What is Twitter?

Twitter keeps you in touched with your friends no matter where you are with short straight to the point messages. All you need to do if update them and your friends will know your current status. Mashhable relate Twitter as a revolution of blogging method with a smart example of “their cat”. Here are more readings from the official Twitter to give you a clearer picture. [ Twitter Help Page, Twitter FAQ, Twitter Blog ]. Most of us have already known what Twitter is and this makes my description above looks kinda irrelevant. However the main thing here is to share with you facilities of Twitter developed by 3rd parties.

Why Twitter?

As much as some of us come to hate Twitter because of the constant annoying updates messages, Twitter from my point of view is still a good gateway to get connected and get really updated with close friends and working mates. It seriously depends on “who you’ve added” thou. Here are some nice articles showing how Twitter can be useful.

5 Ways to Use Twitter for Good

Chris Brogan list out 5 ways how Twitter can be useful, his ways includes Quick Human Answers, Conference / News Briefings, Friendsourcing, Micro-Attention-Sharing and Direct People to Good Causes. Read full story.

Three Innovative Ways to Use Twitter

Muhammed Saleem on another point of view, shows 3 ways how you can connect better with your readers and customers with Twitter. That includes using Twitter for commerce, updates and brainstorming. Read full story.

Now that if you are still with me and think Twitter can be one of the next communication tool, here’s a list of Twitter Applications desktops, mobile phones, browsers, Wordpress plugins and websites.

Twitter Desktop Applications

1. Twitterrific, for Mac [Download]

   

   Twitterrific is a fun little application that lets you both read and publish posts or “tweets” to the Twitter community website. The application’s user interface is clean, concise and designed to take up a minimum of real estate on your Mac’s desktop.

2. Twadget, for Windows Vista [Download]

   Windows Vista user can use this sidebar widget to track Twitter friends statuses or update your status.

3. triQQr, for Windows [Download]

   

   A light (745kb) desktop Twitter application for windows, currently still under beta.

4. twitteroo, for Windows [Download]

   

   Yet another Twitter desktop application for Windows with much more functions like URL shortening, browsing Twitter membes pages, font cuztomizing, direct messaging, etc.

More Twitter desktop applications

• Mac – Twidget, Twitgit, Celly, Twitterpost, Chitter, Twitterlex, TikiTwit
• Windows – TwApp!, Mugshot, Twessenger (for Live Messenger 8.1)
• Linux – Mugshot, gTwitter,

Twitter Mobile Applications

1. Twapper

   

   Simply go to http://m.30boxes.com/twapper with your cell phone and enter the particular person’s name and you will be able to see his/her twitters. Read more about Twapper.

More Twitter mobile applications

Jargon, WHERE

Twitter Browser application

• Twitter Seach for Firefox, enable you to update to Twiters from Firefox Searchbar
• Tweetbar, Show feeds of twitters in Firefox sidebar. Also for Flock
• Twitterbar, Update to Twitters from Firefox or Flock’s address bar.

Twitter Wordpress Plugins

1. Twitthis, [Download]

   TwitThis is an easy way for people to send Twitter messages about your blog post or website. When visitors to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the webpage and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL. Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of the web page to all of their friends on Twitter.

   See Twitthis official website for plugin installation instructions

2. Twitter Tools, [Download]

   A Twitter Wordpress plugin from Alexking, functinalities as follows

   • Archive your Twitter tweets (downloaded every 30 minutes)
   • Create a blog post from each of your tweets
   • Create a daily archive of Twitter tweets
   • Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post
   • Post a tweet from your sidebar
   • Post a tweet from the WP Admin screens
   • Pass your tweets along to another service (via API hook)

3. Twitter Updater, [Download]

   Another Twitter Wordpress plugin from Victor Chan.

Twitter Website Plugins

The reason I seperate this is because the two above (Twitthis, Twitter Tools) is only for Wordpress Weblog Platform.

1. Twitter Badge

   

   This is a javascript badge created by official Twitter. This flash badge enables your website visitors to see your current tweets. Login to your Twitter account and click on Badges to customized it; then copy-paste the generated Javascript in your website. That’s it!

2. Twitter for Netvibes

   If you are using Netvibes for feed reading, here’s a module for Twitter in Netvibes.

Twitter for RSS

Broadcasting RSS Feeds with Twitterbot from Engtech.