One of the cool things about having an open API like Twitter’s (and somewhat facebooks) is that you get a ton of cool and useful apps (websites) that can help you do everything from manage followers to search better to Assassinate Unhinged Industrialists. One of the bad things about having an open API like Twitter’s is that you get a ton of cool and useful apps (websites) that can help you do everything from manage followers to search better to Assassinate Unhinged Industrialists. It seems everywhere you turn these days everyone and everything is about twitter. Which in itself is ok, though twitter is quickly becoming the Z Cavaricci’s of 2009. Pretty soon, the cool kids in class will be on to the next internet fad while you’re still begging your mom to let you on twitter.

To help usher that along, here are FIVE twitter tools which may or may not make your “Tweepularity” rise.

1. Twistory – Twistory is a cool little app that actually ties your tweets (or the user you want to stalk) in to your ical application so you can see what was tweeted when. The neat thing about this app is that it works with ANYTHING that can use and iCal file, so google calendar, outlook, mac, thunderbird. It just works. I was interested in trying it out so I fired it up in outlook and I had a NEW calendar with just my tweets. Its actually pretty cool. Though something affected it as of 3pm yesterday and I haven’t updated the calendar yet (I keep getting errors…
2. TweetPsych – Tweetpsych admittedly does not do too much. But its a fun and interesting one to play with just to see whats in your psyche. From the site: “TweetPsych uses two linguistic analysis algorithms (RID and LIWC) to build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their tweets. The service analyzes your last 1000 tweets and works best on users who have posted more than 1000 updates. It also works best on accounts that are operated by a single user and use Twitter in a conversational manner, rather than simply a content distribution platform.” Put in your userid and see how you psych out.
3. Tweefind – Tweefind is simply a search site for twitter. Its a little pink (ok, a lot pink) but its a handy tool for searching. Some of my favorite searches so far have been for words like “Twiends”, “OMG you guys”, and “Iran”. THere’s some crazy stuff posted out there!
4. TwitterAnalyzer – TwitterANALyzer is cool simply because it has the word ANALyzer in it but beyond that its a pretty well designed tool that is a good way to see how YOUR twits are trending. It provides all kinds of goodness that those in the marketing world would kill for to know who wants the newest shade of HOT PINK lipstick. Its also got some good built in metrics for figuring out your reach. TwitterAnalyzer is the TWITTER MARKETER’s DREAM!
5. Tweepular – Tweepular is one of those tools I actually keep going back to. I’ve written about it before and I was fairly impressed. It turns out that the folks behind tweepular have more up their sleeves and are working to make it better (if possible). Some potential improvements include tweeting from the interface, a blackberry and iphone app, and more ways to improve your following. One of the coolest features of tweepular is the ability to mass follow and unfollow people as well as the ability to find out who is the most tweepular (think popular) and follow them as well. Its a handy tool thats good for building a following.

Mind you, those are just some of the tools online that I’ve come across to help with twitter… I may take a look at clients or games next who knows… got any suggestions?

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So I came across a new way to get in touch with people I haven’t (or didn’t want to) talk to in years. No, not myspace, facebook or any number of other social networking sites but a new breed. One that if they can work the kinks out (like the fact that it kept refreshing in firefox) might become the best way to reach out to friends you thought had been abducted by aliens.

PeekYou’s People Search is the latest (and greatest??) web 2.0 way to find people you haven’t heard from. They claim to have over 125 million people listed on their network, and when I searched for a friend from college, I came up with three possible answers, all of which could be the guy, because they’re listed in places I know he’s lived. So Which one is it? And if I message him, will he answer? Who knows. One nice feature is the ability to “track” a person and get updated whenever their information changes. Kind of a digital stalking really.

For S&G (Shoots and Giggles) I decided to plug my name in to the peeker and low and behold, there are at least 10 other Mark Angeli’s with a web presence, however, only one has the avatar I do and all the tags I have entered. It looks like Peek You scours the social network for any information it can glean on you. The things listed for me are all the items I have on my facebook and linkedin profiles, so really, all this does is provide one central place to get the information.

With the numerous sites out there for people to log on to, there does seem to be a need for a “phone book” of sorts and peek you appears to be working on doing that. The site is pretty ajaxy (my new word of the week) and very smoothly laid out (read: web 2.0ish) and like I said outside of the refresh problem making the site almost useless in Firefox (the site is ok in Opera and IE 7) its a pretty cool tool and one I have already bookmarked for future use….

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