How can we get the most out of the revolutionary “microblogging” platform Twitter?
Influential Forrester analyst and veteran blogger, Jeremiah Owyang, recently posted on the topic of “essential Twitter tools.” I can certainly relate, as an increasingly heavy (a.k.a, addicted) Twitter user. Twitter is, in my opinion, a first-class citizen of the Social Web. Very open. Very social.
I have tried all the tools Jeremiah mentions, and for me, the key is search. I mourn the loss to Terraminds, but have happily replaced it with Tweetscan. (Although, when it was down for hours today, I had serious withdrawal.) Why? Because it really matters to me what people are tweeting about my company (Plaxo). When someone has a problem, complaint, question, or suggestion for Plaxo and voices it via Twitter, I want to know. Many a new conversation or relationship has been struck as a result of this facility.
My only addition to Jeremiah’s list is Plaxo Pulse (the first social aggregator). There, by virtue of the foundation of my unified address book, I am “following” a bunch of Twitterers that I am not following directly in Twitter (or indirectly via FriendFeed). And, because Pulse allows for status sync with Twitter, many of those messages show up simply as status updates.
The Real McCrea 
Thanks John. I wonder why Terraminds went the way of the dodo. They could have deployed some type of advertising model to self-sustain. The use case is similiar to Google.
I share the question. It seems like there’s a real business opportunity providing good search services around Twitter and some of the other social media sites. It’s certainly something in our game plan at Plaxo (and presumably any other service that is aggregating content from multiple services).
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