When Twitter first started, a lot of people thought that you could judge a person by the number of followers they had. In other words, a person would be considered popular if they has a large number of others following them.

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.

There is a feature on Twitter called Favorites. You can make a tweet a Favorite and share it with others, or just go back and read it later.

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.

Tweetabix interviews Twitter users as to how they use Twitter, whether for fun, community or business. Richard McKay (@holeinhiseye) runs this site and asks each person what they think about Twitter and its future.

This is a great resource for newbies and the general public to learn about Twitter.

A lot of people are using Twitter as a broadcasting tool to get the word out about events in their local cities. Unfortunately, many of these tweets get lost in the general Twitterstream.

Happn.in is one solution to this problem. This site allows you to follow your local Twitter feed, see what the current trends are, and even advertise to the local Tweetstream.

Using the hashtag #hi_, the site allows you to find your location on a Google map (the sites currently covers Western Europe and the US), and click on the pin. A small window appears with a list of the current words that are trending, a “town crier” -someone from the area who has tweeted the most about the local events that week, the latest posts with the hashtag and a way to advertise to that particular area.

If you click on “More  [city] Detail” it leads you to a page where you can not only see what is happening, but Happn.in even lets you rate the tweets.

This information is already very valuable to marketers, and retailers. Happn.in has hit upon a formula that will lead to a lot of great data.

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.

You can also change the colors of the application.

I highly recommend this desktop app for keeping up on what is happening day to day on Twitter.

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.

A lot of questions are asked every day on Twitter ranging from the specific (what websites to use to book travel,  where to find program applications and tutorials) to the general (what’s the best place for dinner, what is a gerbil). Sometimes the questioner gets a direct answer, sometimes not. To help all of those in need, TweetBrain has appeared.

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.

Most of us still approach dating the old-fashioned way. We go to bars, Internet cafes, or events looking for the right partner, talk to people online, or just hang out at parties.

Now, there is a new way to find a date via Twitter! Radaroo lets you send a tweet stating all your needs and interests in 140 characters and will (apparently) hook you up with like-minded individuals. The challenge is to fit a dating profile into 140 characters. The site is still in Beta, so it may not have all the bugs worked out yet.

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.