20 Twitter Apps You Need to Know About

by Clint Boulton

TweetMeme is a service that aggregates all the popular links on Twitter to determine which links are popular. TweetMeme also makes the retweet button, which is for content publishers who want to invite their audience to tweet their content on Twitter. The button shows a live count of the number of times your Web page or blog post has been tweeted. Why did we start with this one? eWEEK uses it! Yes, eWEEK uses TweetMeme to tweet and retweet its stories on Twitter with one click of the mouse button. If you are a content publisher, give TweetMeme a try.

Hailing from nobosh labs, TweetMeNews tweets users’ personalized news based on their interests. Nobosh Labs’ reason for creating TweetMeNews captures the Twitter zeitgeist in a nutshell: “Nobosh has been developing a news personalization engine for over a year. As time went on Twitter exploded! Since that explosion the world has seen a convergence of information on Twitter, reducing the need to visit other sites.”

A super popular application, TweetDeck is a real-time Web browser that connects users to their contacts across Twitter, Facebook and other social sites. TweetDeck also boasts a version of its social application for the iPhone that geeks are giddy over.

TweetVite is pretty much what you’d think it would be from the name: Use it to create invitations for events you’re hosting or to find local Tweetups.

Again, as you’d guess from the name, TwitVid lets users upload and tweet videos on Twitter.

Another app for sharing video on Twitter, Vidly recently changed its name from Twitvid.io.

Another of many, many tweet stream aggregators, Twitoaster threads and archives Twitter conversations, adding context and statistics, such as how many replies a Twitter user has received by the hour and on a weekly basis.

Tweet From Above and Tweet From Below let users send heavenly and hellish tweets anonymously.

You get one guess as to what TwitPic lets you do. You would not be wrong if you said it lets you share photos in tweets.

Twitbin is a Firefox extension that allows you to keep up with all of your Twitter conversations right from your browser sidebar.

Twitterholic scans the Twitter public timeline for new twits to tweet and calculates individual statistics for each Twitter user.

Owned by Seesmic, Twhirl is a desktop client based on the Adobe AIR platform that lets users … well, this slide tells it all.

Another Twitter tool whose name spoils any nomenclature mystery, Twtpoll is a feedback tool that lets users create and distribute polls/surveys on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed or any other social media site.

Retweetist tracks retweets, or messages tweeted on Twitter that repeat information previously tweeted by another user.

Tweepler lets users separate the wheat from the chaff, helping users decide if they want to follow new followers or not.

TweetScan sends users e-mail when their keywords are mentioned on Twitter.

For those who can’t get enough of following the data flow on the links they share on Twitter, here’s Tweetburner.

This is so cool: See who is posting what from where in real time with Twittervision, as a sort of mashup of Twitter and Google Maps.

Twibs helps users find businesses on Twitter. Great promotional tool.

Finding Twitter apps can be a royal pain, particularly because so many are built by some programming shops, or even just lone wolf programmers. Twitdom is a Twitter apps database that provides a “consolidated view of all the applications developed for the Twitter ecosystem.”