Selecting your handle is an important step when starting out on Twitter. It’s not that you can’t change it whenever you want, it’s just that as people start to recognize you as your Twitter handle, your brand and your reputation, it becomes harder and harder to move away from that.  There are a few handle options you have, so I thought I’d go over the pros and cons of each:

Your Real Name (first, last, initials, business name or some combination of the those)

Examples – @lizstrauss, @loic, @chrisbrogan, @DaivRawks, @jbruin, @pistachio

• Pro – You’re branding your own name, so people will recognize you
• Con – It’s harder for people offhand to know what you do or what interests you

A Description (who you are, what you do, what you’re interested in)

Examples – @BostonMarketer (that’s me!), @SEOSEM, @BostonTweet, @thebrandbuilder,  @skydiver

• Pro – People automatically know what you do, or what interests you.
  • I can speak from personal experience on this one… I get quite a few referrals through Twitter for Marketing and Social Media Consulting work.  I attribute that to a lot of factors, but one of them is that my name makes it clear what I do.  So, if someone is trying to think of a referral for Marketing in Boston, I come to mind.  The same thing happened to me on the other side last week, when someone asked me for a recommendation of someone who is good at SEO. The first person I thought of was @SEOSEM because of his name.  I follow close to 4,000 people, so remembering specific people is difficult.  Having an obvious name, makes remembering you easier when it comes to referrals, or just finding someone in a particular area of interest.
• Con – You’re missing out on an opportunity to brand your own personal name.  I joke sometimes that people don’t actually know my name — I’m @BostonMarketer to them.  But, I do think it’s somewhat true.
• Con – If you’re not focused in what you’re interested in, it can pigeon hole you into one area

A Random Name (probably not obvious to everyone why that’s your name)

Examples – @lmzadi1, @NoOneYouKnow

• Pro – CAN be memorable
• Con – You’re not branding your name, or what you do, so it’s a missed opportunity
• Con – Oftentimes difficult to remember

(of course, there are also combinations of the types above, i.e. @pamelawella, @JessicaKnows, @LauraLovesArt)

Overall, my personal recommendation is to choose a name that describes your interests, as long as you are focused in the reason you are on Twitter.  If not, then go with your real name!

Other miscellaneous tips:

• Names I find difficult are ones where it’s A name, but not the person’s real name.  For example, @BstnMelody — I find her name VERY difficult… because her name is NOT Melody, but rather, Robin.  So, when I see her, I keep wanting to call her Melody.  Another one is @Admore, whose last name is not Admore, but rather Damore. (Sorry Robin and David, I needed to use you as examples to make the point.)
• Regardless of what your Twitter handle is (unless you share an account with multiple people), you definitely should have your real name onyour bio as well (see image — you see Rachel Levy, although my Twitter handle is @BostonMarketer).  It puts a real name to your handle, and makes you more personable.
• The use of underscores makes typing the person’s name more difficult.  On a laptop keyboard, it’s just pushing the shift key.  But, on the iPhone it’s an additional two strokes to get the underscore.  I would recommend staying away from underscores if you possibly can.
• Having a long Twitter name makes it difficult to get retweeted — the longer your name is, the more characters your name takes up to RT you.  My name (@BostonMarketer) is 14 characters, and I think it’s a bit too long… my recommendation is to keep your name under 10 characters.
• Don’t use a lot of random numbers or strange spellings of words in your name, as it’s difficult to remember.

(Photo credit: Follow Me, Twitter Handle list)

What do you think?  What are the best naming conventions?  Any other pros/cons I’m missing?

If you’re not familiar with BlendTec, they are a company who used videos to market a fairly unexciting product, in a brilliant way that turned into a viral sensation. They pick items that you would never ordinarily put in a blender, such as iPhones, golf balls, glow sticks, and show how powerful the BlendTec blender is, by the fact that it can crush up these items on their “Will It Blend?” show. The shows are hysterical, and have proven to be an amazing tool to market their product.

Last weekend, I decided to conduct an similar experiment of my own. Except that it really wasn’t planned. It just happened by mistake. I put my iPhone through the washing machine. Yes, rinse cycle and all. So, what happened to it? Well, by the keen knowledge of my friend Claudio, my phone was saved, and seems to be in 100% working order. Here’s what Claudio did to save the day:

• He said, no matter what, don’t turn on the phone until we fully dried out the insides.  So, despite my impatience to just turn it on and see if it was working, we kept it turned off
• Then, Claudio instructed me to suck all the water out of every single hole in the iphone.  It tasted like Tide.  (maybe that was just his way of getting me to wash my mouth out with soap!).  Anyway, I literally sucked as hard as I could out of both microphone holes, the volume buttons, the headset hole, the on/off buttons, the charger hole, and the SIM card hole.
• Then, he pointed a hairdryer at the charger hole and blew medium heat air into the iPhone for probably an hour and a half.  Every few minutes, he rotated the iPhone around so the hair dryer blew into different holes.
• Then, we charged the phone.  We’re not sure if my phone had run out of battery before the washing machine incident or if it disengaged the battery during the incident, but it did need to be charged.

So, that’s it!  At first, the sound on my ringers and music was off, but over the next few days, it came back to normal.  There was also some fogginess on the screen, but that went away the same day.  Now, it’s good as new.  Thanks Claudio!

