10 Useful Twitter Tools for Your Twitter Toolkit

1. Nearby Tweets - nearbytweets.com
This is a nice twitter tool that lets you see tweets that are in your area. You can choose any location though - but the biggest feature is you can search for certain keywords in that area. So you can find people who are tweeting about what your business does.

2. Qwitter - useqwitter.com
Qwitter is a service that lets you see who unfollowed you on Twitter. It will send you an email at the end of each week telling you who unfollowed you.

3. TweetDeck - tweetdeck.com
TweetDeck is an application you install in Windows that will give you a wide overview of all the things you can do in Twitter. It's divided into columns that feature live feeds of what the people you are following are doing, direct messages, active tweets and columns for searching keywords. You can have a column setup to monitor certain twitter keywords and hashtags that are happening in all of Twitter and reply directly to them.

4. WeFollow - wefollow.com
This is a good site to see the top people to follow in your industry. You can search by keywords, industry or hashtags. This is a great place to find relevant people in your area who are in your industry, you can also sort by location so you can find people and businesses close to you.

5. LocalTweeps - localtweeps.com
While this one sort of overlaps a few of the others listed, it is useful because you can search for users that are near or in your city. So it may be helpful if you're a business who want to follow local people to see what they say and get them to follow you.

6. ExecTweets - twitter.com/exectweets
While not quite a tool, this is a Twitter account that retweets top executives in multiple industries. This can be good to get business insights from various top players in your field or just see what the top competition is up to.

7. PollDaddy - polldaddy.com
Another one that's not quite a tool for Twitter, PollDaddy let's you send out customizable polls that you can use to glean info from your followers. It's build by the same people who created WordPress, so it's a great tool.

8. Google URL Shortener - goo.gl
There are a bunch of URL shorteners out there, but I've been using Google's since it's easy and I already have a Google account. You can track how many clicks you get too.

9. Twitter Advanced Search - twitter.com/search-advanced
Twitter has an advanced search feature where you can search by many different criteria. It's more "advanced" than the basic search and can come in handy when you need more control over what you're looking for.

10. WordPress Twitter Tools - wordpress.org/plugins/twitter-tools/
Very handy if you have a WordPress blog and want instant tweets when you post a new one and much deeper integration with Twitter.

These twitter tools are just the tip of the iceberg. They are just the ones that I find useful. If you have any must have Twitter Tools that you use please share & let me know in the comments!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7804886

Finding Your Customers on Twitter

Though face-to-face networking remains crucial to the success of your business, taking advantage on online tools can be a great supplement to all your other efforts to find prospects. Personally, I’m not always comfortable at networking events. Trolling for customers online is very comfortable and often leads to the identification of a prospect followed by a live meeting for coffee. Using Twitter to identify prospects, see how they behave online, and then engage with them, can be an incredibly efficient use of your networking time.

Twitter allows you to use keywords and hashtags to find prospects who may even be geographically targeted. Try Twitter’s Advanced Search tool to locate prospects. Using the Advanced Search tool along with the Twitter Operators enables you to find the people or businesses you are looking for in the location you are looking for.

Tweetdeck, Hoosuite and other applications that assist you in managing your Twitter feed, can also be used for prospecting purposes. Use keywords and phrases to add columns in both Tweetdeck and Hootsuite targeting people and/or business you want to connect with. When the columns populate, scroll through, locate those that interest you, and check them out. It’s easy to follow potential prospects and engage with them on Twitter. Who knows, maybe they’ll make the first move and want to connect with you.

Several other tools exist to assist in your prospecting. Twellow is an example of a tool that lets you target prospects by categories like you would use to look someone up in the Yellow Pages. Twellow also lets you add yourself to the directory for free.

Every tool has its pros and cons, and there are many to choose from. Find the one that works best for you and start engaging with your prospects. Let us know how it goes and what tools you are finding most useful.

Twitter changes provokes anger from developers

Developers and users of Twitter have reacted angrily to changes made by the social network to restrict creation of third-party applications.

Any new app that wants to serve more than 100,000 users must now seek the company's explicit permission.

Apps which already have more than 100,000 users are allowed to double their user base before having to get Twitter's go-ahead to grow any further.

Critics said it would stifle the development of innovative products.

Revoked key

The changes came as part of Twitter's overhaul of its Application Programming Interface (API).

An API allows different parts of a program to communicate together, as well as letting one application share content with another.

In Twitter's case, its API has allowed for the development of extremely popular third-party services like Hootsuite, Twitpic and Tweetdeck - which was acquired by Twitter in May last year.

Twitter says the new rules, announced by its director of consumer product Michael Sippey, aim to "deliver a consistent Twitter experience".

Mr Sippey wrote: "If you are building a Twitter client application that is accessing the home timeline, account settings or direct messages API endpoints (typically used by traditional client applications) or are using our User Streams product, you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100,000 individual user tokens."

In this context, "tokens" are individual users.

The guidelines also covered how tweets are displayed within apps.

"If your application displays Tweets to users, and it doesn't adhere to our Display Requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your application key," Mr Sippey explained.

'Wiggleroom'

The changes are not expected to have an immediate impact on users.

However, the announcement was heavily criticised by developers.

Marco Arment, creator of popular reading service Instapaper, advised developers who were building on Twitter to "start working on another product".

"Twitter has left themselves a lot of wiggle room with the rules," he wrote in a blog post.

"Effectively, Twitter can decide your app is breaking a (potentially vague) rule at any time, or they can add a new rule that your app inadvertently breaks, and revoke your API access at any time.

"Of course, they've always had this power. But now we know that they'll use it in ways that we really don't agree with.

"I sure as hell wouldn't build a business on Twitter, and I don't think I'll even build any nontrivial features on it anymore."

Twitter is not the only service to put such restrictions in place. Last year, Google announced that it would begin charging companies that made heavy use of its Maps product.