A few of my favorite Twitter things

If Twitter has taken over your life, you're not alone.  If it hasn't, shame on you, go join.  Below I've gathered some of my favorite Twitter "tools".  Tons more exist, so if I missed your favorite, let me know!

Qwitter is a tool that helps you figure out when someone unfollows you (gasp!) on Twitter, and the last tweet you tweeted before that mean person unfollowed you.  All you have to do is sign up with your twitter username and email, and they'll email you when someone decides to pull your plug on twitter.  I hope I won't be getting many of those emails after I post this...   http://useqwitter.com/

This site is a great tool for those people who are OCD about making sure they only follow active Twitterers.  I had a few friends that joined, and then decided Twitter was not for them (Pat), or an a great idea of a Twitter account that just never took off (StateCollegePD).  MyCleenr goes through your Twitter friends and sorts they by the time they tweeted last.  It was interesting to see how infrequently some people tweet.  You can even delete Twitter friends right from their site (harsh, I know, but someone has to do it).  http://www.mycleenr.com/mycleenr

Some of my good friends have found me on Twitter just because I was friends with their friend (Caitlin).  Instead of stalking who your friends are @-ing, use Twubble.   This site searches your friends friends and picks out people that you might like to follow.   http://crazybob.org/twubble/

My favorite, and nerdiest Twitter related site has to be TweetStats.  This awesome site gives you most any statistic you can think of related to your Twitter account. From how many tweets per day (tpd) to Tweet Density to Daily Tweets, Hourly Tweets, to Interface used to a Tweet Cloud.  TweetStats provides hours (maybe I'm just weird) of entertainment analyzing your tweets.  I found out my top 5 Twittered words were going, good, fun, today and think.  I tweet most on Wednesdays, and somehow, have tweeted every single hour of the day, but 3pm seems to be the high point with 62.  http://tweetstats.com/

I hope you have as much fun with these as I did, because if you don't that just means I'm really nerdy.

Regulating Tweets

Blogger note: Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

1. Don't have conversations on twitter. If you find yourself @'ing the person multiple times to find out where you're meeting for tea, call them, or at the very least direct message.
2. Please watch your alcoholic intake before tweeting. Drunken tweets are confusing for others.
   
3. Keep it within a few hours. @'ing someone 8-hours after they tweeted causes a lot of confusion for other people who have to search back through tweets to find the specific tweet that you are just now referring to.
4. Tweets usually arrive in groups of two or more. This is an unnamed phenomenon.
5. Don't follow hundreds or thousands of random people. Do you really need to know what Sally in Alaska is doing all day if you don't know Sally?
6. Twitter allows 140 characters. Just 140 characters. They provide a nice character counter too. This is 140 characters, do not exceed 140.
7. Really though, all of those rules are unimportant and the biggest rule of all is TWITTER. Not updating is the worst thing you could ever do. Don't be a Twitter Fail Whale.