Anyone else have any tips for saving an iPhone from a washing machine, being run over by a car, or being dropped?

uVizz, an innovative application for video sharing, could be the next big video sharing platform. It solves two problems for online advertisers. First, click through rates of advertising on social networks are notoriously low (0.8% on Facebook).  So, while they have a high reach, people very rarely click on them.  The reason for this, is most likely related to the second issue that uVizz solves — that the ads are not relevant to what the consumer is actually doing.  They can certainly be targeted based on content or demographic/geographic information, but the consumer is not necessarily open to seeing them at that time they appear.

Below is my summary and thinking from my demo view of uVizz with the company’s Managing Partner, Matt Johnson.

About uVizz

In a nutshell, uVizz partners with companies who pay consumers to create and share viral videos. It’s a new way to engage users to help promote a company’s products.

How it works… if iPhone started a uVizz campaign, they would decide on an amount they are willing to pay when the video is viewed ($0.15 is the minimum, and I have used $0.20 below).  Hopefully, some passionate consumers, would create a video (or any content, really) about the brand, submit it for approval to the company, and then it’s ready to become viral!  The photo below, explains how this works.

For every unique video view (UVV) (1st view by a new person), the video creator gets 30%, the referral chain (everyone who helped refer the video) gets 20%, and the person (David) who passed the video onto the viewer (Christina) gets 20%.  And, of course, uVizz gets their cut, at 30%. So, if the video gets 10,000 UVV, that all came through David (normally though, not all views would come through one person), iPhone would pay a total of $2,000, and the revenue share would be as follows:

• Video Creator – $600 (10,000 x $0.20 x 30%)
• Referral Chain – $400
• Referral Creator (David) – $400
• Video viewer (Christina) – $0
• uVizz – $600 (30% share)

When uVizz launches on June 15th, it will be available as an application in Facebook, Bebo, and Friendster. (it’s also available with Twitter, but is just link sharing that drives people to Facebook or uVizz.  I’ll explain more about how it will work with Facebook, as that’s the most popular of these three sites.  Basically, uVizz is an application that allows the company to set up the campaign, the video creator to upload their video, and the video to be shared.  Everyone needs to add the uVizz application in order to view or forward on videos. The application tracks all the view information, allows the video creator to upload and manage their video, and allows everyone involved to see the money they have made.  The videos spread virally, not only through people sending it to their friends, but also through optional wall posts.

Even more interesting, is the targeted nature of this.  The company only pays when the video is viewed by someone who fits the demographic profile they have set.  For example, Morningflake, one of uVizz’s first customers, is based in the UK.  So for their campaign, they will only pay for UVV in the UK.  In addition to location, companies can also target by age and gender (more criteria coming at some point). The Facebook application even tells people who of their friends fit the demographic target so they are aware before sending it to a friend.
Consumer perspective

This is a great concept from the consumer perspective.  People who are passionate about brands like getting involved with them, and the fact is, that they are already creating their own content or spreading the word about the brands they love (for example, BzzScapes or BzzAgent).  The benefit is obviously that they can get paid for doing what they are already doing.

I honestly don’t see any downsides for the video creators.  The only potential consumer downside I see, is that it is encouraging people to push the content on others, in order to make money.  It seems similar to some MLM (multi-level-marketing) schemes.  However, what stops this from happening is the people themselves.  If I keep sending annoying videos to my friends, they will eventually ask me to stop, or unfriend me on Facebook.  So, just as with forwarding jokes via email, you have to use discretion, or you will eventually get ignored.

Company perspective

I think this is also a no-brainer for companies.  It’s like PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns, where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, yet it’s much more targeted.  The biggest question these days with viral content is “what makes something viral?”  Well, with uVizz, the advertiser doesn’t have to know that.  They don’t have to spend tons of money trying to figure that out.  If something takes off and they have a hit on their hands, only then do they pay.

The other benefit, as Matt Johnson told me, is that “it’s a way to engage the company’s consumers in their advertising, and get them to have a stake in the process.”

I also think that since these videos are user generated content, they can often times be so much more effective than ads created by a company.  Believe me, I AM in favor of corporate marketing, given my background in it, but I think there’s something to be said for user-generated content.

My overall thoughts

Overall, I think this is a win-win for everyone involved.  The advertisers get good content, the creators get paid, and people who pass it on get paid as well.  I have a few concerns/questions:

• Although I do think consumers themselves will stop this from becoming spammy, I still think it’s possible.  People are already getting burnt out on the games/quizzes on Facebook, so I worry if this is just one more thing to add to the list.
• uVizz primarily promotes itself for viral videos, but they also mention it can include other content (photos, blog posts, stories). I think creating a video can be overwhelming to some people, so the other forms of content could be more accessible to them.  uVizz should stress this.
• As an advertiser, I would also want to know detailed information about how long people are watching the video for.  As with anything where people can make money, there is always someone out there to scam the system.  Will there be groups formed where people agree to watch each other’s videos so they all make money?  Just click on it for a second, and you’ve “watched” it?  uVizz should be sure they are thinking about these types of scams.
• uVizz is making 30% of the revenue share, which is equivalent to the video creator. That feels like too much to me.  If I were the video creator, I would like to feel like I was making the most from this.

But, as I mentioned, overall, I LOVE this product.

Photo credit: No Spam, Camera

What do you think of this idea?  Any concerns? Good idea?

What I feared would happen when I got my iPhone has happened already, in just a few short weeks. I’m addicted, and seem to have my head buried in it all the time!  Here’s a story for you about a situation that would have been different if I had been allowed to use my phone.

