Twitter

You’ve surely noticed the rising popularity of Twitter in recent months. It’s one of those strange phenomenons that is rather difficult to explain to someone until they have actually used it themselves. For the uninitiated, Twitter can perhaps best be described as a micro-blogging tool and instant messenger service rolled into one. Casually communicate with others and answer the simple question: “What are you doing?”

Twitter, in and of itself, is already a pretty useful tool for social networking. Just like WordPress, though, Twitter has a huge following of developers who are constantly creating new tools that expand this functionality and make your user experience that much better. Some tools are designed specifically for Twitter, whereas others can also serve other purposes.

If you’re going to use Twitter, you’ll want to know about the five tools listed below. You can thank me lank.

1. Twhirl (Desktop Client)

Twitter is akin to twitch gaming. It’s reactionary and you need to stay on top of things. Using the Twitter website will inevitably mean that you need to constantly hit “refresh” to get the latest tweets from your online friends. A suitable desktop client like Twhirl makes this process much easier for you. Twhirl works in much the same way as an instant messaging program. It can sit hidden in your taskbar and it will automatically notify you of new tweets. No more hitting refresh. Getting inspiration for speedlinking posts is easier too.

Alternatives: TwitterFox, Twitterific, Twitteroo, Ping.fm

2. WordTwit (RSS Feed Tweeter)

Twitter can serve as a massive source of traffic if used correctly. Many bloggers use Twitter as marketing tool, but it can be tedious to manually send out a tweet every time you have a new post. WordTwit is a simple WordPress plug-in that automatically tweets to the world when you have a new article up on your blog. This way, you can be sure that the Twitter-sphere is aware of your latest work.

Alternatives: Twitter Tools, TwitterFeed, Twitter Updater

3. Is.gd (URL Shortener)

As you know, each “tweet” can only consist of 140 characters. That doesn’t leave you with very much room to provide useful links (like ones back to your own blog posts). Is.gd is a service that is able to shorten any URL into far fewer characters. Even the longest URL can be translated into something that is only 17 characters. Better still, is.gd is built into the Twhirl client described above.

Alternatives: TinyURL.com, Snurl.com, Twurl.nl

4. TwitPic (Image Tool)

Twitter is a text-based service, but so what do you do when you want to share a picture? Sure, you could host the photo on your own web space, but why do that when there is something as simple as TwitPic? Another tool that is built into Twhirl, TwitPic allows you to upload any picture from your computer and share it with the world. It’s not quite as permanent and long-lasting as a Flickr photostream, but it’s much more streamlined too.

Alternatives: Flickr.com, BrightKite.com, ImageShack.us

5. Twitter Uptime

The most frustrating thing about Twitter is that it isn’t keeping up with its own level of growth. Far too often, Twitter is down for some inexplicable reason and we are left wondering whether Twitter is still worth using. If Twitter wants us to use the service, it needs to make sure that it works all the time.

Alternatives: None (maybe Twitabit.com or TweetLater.com)