Best Twitter Tools, Applications, and Resources

First, you should sign up for Twitter. Then you begin building your network by being a fan of other Twitterers.

When you start out on Twitter, you may not have any (or many) friends or fans, but there are a couple great ways to find friends and expand your network.

Along with doing a search within Twitter by referencing your Contacts on Hotmail, GMail, and Yahoo, you can use other means.

Here is a Twitter directory called Just Tweet It to get you started in finding other Twits (people that use Twitter). The directory is broken down by category and includes a search feature.

Also, there is a Twitter search engine built into Twitter.

You can also do your own already customized Twitter search via Google, by clicking here for an Advanced Google Search by only searching site:twitter.com (plus your own search terms).

Once you've started to build your network of friends you can find others Twitterers (another name for a Twitter user), based upon your current fan network. Try out Twubble. You'll have to use it to really understand how it works. *I believe you need to be logged into Twitter before using it.

As you progress along with your Twitter experience you may find the following to be helpful.

Have more than one Twitter account? Try SplitTweet or BrightKit. If that doesn't do the trick for you, try Mattinator, which also provides multi-account access.

Twitter your followers anonymously with SecretTweet.

Spice up your Twitter profile with free Twitter background at Twitter Patters.com

Do you want to see who you are following, but are not following you? Take a look here.

You can schedule and monitor your Tweets via Twittertise: Twittertise allows you to advertise on Twitter and track the success of branded communications with your customers. "Using Twittertise you can schedule your communications on Twitter and using URL tracking technology measure the effectiveness of your traffic driving techniques on the platform".

First, you should sign up for The official Twitter mobile area.

Twittelator Pro - Twittelator Pro is a new application for your iPhone.

Tweetie - Some features of Tweetie:

* Handle multiple twitter accounts.
* View your timeline, replies, direct messages and favorites.
* Browse your friends and followers.
* Post new tweets, retweet
* Reply directly to tweets and send direct messages.
* Follow and unfollow people.
* Mark tweets as favorites.
* Navigate reply chains.
* Inline web browser.
* Post links with automatic link shrinking via bit.ly.
* Upload pictures to twitpic.com.
* Update your twitter location.
* View twitter trends and perform custom searches.
* Save your favorite searches.
* Implements the full twitter API.
* Uses secure connection (https).

20 more helpful Twitter tools info on Simplehelp.net.

You could run into issues regarding the Twitter API and the one that I have experienced is a "rate limit exceeded".


What does "rate limit exceeded" mean?

This is a question I am being asked more and more often so I thought I'd give you a brief overview of what it is, why it exists and what can be done about it.

In order to control the use of the Twitter API (the service which provides the twitter data for 3rd party Twitter applications such as TweetDeck) Twitter sets a limit on how many times it can be used in an hour. This limit applies to your Twitter account rather than the applications which make the calls to the API i.e. you have 100 API calls per hour in total regardless of which Twitter applications you use - it is NOT 100 API calls per application. It is also important to note that this limit only applies to 3rd party Twitter applications, the twitter.com website does not use it's own API (mmm doesn't seem particularly fair) and therefore has no limits.

So what constitutes an API call? Strictly speaking every operation which communicates with Twitter is an API call, what we really need to know is which API calls have an impact on the 100 calls limit. The simplest way to think about this is every call to the Twitter API which requests data will count towards your limit. So when TweetDeck updates the All Tweets, Replies or Direct Messages columns this would count as 1 call each as would viewing a twitterers profile (this actually costs two calls, one for the profile itself and one for the archive of their sent tweets).

Sending data to Twitter (posting), such as posting an update or a direct message, favoriting a tweet, unfollowing or following a user, does not count towards the limit and you can continue to do so even when your rate limit has been exceeded. Also, updates to the search, groups, twitscoop and 12seconds columns do not count towards the rate limit since the data does not (directly) come via the Twitter API.

If you use up your 100 API calls in the hour then you will see the "rate limit exceeded" message in TweetDeck and Twitter will not provide any updates until the hour is up. The All Tweets, Replies & DM columns in TweetDeck will appear to be frozen. At the end of the hour the rate limit will be reset and you will start getting updates again. You can view your rate limit status here from the Twitter API, you may need to view source - this information is included on screen in the next version of TweetDeck (v0.20).

So what can you do if you get the "rate limit exceeded" message? Unfortunately not very much. This is a Twitter enforced limitation rather than a TweetDeck one but I would suggest the following:

* only ever run one twitter application at a time, even if you're not using the others make sure they are closed
* try not to over use the refresh button - this will cost you 3 calls per click (All Tweets, Replies & DMs)
* try lowering the %'s used in the settings window, twitter API tab - you'll get less frequent updates but you'll use less API
* if you do get the rate limit exceeded message then go here and find out your reset time, TweetDeck will not get any updates until this time (so it might be a good opportunity to get a coffee) - you CAN continue to post messages, you just won't see any responses
* also if you do get the rate limit exceeded, close down your twitter applications and then reopen then at the reset time (see above)

I hope this helps explain the API limit a bit more, it can get rather complicated. It's not an ideal scenario but if this control keeps Twitter running more stably then it's obviously worthwhile.

First, you should sign up for Posterous - "Post everything" via your Posterous account.

Share your pictures via Twitpic. An easy way to share images with your Twitter followers.

Tweetburner - Another great way to Tweet your links and spread the love.

Automatically respond to friend and fan requests with Socialtoo.com

Create your own poll on Twitter by using StrawPoll.

Funny Stuff on Twitter - ComicTwit

Find out the most favorited Tweets - Twitfave

A visualized position of Tweets on Twittervision.

By following TwitStat you can have your "stats" displayed on TwitStat.