I was waiting in court to contest a ticket I got (made a left hand turn during the 2 hours it’s not allowed… but got out of having to pay!), and was sitting on a bench between two men.  All three of us had our head buried in our phones.  I was checking email, tweeting, and reading my RSS feeds.  The guy on my left was texting.  And the guy on my right was playing a game.  There was a sign that said cell phones were not allowed, but I assumed (and probably so did everyone else currently playing with their phones) that meant talking on our phones, not using them.

Not one of us on the bench made eye contact or even acknowledged each other, until the security guard announced that cell phones will be confiscated if anyone uses them, including texting, etc.  The guy to my left turned to me and made a comment about it, and then we started talking. Later on, we started talking to the man on my right.  Both had fascinating things to say, and both of those people I would have NEVER talked to, had I continued to be buried in my phone.  Here’s what I learned about them…

This is Richard. We started talking about cell phones (of course!), and why he likes his Blackberry Storm.  Then he told me that he’s a cab driver, but only temporarily—  he used to be an Investment Banker, until he lost his job.  He does some consulting work, but drives a cab to bring in some extra cash.  Interesting, that it’s similar to my situation… an MBA who does consulting, babysits and takes care of dogs to help pay the bills. I asked if he feels people judge him for driving a cab, and he said, yes, until they hear him talk and hear that he is smart (which he was).  He’s from Haiti originally (and still has a thick accent)… father used to be a lawyer and mother was a professor.  He told me all about living in Haiti and celebrating a certain holiday where people go around to the various villages and eat a lot of meat!

This is Arnost. He’s from Bulgaria… moved here 5 years ago after selling his Lingerie shop there, and moving here to get married.  He told Richard and I about how he got a DUI when he first moved here.  No one was hurt, thankfully, but he spent $8,000 in the process with lawyers, court fees, and the DUI class.  Richard told us that in Haiti, there are no laws about drinking and driving.

The three of us continued to chat until each of us got called into the court room. So, why am I writing about all of this?  Well, as much as I LOVE my iPhone, and am happy to have access to email and Twitter when I need to, I think there are many missed opportunities talking to interesting people, or seeing interesting things, that pass you by when you have your head buried in the phone all the time.  I’m going to remember to put it down more often and take a look at what’s around me.

Photo Sources: 3 people on phones, No cell phone sign

What do you think?  Have you had a similar experience?  How do you get yourself to “step away from the phone”?

Note: The original post with comments is now ineditable, so has been recreated here. Please see the old post if you’re interested in the comments!

There are so many Twitter applications, I can’t keep track! So, I decided to start this list as a comprehensive place to list all the Twitter programs. I plan to keep this updated as I find out about new applications. If you have any to add, please leave a comment below, and I’ll add them. Or, if you feel I have described the applications incorrectly, please let me know as well! (ones in bold italics in the chart have been added since the last update)

*Note – See below for a list of even more programs and non-iPhone mobile applications. Any mobile applications are denoted with [m].

140it – Shrink your tweets directly from Twitter, using this browser button.

BackTweets – This application will search Twitter for links to a certain website, even if they are shortened. I have an RSS feed set up for my website, and have seen many times where people tweeted about my post without me knowing it. It give me the opportunity to

Backupify – A free backup service for Twitter, and many other social media applications, including Facebook, WordPress, Flickr, Delicious.  You can choose daily or weekly backups, and get a pdf of the backup.  Very cool application.

Birdhouse [m] – Capture your ideas, save them for later and publish them when you’re ready. Quickly jot down your ideas, just like in Notes. Count down to 140 characters, just like in Twitter. Save as many as you want, revisit them later. Capture your ideas offline, even in Airplane mode. Rate drafts with stars and sort by best or by newest. Manage and publish from multiple Twitter accounts. Unpublish the bad ones just as easily. Back everything up through email. $3.99 on iPhone store.e

BlastFollow – This is a great tool to follow a bunch of people with a similar interest all at once based on a hashtag.  So, if you’re at an event or on a webinar, enter the hashtag, and you’ll automatically follow everyone using that hashtag.   Simple but very useful.

Brizzly – A web-based Twitter client that has multi-account (including Facebook) and list support.  It also has a “mute” feature where you can mute a particular person if they’re tweeting too much (!), but you need to be using their interface to actually have the mute work.

BubbleTweet – Create a short video that pops up as a “bubble” over your Twitter profile page. Here’s an example. Cool service, but the bubble only shows up if you use the BubbleTweet URL given to you. So, anyone who just goes through Twitter.com won’t see your bubble.

ChatterBox – ChatterBox allowsho you to monitor Twitter conversations that matter to you. Whether it is a list of interesting keywords or specific user handles, ChatterBox can centralize that information into a common dashboard that individuals and teams can leverage to manage and respond to those conversations. Easily assign workflows, prioritize, tag and assign those interactions to team members ensuring that all tweets are responded to in a timely manner. Looks great for company use.

ClickableNow – Clickable Now is a plugin you’re your browser that allows you to add clickable images to your Twitter background, and allows you to see the clickable backgrounds of other tweeters.

ConversationList – A “conversationlist” is a Twitter list of the people that you talk to (and about) on Twitter. The list is automatically updated daily, so that it always reflects the people that you are paying attention to right now.  Cool application, but I don’t really see a use for it.  Also, if someone uses ListWatcher, it’s constantly telling them they have dropped from or have been added to your list.

Doesfollow – A simple program that does one thing… tells you if one user is following another user. It gives you a “yup” or a “nope” answer. I use it if for some reason I’m curious about if someone is following me (don’t use too often).

DM Deleter – This application will delete all the DM’s in your account. Apparently this saves Twitter money, because you help them conserve server space.

