – twitzu is a service that allows you to post events to Twitter. Users can respond and let you know if they plan on attending or not.
  • Twuffer – Allows you to schedule Tweets
• Tools | Replies
  • TwitAps Replies – Get Twitter replies sent directly to your Inbox without supplying your Twitter password.
• Tools | Search
  • monitter – Monitor lets you “monitter” the twitter world for a set of keywords and watch what people are saying.
  • Tweetbeep – Sends you emails of given search terms directly to your email address.
  • TweetGrid – Lets you monitor a number of different search terms on a single page.
  • Tweetscan – A Twitter search engine
  • twilert – lets you receive regular email updates of tweets containing any keyword search you give.
  • Twitter Search – Official search engine for Twitter
  • TwitterLocal – TwitterLocal is an Adobe AIR based application that allows you to filter Tweets by location.
• Tools | Search and Trends
  • #hashtags – Shows you popular hashtags that are on Twitter right now as well as a graph for each one with populatiry over time.
  • Gamejabs – Any time you mention a team or player, tag it with a ! in front of the word and Gamejabs will filter it to the right page.
  • Twazzup – Takes twitter search trends a step further showing you links, photos and featured tweets that relate to the topic.
  • Twist – Shows you how popular a term is on Twitter. Type a term in the search box and Twist will tell you how often it’s been talked about in the last 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days.
  • twitority – Twitter search that will filter the results based on the users’ “authority”
• Tools | Stats
  • TweetStats – Gives you stats of your Twitter usage: Your tweet numbers broken down by month, day of the week and hour of the day. Average daily and hourly tweets, as well as most replies to and interface used. It also gives you a cool tweet cloud.
  • TwitGraph – TwitGraph will show you a few simple pie charts based on your Tweets.
  • twittas – a cool stats site that lets you see stats about your tweets and your followers.
  • Twitter Charts – Graphical representation of your Twitter usage by time of day and day of week. Also has a nice “reply explorer” to see your conversations.
  • Twitter Counter – Stats about your followers, friends and updates over time. You can compare follower growth of two different users, get a badge that shows current number of followers and it gives you prediction of where you’ll be tomorrow and in 30 days.
  • Twitter Grader – Gives you a “grade” (from 1 to 100) based on a special algorythm. Will also show you the top users in your area or total. Used to suggest users for you to follow as well.
  • When Did you Join Twitter? – Simple. What date did you join Twitter
• Tools | Trends
  • Favrd – FAVRD lists interesting things that show up on Twitter, based on the number of times an item has been declared a ‘favorite’.
  • retweetrank – See how often your Tweets are retweeted by other Twitter users.
  • TwitLinks – Posts the latest links from the worlds top tech twitter users.
  • Twitscoop – Easily see what’s trending on Twitter in real time.
  • Twopular – Looks for popular posts. Gives a list of popular Twitter terms for: now, last 2 hours, 8 hours, day, week, month and since they started the service (Dec 5, 2008).
• Tools | Video Sharing
  • twiddeo – Twiddeo is a powerful but simple service that let’s you do one thing very well: Twitter updates with Video. Upload from the web, your cameraphone and record from your webcam.

Among the recent wave of Facebook changes that seem to have everyone up in arms (although I think people are getting used to it now). Facebook changed something and did it right for a change. They added a bit more functionality to their chat feature.

Facebook chat was basically an all-or-nothing thing. When you were on, you were on and all your friends knew it. But what if you didn’t want to appear online to some of your friends? What if, hypothetically, you didn’t want your “work friends” to know you were on…well now you can.

Facebook upgrades the chat feature

If you add those friends to a group, you can change your settings to appear “offline” to that group. Handy eh? There’s a button to organize your lists and an options button that lets you Go Offline (to everyone), Re-order Lists, Pop out Chat, Show Feed stories in Chat, Play Sound for New Messages, Keep Online Friends Window Open and Show Only Names in Online Friends.

It may seem small but sometimes it’s the little things that make a big difference in the user experience. So sit back and enjoy the new Facebook chat feature and wait until the next Facebook change

What do you think about the new chat feature?

