Twitter provides a simple and intuitive interface which is very easy to use. It also has powerful features which take some time to discover and hooks that readily allow the integration of other applications and services. This means that there is a great deal under the surface and on the web that can make Twitter much more useful and fun.
This post goes beyond the basics and takes a look at some of the web sites that can help take advantage of all that is on offer in the Twitter ecosystem.
Using a search engine to find Tweets
To get to those hard to find Tweets it can be useful to use an alternative to Twitter when searching. The major search engines provide custom Twitter search pages:
Finding popular tweets and accounts
Keeping current with what is going on is all about following the right people. There are a number of web sites which help in finding accounts for what is trending and for your interests.
For current trending topics and popular tweets:
Monitter - simple, multi-column display for following trends and filtering on location
Retweetist - most popular retweets
Tweet Grid - handy dashboard for following multiple real-time searches
Tweet scan - simple searching for current topics
Tweemes - scrolling list of Tweets for currently popular hash tags
Twitterfall - a scrolling waterfall style listing of the latest tweets
TopFollowFriday - a popular website showing trends for the #followfriday hash tag
(used by entering the #FollowFriday tag and @names for people you want to endorse - see example, explanation)
Listorious - provides an easy way to search for popular lists and Twitter accounts. Helpful when searching for trends and feeds on particular topics.