ExecTweets – Helps you find and follow the top business executives on Twitter.

Filttr – A program that allows you to adjust the tweets you see. You can increase or decrease certain people, and increase or decrease what you see from certain keywords. Great idea! They should integrate this into Tweetdeck! But, I can definitely use this as-is.

Followformation – I have not tested this application, because it does not use Oauth. Followformation is a tool for novice Twitter users to get started with following the top people in their categories of interest. It’s like Twitter’s suggested users list, but uses a few sources, such as We Follow, Twitterholic, and GeoFollow. Up to 10% of the auto-followed lists from any category will be paid placements.

Followize – This app’s description is “It’s a powerful, streamlined interface to Twitter which makes following lots of people and conversations quicker and easier.” But, honestly, when I sign in, I have NO idea what it does, or what the benefit is.

Freetwitterdesigner – Allows you to create a customized Twitter background with text, shapes and images.

FriendDeck – Described as “Tweetdeck for Friendfeed“. Seems amazing for those who use Friendfeed.

Friendfeed – “Helps you discover and discuss interesting stuff that your friends and family find on the web.” Basically, it allows you to see what your friends are sharing (and share yours with them) on various websites across the internet, including web pages, videos, photos, and music. It’s used for sharing, idea generation, conversation, marketing, etc. It’s used for much more than just Twitter. Seems great, but it’s just too much information for me right now. I will probably be an addict at some point soon.

Friendorfollow – Shows you who you are following that’s not following you back? Who’s following you that you’re not following back. I don’t use this… too much information for me. Gives you 3 tabs:

• Followers – those you are following who are not following you
• Fans – those who are following you but you’re not following them back
• Friends – Mutual follow

Greasemonkey – See bio text, following & follower count, and most recent Tweet for all friends and followers on the Twitter follow or friends list. Seems great! But, I use Topify to decide who to follow.

Grouptweet – Allows you to create a group to tweet with privately (i.e. bostontweeters). I haven’t found a need for this yet, but see that it could be useful for a work situation.

Hootsuite (formerly Brightkit) – HootSuite allows you to manage multiple Twitter profiles and pre-schedule tweets. Their newest feature allows you to link Hootsuite account with Google Adsense, so you can send links with banner ads. Here’s an example of what it looks like (see top banner). This is the only feature I’m using for now, although I am undecided as to how I feel about sending links with ads. (Thoughts? Let me know below!)

HowSociable – A free tracking/monitoring application that shows you how visible a brand is on the social web. 1,000 is the average brand, so higher or lower indicates something about your brand.  It can also send you a monthly email updating your score.

Klout – Klout allows you to track the impact of your opinions, links and recommendations across your social graph. They collect data about the content you create, how people interact with that content and the size and composition of your network. Then they analyze the data to find indicators of influence and then provide you with innovative tools to interact with and interpret the data. Very cool application!  This is quickly becoming a widely used tool by companies to determine key influencers.

Listorious – Listorious makes it easy to find the best lists of Twitter users on any given topic, and for list creator to publicize their lists.  You can also follow lists directly from the application.  This is a great way to find lists in a particular area of interest.

ListWatcher – A great application that works by just following @ListWatcher.  It sends you a DM when any of the following happens:

• Someone adds you to a list
• Someone deletes you from a list
• A list with you is made private or deleted
• A list containing you is renamed

This is a great application so you know what lists you are on.  My only complaint is that it doesn’t filter out the Conversationlist activity, which changes every day, so that makes for a lot of useless DM’s.

Monitter – Similar to Tweetdeck, it’s a twitter monitor, it lets you “monitter” the twitter world for a set of keywords and watch what people are saying.

Muuter – A GREAT tool that allows you to temporarily unfollow someone if they’re tweeting a lot. If they’re at an event, and are tweeting too much, just mute them!

My First Follow – This application will tell you who you first followed on Twitter. I’m not sure what this shows you, but people do seem to use it!

MyCleenr – MyCleenr is a unique way to sort your friends by their last tweets. It allows you to get rid off all the inactive and useless accounts that you are following!

Mr. Tweet – Does 3 things:

1. Suggest good people and followers you are missing out on
2. Recommend you to enthusiastic users relevant to you
3. Regularly update useful stats of your Twitter usage

I prefer to find people to follow myself, so I don’t use this application.

My Tweeple – Shows you who you’re following who is not following you back, and vise versa. It’s similar to Friendorfollow, but the display is more cumbersome.

Nearby Tweets – A geography–centric social tool for networking and a business tool for building customer relationships and monitoring real–time buzz. Creates a geographic layer on top of Twitter.

Newsgetter – Allows you to search for certain terms, and save your searches to return to later.

Objectivemarketer – A centralized campaign manager. Deliver a message to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.   Then track and analyze responses to messages.  Schedule posts, including recurring posts.  Create automatic posts from an RSS  feed.

Peoplebrowsr – Similar to Tweetdeck, but web based. I love Tweetdeck too much to consider anything else!

Peepnote – A contact manager for Twitter.  Tag and filter the people  you follow, add notes to remember who they are, and export custom lists to Twitter.

Pluggio – This is a web-based Twitter app that has  many of the features of other Twitter clients.   The one feature I used regularly is that you can set up certain keywords to get notified when they are used, and follow those people.  You can put even put parameters about the people to be notified about, such as their follower/following ratio, number of tweets, etc.