Recently, a friend of mine joined Twitter. He finally got past the “why would people care what I’m doing?” phase and now he’s excited about it. He’s a n00b though and there’s a lot of things flying by him that he’s not understanding. I answered his questions then thought, maybe there’s others out there that could use some help with what I call “Twitter Commands”.

Sure there are a lot of “How To’s” and “Beginner’s Guide” for Twitter. But what if you’ve got most of it down. You’re signed up, you’re following people, they’re following you. You just want to understand what all this secret language stuff is right?

Well, here’s my attempt at answering that question. Did I forget one? Leave a comment below.

Update (7/8/2009): If you like this post, please comment below. You can also follow me on Twitter and say hi! I’d love to hear from you. Thanks.

1 – @Reply’s

“So what’s with all these @ symbols everywhere?”

Adding an @ immediately followed by a Twitter username is a way to acknowledge another Twitter user. Adding that on to the beginning of your message is considered a reply, kind of like an email reply (actually, it’s more like hitting “Reply To All” in an email). Much like an email reply, you’re commenting on or answering that user (or several users if you have more than one in a single post). Replies come up in your normal Twitter stream, but they’re also easy to find by clicking on the @{yourusername} nav item from your home page.

2 – Direct Messages (DM)

“Someone just told me to DM them. How do I do that?”

Direct Messages (or DM’s) are like private messages between you and another Twitter user. When you want to send someone a message that only they will see, you send a DM. The syntax for sending a DM is:

d username message

So as an example, if you wanted to send me a direct message you would type:

d CantonDog Hi, this is a direct message!

Notice the space after the ‘d’. Unlike an @reply where there is no space between the @ and the username, you need that space right after the ‘d’ in order to send the direct message. There’s one more catch, each user in the message needs to be following the other in order for it to work. If you’re trying to DM me, you need to be following @CantonDog AND I need to be following you.

3 – Favorites

“I have a favorites link in my nav bar. What’s that for?”

Favorites are pretty easy, they’re exactly what they seem like. If you see a post that you like, or someone posts a link to a site you want to check out later, you can favorite that Tweet. Then later, you can go back to your favorites and see that post. A week, a month or a year later. Whenever!

4 – Retweet (RT)

“I keep seeing the letters RT in my stream. What does RT mean?”

Retweets (or RT’s) are a way to quote another Twitter user. If someone posts something cool, funny, thought provoking, stupid or whatever…you can quote them by sending out a RT. RT’s are handy because it’s a way to make a message viral.

The syntax for RT’s is as follows:

RT @username post

For example, my friend is new to Twitter and because of that, doesn’t have a ton of followers. If he posts something that I think would be helpful to others, I can RT his message. Now, his message isn’t limited to just his followers. Everyone who’s following me will also see the message. If someone in my network also likes the post, they can RT it again and everyone following them will see it (and so on and so on).

This can also help my friend get more followers. After I RT his post, if someone who is following me likes the subject of his post, they can follow him because he’s credited in the post. Here’s an example of how someone would RT me:

RT @CantonDog Remember, your dog is the only one in your life that loves you more than himself.

5 – Overheard (OH)

“OK, I get RT, but what the heck is OH?”

The letters OH when followed by a colon such as OH: stand for “Overheard”. For example you might see a post like:

OH: Isn’t it obvious? I was licking your eyeball.

Which just means that the person sending the Tweet, overheard someone say that. It could be someone they know or it could be a total random stranger. It’s usually something funny (or funny if taken out of context) or controversial. Sometimes, the OH is qualified by a location such as:

OH at coffee shop:

or

OH at the movies:

6 – Hash Tags (#)

“Why do I see # symbols everywhere. They seem to mean nothing”

Well, yeah, they seem to mean nothing…until you realize what they are and how powerful they can be. The # symbol is called a hash tag. Putting a # symbol in your tweet followed by a word (or words put together with no spaces) is a way to categorize or tag your post. This way, if other people are talking about the same subject or event, they can use the same hash tag. This serves more than one purpose.

