TweetBeep allows you to track a particular subject or mention of a website on Twitter. It will send you email updates when the topic or website you are following appears, even if a URL shortener has been used.

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.

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….

2Tweet allows you to send photos and videos to your Twitter, but t is not as simple as it sounds.  You email their server with your data and the first 113 characters of the subject become your tweet. The body of your text is put into the photo viewer. Then a tweet with a link to the pics shows up.

You can see the the number of visitors and ratings and comments on the link. 2Tweet creates a gallery of your pics on their server.  This app is good if you like to post a lot of photos and you want to keep track of them online.  – Louisanna6

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Twitter has grown so fast and is so large that in order to find people to follow, you really need some help. My favorite directory for this is Twellow. Twellow (a service of WebProNews) allows you to search by occupation or niche and has set up a series of categories that cover just about everything. If you do not see the category you want, ask them to add it.

You can either browse these categories or look through the entire list. The list is overwhelming, so I suggest browsing first. When you click on a category, Twellow tells you their name, their Twitter name, the number of followers, when they joined Twitter, and their bio.  You can also see some of their tweets.

To login to Twellow, and claim your profile, you need to use the ID and password you use for Twitter. You may already be listed in the directory, but you can edit the profile and add categories. Once logged in, you can see your friends and followers as well. There is also a fun tab called “TwellowHood” that lets you search by geography.

Twibs is a business directory for Twitter that allows you to search by the name of the business. You can sort by the number of followers, or alphabetically.  The businesses on the home page are there by popular vote.

Each entry gives you the Twitter name of the company, the number of followers, and the location, as well as their bio. If the company has added their business to the directory, they can pick the labels or hashtags that they want to be known for. Adding your business to Twibs is free, and you do not have to be a mega-conglomerate (like Starbucks).

If you are logged into Twitter, you can tweet the company directly (look for the button on the right), and vote for them to be on the home page. Once you have voted for them, you can then ask your followers to vote as well.

I find Twibs to be very useful when I know the name of the company.

The newest user-generated Twitter directory has just been launched by Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg. WeFollow is covered by this post at Mashable, and looks to be an interesting experiment.

Alltop, while technically not a user directory for Twitter, does have a Twitterati section. Here you can see who Alltop thinks are some of the more famous and/or more vocal Twitter peeps.

Twitseeker allows you to search for keywords in people’s tweets. It does ask you for your login information for Twitter because it is using the Twitter API to search through the Tweetstream, but manages to forget it after a query is done.

Although the tool itself is still in the experimental stage, there are a lot of cool features. There are two types of searches, a simple one and an advanced one. The Simple search is just for a keyword or phrase. With the Advanced search, you can specify location, words or phrase, maximum number of pages to search and Twitterers to list, as well as deciding how many times a person has to be tweeting with the same term to qualify.

The default maximum number of pages is 10 and 25 people listed. In the list of peeps, if you mouse over the Twitter bird, you can see the person’s bio, the cloud shows a tag cloud for their tweets, and the circle shows if you are following them or they are following you. It also shows how many followers they have and the number of times they have tweeted on the topic.

Twitseeker appears to be using Twitinfluence to help it find the information. The only drawback I found was that if you click on the Twitterer’s name (which is a link to their profile page), the page comes up for a second, and then defaults to their background. I also discovered that the Simple Search is best when used with one word keywords. If you want a phrase, I suggest using the Advanced Search.

Image via Wikipedia

ChirpCity allows you to see who is tweeting from and about your city. It also shows a top user list for each city. The cities are arranged in alphabetical order and covers the U.S. and Canada. There is also a Firefox and IE7 browser plugin. ChirpCity is from Roberto Martinez and you can follow him @chirpcity .

Image via Wikipedia

I have seen a lot of odd Twitter applications, and this one is right up there. TweetValue puts a dollar value on your Twitter profile. It seems to be an algorithm based on the number of tweets and the number of followers.

Fortunately, the application does not ask for your Twitter password. You can follow @tweetvalue on Twitter for more information.