Qwitter – Emails you when someone stops following you. I use Socialtoo for this purpose.

retweetrank – Retweet rank is a representative of the number of times a user have been retweeted by others recently. The application tells you our Retweet rank, and percentile. I like this service a lot, as I think that how much a person retweets, is a strong indicator of the value they are bringing to Twitter.

Retweet Radar – Finds trends in the mountains of information ‘retweet’ed on Twitter. Shows you top retweeted people and links. Cool program.

Rate My Talk – Rate My Talk (@talkr on Twitter) is a service that allows conference attendees to provide immediate feedback on a conference via Twitter or through our web site. This data is collected and provided on the site in order to provide accurate feedback on valuable (or not) presentations. Seems like a great service… I’ll definitely check it out if I’m ever a speaker!

ReFollow – A GREAT app that lets you unfollow people who don’t tweet, follow people who tweet about you, etc.  A great way to clean up who you’re following.

Repeets – Counts how many retweets a tweet gets, and tweets about the most retweeted ones (wow, that’s a mouthful). Follow @repeets to get updates.

ReTweetability – The ReTweetability Index measures and ranks Twitter users based on the infectious power of their tweets. This number accounts for number of followers and Tweets overall, so it is a true indicator of infectiousness. Users with a high ReTweetability Index have a greater percentage of their content spread by a greater percentage of their followers, implying that when they do tweet, it’s worth reading. I really like this application, as I do believe that a person’s “retweetability” is a strong indicator of their perceived Twitter value.

ReTweetist – Tracks posts that are retweeted to see what the most valued topics are.

ScoutLabs – A paid tracking/monitoring web-based application that tracks social media and finds signals in the noise. The application  costs $250/month. “Scout Labs helps your team find signals in the noise — what to pay attention to, what customers are ranting and raving about, what’s new and emerging.”

Secretweet – SecretTweet was created to allow Twitter users to share secrets anonymously. Basically, you go to their website, and tweet your secret and they tweet it out to their 10,000 followers. People can even comment on it. Some of the tweets are hysterical/scary!

Shorttext – Shorttext allows you very quickly to write a longer tweet or note, and create a URL for it. When I have more to say than 140 characters (especially if I’m copying an email I’ve received or something similar), you paste it in Shorttext, and it instantly gives you a URL for the copy. It’s not just a program for Twitter, but is very useful as a companion application for Twitter.

Searchtastic – Search tweets from months ago (Twitter keeps only 7 days of tweets).  Download the results to Excel.

Seesmic Desktop – Desktop application similar to Tweetdeck, but with multiple account management. I find the application very confusing to use.

Smub – Shortens urls on a handheld and tweets them automatically. (also can be used for Facebook, Delicious, etc.)

SocialOomph (formerly known as Tweet Later)- You can do numerous things with this site. First, you can use it to set up alerts to track keywords you are interested in. You can also schedule tweets at certain scheduled times. And, you can auto follow or auto DM. I use the scheduled tweets feature.  Also newly added, is the ability to block auto-DM’s.

Splitweet – Similar to Tweetdeck, but it allows you to manage multiple accounts. I do need multiple account support, but I am too in love with Tweetdeck, so am waiting for them to come out with this functionality (coming soon).

SocialMention – A free tracking/monitoring application that has a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information. It allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc. You can also receive daily alerts, or put a widget on your website.

Socialtoo – This program allows you to do multiple things:

• Received an email telling you who followed you and who unfollowed you the day before, and what you tweeted before that happened
• Autofollow people
• Opt out of auto DM’s (they used to offer an auto-DM service, but no longer do)
• Conduct surveys

The only part of the program I use is the first one… Socialtoo emails me every day with who followed me and unfollowed me yesterday. I usually scan quickly to see if there were tweets that are particularly popular or unpopular, so I can notice a trend. I also look to see who unfollowed me, so I know that they are no longer following.

Tagalus – Allows you to find out the “definition” of a particular hashtag.

Tagdef – Definition of Twitter tags, similar to Tagalus. You can also tweet @tagdef and say “Define #xxx” and it will define it for you.

TBUZZ – Makes it easy to tweet the page you’re on, or follow the buzz around it. Using a toolbar button, you can automatically tweet the shortened link and even copy and paste text easily.

Techrigy – This is a paid tracking/monitoring application that marketers can get a full view of their marketing landscape by listening to their consumers online. It enables organizations to:

• Understand consumers’ reactions to all marketing campaigns irrespective of channel
• Monitor brand reputation
• Identify Influencers
• Undertake proper competitive analysis and market research
• Support loyalty initiatives and programs
• Engage directly with customers online

Tinychat – Create your own chatroom and invite people through one simple link. Not just for Twitter use, but it is a useful tool for Twitter users. It’s pretty basic (no sound alerts, etc), but it does the trick.

TopFollowFriday – Shows you who is endorsing who and who is being endorsed on #followfriday. The results don’t look accurate to me.

Topify – This is one of my favorite applications! What this application does, is makes your email work much better for you with Twitter. When you receive an email about a new follower, instead of being without any information about the followee, it will include their bio and basic stats. And, directly from the email you can follow the person! It also allows you to reply to a DM directly from email.

Twalala – Twalala allows you to control what you see and don’t see in your twitterstream. You can filter tweets out of your stream by keywords and phrases or mute individuals who get a bit too chatty. Twitter with a mute button! Great concept, except you have to use their interface for it to work. It would be great, if the selections here, would be active no matter what Twitter client you used.

TwapperKeeper – Create a permanent archive of a hashtag, keyword or person.  Great app, given how quickly Twitter makes tweets unavailable.

