There are any number of bots (i.e. robots) on Twitter. These are accounts that are programmed to tweet when they find a certain term. Send a tweet out about iPad and you will immediately see a bunch of spam tweets responding to yours.

I re-tweeted a post about the top WordPress plugins on 3/30, and a friend RT’d it. An account called @DesignEcho re-tweeted  that one and added the hashtag #Design. @DesignEcho is using Twitterfeed (a sure sign of a scheduled tweet). The first instance of the RT was at 6:45pm.

Unfortunately for it, the bot then continued RT’ing its own tweet at 7:16pm,  9:51pm, 11:21pm, and 11:52pm. It looked like this by the end:
evolutionfilesMar 30, 5:36pm via TweetDeck

RT @anitasearchguru @bkmacdaddy: Top 100 #WordPress Plugins – The Best Of The Rest goo.gl/Dvnxt

Design_EchoMar 30, 6:45pm via twitterfeed

RT @evolutionfiles RT @anitasearchguru @bkmacdaddy: Top 100 #WordPressPlugins – The Best Of The Rest ht…

Design_EchoMar 30, 7:16pm via twitterfeed

RT @Design_Echo RT @evolutionfiles RT @anitasearchguru @bkmacdaddy: Top 100 #WordPress Plugins – The Bes.

Design_EchoMar 30, 9:51pm via twitterfeed

Design_EchoMar 30, 10:21pm via twitterfeed

Design_EchoMar 30, 10:52pm via twitterfeed

RT @Design_Echo RT @Design_Echo RT @Design_Echo RT @Design_EchoRT @evolutionfiles RT @anitasearchguru @…

Image via CrunchBase

A lot of people use third party applications to tweet with, rather than going directly to Twitter. The ones I use include HootSuite, TweetDeck, and MarketMeSuite.  If you look carefully at these apps, you can see what other peeps are tweeting with.

On TweetDeck, look at the lower line where it gives the name of the person and the date. It also says “via [app name]“.  HootSuite has it directly under the name of the person (this is also true for the mobile app), and MarketMeSuite places the app name at the top. All of these names are links that will take you to the application website.

When it says “Web” for the name, it is referring to the main Twitter website.  This is also true if there isn’t an app mentioned.

Some of the different apps I have seen include: Visibli, TwitterFeed, FourSquare, LinkedIn, Tweet Button, Timely, CoTweet, Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, and SocialOomph. I will be reviewing these in later posts.

TwitBacks has a number of categories for backgrounds and lets you put in your contact details as well. They let you put links on your background to your social networks, and will help you promote your Twitter profile. They also offer a customized background for $99.

FreeTwitterDesigner also has free backgrounds. I really like their easy to use interface. These are straight graphics without any bells or whistles.

You can just use a graphic image to use as background as well.

As Twitter usage has grown, this has become less and less important. It is not the number of followers, but rather how much the person engages those followers.

Let me give you an example. A certain person on Twitter has 37,000 followers from using one of the many auto following programs. This software automatically follows people for him, waits until they follow back, and then unfollows them.  This results in a huge following, BUT none of these people really know who the main person is.

The person in question does not engage any of these followers. He tends to schedule his tweets in advance, and never stops to actually talk to anyone, nor does he RT other people’s posts. IMHO, he is little more than a robot here on Twitter, which does not make me want to follow him, nor to ask questions.

Twitter is all about engaging your followers, your prospects, and your customers. Why else would you want to be active here? Many of us share information, ask and answer questions, and even repost (ReTweet) other tweets. (Just don’t get me started on people who protect their updates! That is a whole ‘nother post.)

Many of us who have been on Twitter for longer than a year understand this. People like @ChrisBrogan, @iamkhayyam, @debng, and myself (@searchguru) have worked hard to build up their followers by talking and sharing with them.

Try it. Reach out and share information, or a pleasant thought with someone else. It doesn’t hurt.

One of the problems with this is trying to sort through all your Favorites at once. If you are like me, you tend to mark tweets as Favorites so you can come back to them later. As a result, I have pages and pages of them.

I have just discovered that you can see your Faves as an RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. If you are older than 30, think of those electric ticker tape signs. If you are under 30, you probably know what it is.

Simply type into your browser,  http://twitter.com/favorites/(your Twitter name).rss . That will bring up all your faves in an easy to read stream of links.

All you have to do is put in their Twitter name to get the information.  The app also lets you see the stats in a Word Cloud, and what hashtags are being used.

In addition, you can see what is trending on Twitter in real time, and what the day’s trends were. All in all, this is a very useful app.

This service would be an excellent tool for companies that want to keep an eye on their brand, or for people researching a particular subject.

Twitter Alerts – TweetBeep.com.

TweetBrain pulls out the questions from the tweetstream, and allows peeps to answer them directly in more than 140 characters. A link to the answer is then posted on Twitter, telling the person asking that an answer can be found and giving the URL. The FAQ on Tweetbrain is one of the best ones I have ever seen, explaining all the ins and outs of the application.

Tweetbrain is free to join, and anyone can answer questions. It provides an excellent way of sharing your expertise, and building your brand. I highly recommend this app.

Twitter know lets you see what the trending topics are on your Twitter home page. However, many of us do not have a clue what these topics actually are.

What the Trend? to the rescue! This application (by Matt Mayer) explains what the topics are, when they started and the last time they were tweeted about. If you click on a trend, you can see the tweets, any news or photos (from Flickr) about the subject as well.

You can also follow @whatthetrend on Twitter.

Visible Tweets lets you see tweets as a tag cloud, animated, or as rotating letters. While it is very pretty, I do not really see the usefulness of it. Since Tweets are read, not audio, most of us can do the visulaization ourselves.  The tag cloud part might be useful if you are not sure what part of the tweet is a subject….