I’ve long been a fan of Twitter, and despite the many naysayers it has become an integral part of many peoples web existence. Since Twitter shares their API with developers, it opens up a whole world of mashups and sites that take advantage of the huge network that Twitter is accumulating. This subject has been covered by people before, but I thought it would be fun to share a few of my personal favorites.

tweetscan

The best search tool for Twitter that I’ve found. One of my biggest annoyances about Twitter is that the Replies tab only shows responses with your username as the first word in the tweet (e.g., “@veronica talks about her cats too much”) and not responses with the username any where else (e.g., “sick of hearing about @veronica’s cats”). Tweetscan solves this by finding any instance of the word. It’s also really helpful for tracking hashtags, like #sxsw.

quotably

Takes the Tweetscan idea one step further by tracking entire conversation threads. You can see the divergent paths as the topic morphs and changes, and you can also see where comments of yours fit in with conversations already in progress. A new site on the scene, but one of the most useful.

commuterfeed

This would be insanely helpful to me if I had a car. Alas, I do not, but I think this site kills two birds with one stone: you get instant traffic info, as well as the ability to vent your gridlocked frustrations.

politweets

Too lazy to read the news? You can read the outrage and support for the candidates here. Clicking on the individual candidates names will show you other ways to follow them online (i.e., Flickr, Facebook, MySpace) as well as their most recent tweets.

colorwars

I’m not entirely sure how much of the Twitter API Ze Frank is using, but it’s gotta be worked in there somehow! When I first heard of Colorwars, I was not impressed. However, once I set aside my childhood fears of being chosen last for everything, I realized that it was a fun and interactive way to use Twitter. Not only that, Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV promised us presents if we joined veryGreenTeam.

Of course, there are many others that are fun but don’t really have much purpose other than to be entertaining: TwitterVision, TwitterPoster and Twitterholic come to mind. Tweetmeme is another one that has potential, but it almost always features non-English tweets, which makes it difficult for my monolingual brain.

Do you have any personal favorites that I missed? For a huge list of other sites and for more API info, head over to the Twitter Fan Wiki.

No related posts.