Twazzup – I really like this application. It’s basically Twitter Search, but groups the results together in a more meaningful way. It shows you real time tweets, real time photos, most popular links, and top trendmakers. Very useful.

TweetpML – One of my favorite applications for Lists.  TweepML is a simple format to make it easy for people to share a list of Twitter users.  You can follow the list right from the application, and you can even automatically follow all members of the list, or just certain members.

Tweepsearch – Similar to Twellow, this program searches bios for a particular keyword. But, it can also search the bios of your followers only, which can be very useful.

Tweet Backup – Gives you the ability to export all your posts and friends (will be able to restore in a few weeks as well). After a recent issue with my account (my following count doubled overnight), I signed up for this, just for peace of mind.

Tweetake – Another way to backup your tweets.  The site was down when I was writing this, so I don’t have more to say!

Tweetbeep – Keep track of conversations that mention you, your products, your company, anything, with hourly updates. You can even keep track of who’s tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL (like tinyurl.com). Great for online reputation management, catching all your @replies, finding job/networking opportunities, keeping up on your favorite hobby, and more!

Tweetburner – The program was down when I went to review it, but it looks like it’s a URL shortening and tracking program. It tracks how many clicks your tweet gets, and allows you to analyze which headlines work best, and at what time of day your tweets get the most clicks.

Tweetchat – This program aggregates all tweets for a certain hashtag into a chat room. The benefit of using this vs. Twitter Search for hashtags, is that when you write your tweet, you don’t have to add the hashtag, as it is added automatically — a HUGE timesaver and is so much easier. Also, you can tweet directly from Tweetchat, so there is no need to flip back to twitter to enter a tweet. I use this whenever I’m on a webinar or at an event… amazing!

TweetConvo – TweetConvo is a great application to view twitter conversations. Rather than going through of a tweet’s @replies to get a grasp of the conversation you just enter the tweet’s URL, and it shows you the conversation for that tweet.

Tweetdeck – I can’t say enough about this program. Basically, Tweetdeck shows your Twitter feed in columns of information based on your preferences, rather than one long stream. For example, I use the following columns: All tweets, bostonmarketer, direct messages, friends, thought leaders, companies, twitter stuff, and jobs. This allows me to keep a better eye on things that interest me. You can also see your Facebook friends’ updates right in the application. You can click to see anyone’s profile, and from there add them to a particular column. It has a URL shortener build in, which is invaluable. I find this useful for my job search as I keep columns of job search twitter id’s.

TweetGrid – Create a Twitter Search Dashboard. Looks similar to Tweetdeck, but you can also tweet from multiple accounts. I liked most everything about this program, except that the avatars are very small, so I found it difficult to use.

Tweetmanager – Does a variety of things:

• follow and track Twitter users automatically based on certain keywords
• send a message to 1,000 users or less
• autoreply to @replies (can be used like an out of office message)
• auto-post tweets at predetermined times
• auto-tweet when you update your blog

I’m not currently using this application, but think it has some amazing features.

Tweetmeme -This app aggregates all the popular links on twitter to determine which links are popular. It even puts the links into categories so you can view it by categories you’re intereseted in or just subscribe to the RSS for each. Popular items get tweeted automatically by the Tweetmeme Twitter account.

TweetMic [m] – Great app that allows you to make high-quality audio recordings and publish them directly to Twitter. There is no limit to the length of audio recording you can make! VERY easy app that allows you to create variety in your Twitter stream.

TweetMiner – Allows you to load RSS feeds into this Twitter Client, tag them to be tweeted, and schedule the time to tweet them. VERY cool application that could be very useful. However, there is no way to import your current RSS subscriptions, so you need to add each one individually.

Tweetmondo – Shows you other Twitter users close to you. Cool visual results.

Tweet O’Clock – Type in a Twitter username to find out when it’s best to tweet them.

TweetReach – Tells you how far a URL, hashtag or tweet reached on Twitter. Shows # tweets, # people, tweet types, impressions and contributors tweeters. Great for analyzing an event.

TweetReports – Monitor your brand and online reputation –  track customer sentiment, receive real-time search results, analytics, reports, or research SEO keywords to attract a larger audience. This is a paid service, from $9-299/mo for individuals to enterprise accounts.

Tweetspinner – Does a number of things, many of which are GREAT for businesses… overall, great app!

• Create and schedule smart tweets – create tweet templates, and Tweetspinner will rotate what it tweets for you
• Schedule rotation of profiles and designs
• Smart friends and followers – keyword following (find users who tweet certain words and automatically follow them), purge non reciprocal folllowers, mimic following (follow the followers of another user), location filtering (awesome! but you need to upgrade to use)

Tweetstalk – A program that allows you to follow someone without having them know you are following them. Maybe it’s because I’m not a stalker, but I can’t imagine why this would be useful!

Tweetstats -This program graphs your Twitter stats for you, including tweets per hour, tweets per month, tweet timeline, reply statistics and more. Interesting to look at occasionally.

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.

Tweetsmarter – Adds special characters (like a star or an umbrella) or a retweet link to your post.

TweetStack [m] – Best described as Tweetdeck for mobile phones. Stacks are similar to columns in TweetDeck, and can even be imported directly from TweetDeck. You can also search, and use multiple account logins.

TweetValue – Tells you the monetary value of your Twitter account. Just for fun!