One purpose hash tags serve, is that you can do a search on Twitter and see who is talking about that particular subject. For example, this past weekend was the NFL Draft. A Twitter search for #nfldraft will show you posts of all kinds of people talking about it.

Another purpose for the hash tags are to see what’s being talked about on Twitter right now. Looking at the right hand side of your home page or search.twitter.com and you’ll see a list of “Trending Topics” or what’s hot on Twitter at the moment. You can easily make up your own hash tag just by including a # followed by a keyword in your tweet. Give it a try!

6b – #followfriday

“What’s the deal with the hash tag #followfriday?”

Some hash tags take on a life of their own. One such tag is #followfriday. The hash tag #followfriday is a way to give props to people who you think add value to your network. Each week, on Friday’s you can choose one or many Twitter users and tag them with a #followfriday hash tag. This lets your followers know who you think are good people to follow.

Some people will post just the hash tag #followfriday then a bunch of @usernames. While this is fine, and a lot of people mimic this action, it’s preferable to give your followers a reason why you’re recommending these people. For that reason, I like to only include one (maybe two) user(s) in a #followfriday I post. Maybe my reasons for following the person don’t pertain to you…wouldn’t you like to know that quicker instead of having to visit a bunch of bio’s?

Mashable has a great post on the origin of #followfriday here.

7 – Short URL’s

“Why does everyone use the same URL for their links? like http://tinyurl.com ?”

Since Twitter is limited to only 140 characters per tweet, space is at a premium. Some URL’s can be quite long. If they’re not shortened, they don’t leave much explanation for why you’re posting it. This is where tinyurl comes into play. Tinyurl.com is Twitter’s default URL shortener. If you put in a regular URL in your post, Twitter will use the Tinyurl service to shorten it for you.

There are others too though, http://is.gd is one I use frequently because of their easy to use FireFox plugin. Another one I’ll use is http://bit.ly because it keeps track of how many people clicked on your link. This can be handy to see how popular your links are.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this post helped you sort out some of the seemingly encrypted code found on Twitter. It can seem like it’s own language when you’re first getting used to it, and it kind of is…but once you know the key’s pretty simple to figure out.

In a future post, I’ll go over some of the third party applications used to access Twitter…so stay tuned.

Did I miss something? Do you have a question about Twitter? Or maybe you just want to add something to my post above? Post in the comments below. And as always, thanks for reading.

The recent outcry over Facebook’s changes had the social media juggernaut doing something not seen very much these days. They listened to their users. What? Are you kidding me?

This isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen right? Users are supposed to bitch and moan yet continue to use the service while being ignored because, ultimately, the service still has value. Eventually, everyone either gets used to it or gets tired of bitching and life goes on…until the next change, then rinse and repeat.

This time though, Facebook listened. They didn’t revert back to the old style, but they made a few changes the users suggested (that actually made sense) and they made them quickly.

The biggest change? Filtering is back. Not the way it was before…but a variation of it. In the “old” style, you had a few options for notices in your news feed: Ignore user, see less from this user, see more from this user and ignore application. When the new layout rolled out…this was completely gone. You could ignore the user completely but there was no middle ground. So, I either had to see what every one of my friends picked as their favorite 5 this-or-that item…or I’d have to ignore ALL their updates (and what’s the point in having them as a friend if I ignore everything they do? Another post maybe).

Now though, they’ve replaced the “ignore” button with a “hide” button, with a small difference. Instead of hiding the user, you can now hide just the application. So if you don’t give  a hoot when someone throws a Ryan Seacrest at someone or when one of your friends does something on Mob Wars…you can ignore just those applications. You’ll still see all their lovely photos and status updates, without the boring stuff you don’t care about.

It’s more than that though. By making this change, and making it so quickly, Facebook is telling their users “we care about your opinions.” Never underestimate the value of a user feeling valued. It brings them into the community more, gives them a deeper sense of ownership. Can you imagine MySpace listening to their users?

I hope this is a trend that continues. After all, the social media revolution is all about listening to what people are saying about you. It’s only fitting that you take that priceless feedback and make your product better…no matter who you are.