I couldn’t start 2009 without writing about Twitter.
If you’ve been online more than 10 minutes, you’ve heard that Twitter is THE social networking tool of the century. Hype? Nope.
Twitter is a bonafide tool for relationship building and marketing, built within the confines of a seemingly impossible 140 characters. If you can’t say it short, you can’t say it.
In a Twitter-nutshell, Twitter allows you to “follow” the people you feel are worth reading, and people can follow you if they think your Tweets are worth following.
The smartest Twitter gurus Tweet a brilliantly balanced blend of humor, links to something of interest on their own site, a link to their newest blog post, or a link to something interesting they’ve read online.
Is Twitter a platform for blatantly pushing your services on your followers? Not unless you want to be thrown out of the virtual party 
My Top 3 Twitter Services
1. Although you can Tweet directly from your Twitter account, my favorite Tweeting platform is Tweetdeck. This Adobe Air desktop platform. Tweetdeck allows you to take all of your Twitter feeds and break them down into categories – making it a lot easier to read your favorite Tweeters. It also creates a category for displaying direct messages and replies.
2. I’m also in love with TwitterButtons. Sure, you can put Twitter’s default blue bird as a link on your own site, but why not jazz it up a little? You can see my Twitter button of choice up there in the right column. I know. . . there are so many great Twitter apps – why bump one of them in favor or TwitterButtons? Because I’m a sucker for a fun photo.
3. And speaking of photos and photo sharing, you have to use TwitPic. This free service lets you share photos on Twitter with your friends–with no signup required. You can also post pictures to TwitPic from your phone, TwitPic API, or through the site itself. Twitpic works great with Tweetdeck.
I’ll do follow-up posts on other Twitter apps – but wanted to get my Top 3 out on this beautiful first day of the New Year.
Finally did give Twitter a try this year, and I enjoyed using it.
That said, I find that I prefer the interface of Plurk for now.
Hi, I have noticed the tweet this option after the article (below share this). Is that a wordpress plugin? May I know how to install it? Thanks!
I just recently signed up for twitter myself and have really been impressed with the simplicity of it. I like the idea of limiting your post to 140 characters. It works really good for people who are busy yet still want to keep up on what other people are doing.
I’ve found tweetdeck to be a way to easily keep track of your tweets without having to be on your twitter page all day. It does a great job of sorting and keeping track of all you tweets.
Have signed up for a twitter account after hearing about it for the past week on Radio 1 (UK radio channel). I have to say so far I just don’t get it! I have looked at quite a number of people with similar interests but the information they seem to be posting is either useless or of no interest at all. maybe I am just looking at the whole thing in the wrong light, or expecting something its not designed for.
I feel like I am the last person to get involved with using Twitter, God knows it took me long enough to get on Facebook. But I hear great things about how well it could work for people.
Twitter is the latest very fast growing social network to the internet. For most users, this is a new big opportunity to make a fortune. I love Twitter and I don’t want Google buy this, but I don’t think this will happened…