Tweetvisor – A web-based Twitter interface, that enables people to better manage multiple Twitter accounts, returns real-time updates about favorite topics, news and tweets, and supports groups, threaded conversations, tagging friends and inline video replies. Similar to Peoplebrowsr

Tweetworks – Does a lot, but the 2 most basic are: Twitter groups (similar to Group Tweet) and threaded discussions, which allow you to see tweets strung together in a conversation. I am a member of one group. But, because I use Tweetdeck, I don’t use the threaded conversation feature much.

Twellow – A search program that also searches bios, names and locations. It also has a graphical interface that enables localized searching. VERY useful, if you are trying to find someone, or target particular people.

Twhirl – Desktop program similar to Tweetdeck, but it allows you to manage multiple accounts. I do need multiple account support, but I am waiting for Tweetdeck to come out with this functionality.

Twibes – Application that allows you to join groups on Twitter

Twickie – Twickie is a free service that fetches Twitter replies for you (and gives you an easy way to view AND export them).

Twidget – A widget for OS X that allows you to update your Twitter status.

Twilert – An application that emails you regular updates of tweets containing your brand, product, service or any other keyword. Great program, but (as expected!), I use Tweetdeck for this.

Twimailer – Rather than receiving the plain emails from Twitter notifying you of a new follower (include just their name), Twimailer sends you their statistics and their last few tweets. Very cool! To me, the major limitation is that you still have to click through to their profile to follow them. Topify solves that issue, which is why I use that application instead.

Twinfluence – Another Twitter grading tool that measures the combined influence of twitterers and their followers.

Twintro – “Twitter Introductions” – Helps you discover the most interesting Twitter users. You follow @twintro, and every day, Twintro retweets a different user’s tweets to you. If you like that user, follow them!

TwitBizCard – Set up your business card on their website, and then add #twtbizcard to a @reply to send your contact information to someone. Very easy!

TwitLonger – Twitlonger is a way to let you post to Twitter when 140 characters just isn’t enough. You can write what you need and a link to what you said will automatically be posted to your Twitter account. It’s similar to TwtLong. It’s like TwitPic for text.

TwtLong – Twitlonger is a way to let you post to Twitter when 140 characters just isn’t enough. You can write what you need and a link to what you said will automatically be posted to your Twitter account. It’s similar to TwitLonger.

Twit Truth – I LOVE this app! Shows you great analytics on your twitter account, for top Twitter users, and anyone else you want to look up. It shows you the stats below, and also characterizes your tweeting with a descriptor (i.e. I’m an “Engager”), average tweets per day, average response time and breaks down your tweets by type.

Twitalyzer – Analyzes your Twitter performance based on 5 factors: impact, engagement, generosity, velocity and clout.That’s great for analyzing your performance over time.  In addition, Twitalyzer shows clickthrough rate, gives you recommendations to improve your scores, shows a sentiment analysis of your account, and many more features!  There’s also a Premium application that you can pay for.

Twitcam -Allows you to stream live on Twitter VERY easily. Just logon (no OAuth yet unfortunately) and start broadcasting. It tweets a message immediately on Twitter letting your followers know, so they can come watch you, and use text chat to talk to you or eachother. And, it archives your video for viewing later on (cool!)

Twithear – Lets you add your voice on twitter. Call a phone number or use your computer to record a message.

Twithority – Similar to Twitter Search, but it allows you to see the results by user “authority” (the more followers, the more “authority”).

Twitoria – Twitoria finds your friends that haven’t tweeted in a long time so you can give them the boot! Great application, but I just don’t have the time nor see the need to go through and clean out my followers (especially if they’re not tweeting).

TWItoSHIRT – Get a T-shirt made with your tweets!

TwitPic – Allows you to easily post a photo on Twitter. Just browse to the photo, and it creates a link. It’s built directly into Tweetdeck, so it’s easy to use from there!

Twitscoop – Through an automated algorithm, twitscoop crawls hundreds of tweets every minute and extracts the words which are mentionned more often than usual. The result is displayed in a Tag Cloud, using the following rule: the hotter, the bigger. This is also integrated with Tweetdeck, so is easy to check.

Twittas – As they say, “A new useless app every week.” Includes, when you’ll hit 1 million tweets, what your first tweet was, your first follower was, etc.

Twittelator Pro [m] – A paid Twitter application for the iPhone (cost is $3.99). Great application that has list support, auto-hashtags, multi-accounts, etc.  This is the application I’ve seen that has the most customization available.  It’s only downside is it’s long load time.

TwitterSheep – See a tag cloud from the ‘bios’ of your twitter flock.

Twitter Snipe – Helsp you find people to follow based on certain criteria. Paid application $77.

TwitterSnooze – Allows you to temporarily stop seeing someone’s tweets (i.e. if they are at a conference you just need a break). The downside is that it actually unfollows and then refollows that person. Note: This application has been out of service for a while now, but I keep hoping it will come back!

Twitrans – Translates your tweets into any language.

TwitStamp – TwitStamp allows you to use your current Twitter status anywhere – in the form of an image so you can post it on blogs, forums, websites, etc.

Twitter Buttons – Create a button for your website that says “Follow Me”!

Twitter Grader – Tells you what your Twitter grade is — it’s based on the #of followers, #you follow, etc. You can also find out who the Twitter elite are in a certain area.

Twitter Karma – An application that fetches your friends and followers from Twitter when you click the “Whack!” button, then displays them for you, letting you paginate through them. By default, the list contains all your friends and followers and is sorted by last update, showing those who most recently updated first. You can sort and filter the list. Similar to Friendorfollow, but with better interface.

Twitter Local – Allows you to filter tweets by location. I’m not currently using this, but can definitely see a use for it, particularly if you travel a lot.

