Twittery Twools For Twits

Posted on March 19, 2007

Twitter is the top search on Technorati today as its popularity continues to soar. Nearly 3,000 posts have now been tagged with the keyword: "Twitter." Because of its popularity there are quite a few new tools and applications emerging for twittering twits. For those not in the know Twitter is a new form of microblogging where entries can only be a maximum of 140 characters long and there are no graphics. Entries can be submitted via IM or text message or through the web-based interface. It may sound dull at first but Twitter has a social component, including friends, that helps make it more addictive. This post describes a few of the new tools available to Twitter users.

Twitterholic is a new a-list for Twitter that shows the Top 100 Twits. It isn't perfect because some top Twits are not there. For example, John Edwards has well over 1,000 followers but he isn't currently listed.

Swotter reads books to you in Twitter if you can handle it. Currently Swotter is reading James Joyce's Ulysses.

Twittervision is an addictive mashup of Google Maps and new Twitter posts. It shows recent Twitter posts, the Twitterer's avatar and the location in the world the Twitter entry came from in real time.

Wired's Monkey Bites has discusses Twitter client tools for the Mac and Windows like Twitterrific (Mac).

Tinyurl appears to the top choice for make URLs short enough to fit on Twitter. Was David Berlind at ZDNet not crazy when he suggested that TinyURL could be the next YouTube? Slink.in, Shorturl, Snipurl and Ink.in are alternatives. So far Tinyurl has held up well under what must be an increasing server load.

The Twitter Fan Wiki lists many more tools, mashups and apps.

Finally on the silly side is The Hoff's Twitter which was funny at first but it appears to be a bot that quickly starts repeating things David Hasselhoff is doing like "Having teeth whitened."

Things that would be very useful would a service that lets you put a Twitter blog on your own domain and/or more flexibility in adding code to Twitter pages.