Twitter tools: Third-party apps take social media to the next level

Part of what sets Twitter apart from other social media is its interaction with third-party providers.

On my iPhone, for example, I use Twitterrific as my Twitter client to view and manage my stream. At my computer, I use HootSuite to take care of multiple accounts and schedule tweets. And just for fun, I’ll scan Favstar.fm to find the funniest people on Twitter.

Unfortunately, hundreds of such applications litter the Web, and it’s difficult to wade through the masses. And in some cases, as soon as you settle into one, the developer backs off from his or her labor of love (as in the case of link shortener tr.im or Favstar precursor Favrd).

Here are a handful that help in a variety of contexts:

• What are people talking about? Tweetmeme is the site that provides those cool badges that allow people to share blog posts, articles, etc. with one click. It also tracks what people are clicking on, providing a pulse beyond Twitter’s built-in trending topics. Another useful tool is What The Trend, which helps you identify those cryptic items among the trending topics.
• How can I find interesting people? Apart from the “Find People” tab in Twitter, Blastfollow helps you find people with similar interests via hashtags. Once located, you can follow a large group quickly. (HT to @GiantTree_Jeff for this tool).
• How am I doing? Twittercounter is a useful metrics tool to gauge your follower count. Klout goes a step further, trying to understand your retweets and other interactions to score your “influence.” I put it in quotes because these types of measurements are subjective and seem to be strictly quantitative in nature. If you tweet a lot and have a lot of followers, you’ll have a lot of influence. But those shouldn’t be the only measures of influence on Twitter.
• How can I provide more? Twitterfeed allows you to feed RSS streams into your Twitter stream to provide added value for your followers. You can time tweets and add prefixes and suffixes.
• How do I manage multiple accounts? I mentioned HootSuite earlier, but it is so vital to my Twitter management that I’m including it with its own bullet. It includes a built-in link shortener, as well as a Tweet scheduler.

I know I’ve only grazed the surface. What’s your favorite Twitter tool? Share it here.

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5. There’s an apps for that!