Twitter Safe – Backs up your followers, following and replies. I’m not using this… maybe I’m just too trusting that I will not lose everything.

Twitter Search (formerly Summize) – A mandatory for Twitter users. Type in any search term (including AND, OR, quotes) and see what’s happening on Twitter for that search. Also shows you trending topics. Clicking on “Advanced” lets you get more detailed in your search, including tweets from one person to another, date, attitude and place.

Twitter Toolbar – This short cut/quicklinks toolbar brings Twitter closer to you, so you can: visit Twitter, update your Twitter status directly, search Google, Twitter Search, Twellow, Twictionary, optimize your Twitter experience and research the world of Twitter.

Twittercounter – Give you TONS of stats about your profile, including a graph of your follower numbers, growth, rank, etc.

Twitterfall – Allows you to search on a particular term, and have the resuts fall in a real update. Cook when twets are moving quicly!

Twitterfeed – Automatically posts your blog RSS feed and post to Twitter for you. You can also use this with services other than Twitter.

Twitterfriends – With TwitterFriends you can …

• find out the hidden network of Twitter contacts that are really relevant for you.
• visualize the network of your relevant contacts and their contacts
• see who of your Twitter friends are online this very moment
• read some stats about your Twitter account
• take a look at the most conversational Twitterers or those who are posting the most links

Wow, there’s a lot of great information here, but I found it to be too much!

TwitterHawk – Very interesting program, but a bit controversial. This program will automatically send pre-written tweets (that you have written) to people who tweet certain keywords. For example, if you have a coffee shop, the program can send tweets to everyone who mentions coffee. Controversial because it may seem like spam.

Twitterholic – Allows you to see rankings by #followers, #friends, #updates and date joined. You can also see these stats for a particular user over time. Good program, I just don’t have a need for it.

TwitterFox – A Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets on Twitter. This extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar which notifies you when your friends update their tweets. Also it has a small text input field to update your tweets.

Twitterific [also m] – Similar to Twhirl in that it allows you to manage multiple accounts, but it doesn’t have multiple columns of information. (MAC only)

Twittez – Twittez is a simple Twitter application that lets you get your answers from fellow Twitters, all you have to do is tweet with “does anyone know?” with your question and they try to find your answer.

Twitpay – Allows you to send and receive money from someone else on Twitter. Very cool program, I just haven’t needed it yet.

Twitseeker – Finds people on Twitter based on what they’re talking about. Cool! I searched for Marketing, and it came up with a list of 20 people who have been tweeting about Marketing. Very useful, especially for my job search.

Twitter [m] (formerly Tweetie) [m] – iPhone application that handles multiple accounts, search, retweet, DM. Very user friendly and clear.  Recently Tweetie launched a new version called Tweetie2. While there is much more functionality, including lists, it has major problems with caching (you need to reload tweets you’ve already seen again), so I’m not using it anymore. Too bad, it used to be an amazing application.

TwittLink – They monitor almost every post on Twitter and extract all tweeted links. Using a statistical approach they figure out which subjects (based on extracted links) are most discussed on twitter. They use semantic analysis to group links that talk about the same subject. Similar to Twitscoop.

Twollo – This program finds people for you to follow based on your interests. Twollo will find them and automatically follow them for you.

Twtpoll – A very simple, easy to use program that helps you set up a poll. Type in your question and answers, and go!

TwtBizCard – Send a business card to someone by just adding #twtbizcard to any tweet! It’s great to use when meeting people at a Tweetup.

Twtcard – Send a greeting card, a surprise message, or an invitation on Twitter or via email.

Twtvite – Simple event manager twitter application… like Evite for people on Twitter. The application also gives you code to embed the invitation into your website.

UnTweeps – List and unfollow Tweeps you are following who have not updated their status in 7, 30, 60 or 90 days. Useful application to clean out spam and inactive people.

VacationTweets – It’s an out-of-office for Twitter!  You can either set it up to reply to your @replies or DM’s.

ViralHeat – A paid social media monitoring/tracking and analytics application (starts at $9.99/mo for individuals and goes up to $139/mo for large corporations. Provides location based tracking, real-time monitoring and daily alerts. Looks like a great application.

We Follow – A user powered Twitter directory that categorizes people into groups, such as social media, marketing, celebrity, politics, etc.

What the Hashtag? – A wiki that tracks hashtags on Twitter. Great idea, as I so often see hashtags that I don’t know what they are being used for.

Who Should I Follow – Similar to Mr. Tweet, this program recommends people you should follow based on popularity and location. What I like about this program is that you can control those 2 features, if they are more or less important to you. The one problem I see is that it recommends people I’m already following.

Visible Tweets – A great application for events, to display the tweets relevant to that event based on a hashtag or a search. You can choose to display the tweets in letter by letter, tag cloud, or rotation.

YackTrack – I think this is a tracking/monitoring application, but there’s really no good explanation on their site, so I have no idea!

Applications no longer in service – TweetVolume

Even more applications – Here are even more applications that I haven’t detailed above, or looked into: BeTwittered, TweepML, TweetMyBlog, Tweetwhatyoueat, Twtpwr

Mobile applications not for iPhone – I use Twitter on an iPhone, but I thought I’d list a few of the applications I’ve heard of for non-iPhone mobile phones: Blackbird (and more to come… suggestions?)

Security note – I am not claiming any responsibility for the security of these programs. Please do your own due diligence to be sure you’re comfortable, especially when providing your Twitter password.

Anything to add or change? Please leave a comment below!