6 tools to make Twitter better

Image via CrunchBase

I have been on Twitter Since March of 2008. Only since about December, have I been consistently Tweeting and following others.

Since I am the gadget guy and "I read the entire internet so you don't have to.®", I though I'd share with you some tools I use to make using Twitter better, easier and more fun.

1. Tweetree. The site I use most when reading Twitter. What Tweetree does is make reading and posting tweets better. For reading: when there is a link in a post the site is displayed in with the tweet, allowing you to simply stay right on Tweetree and read the linked to site/video/picture inline. For posting tweets: it's URL shortner works awesome. Just paste a URL and click Shoren URLs.

2. TwitterGadget. If you use GMail, iGoogle, or Firefox TwitterGadget is a nice little add-on. For Gmail, it resides below the chat box and in Firefox, it resides in the sidebar. It has most of the functionality you'd want in a twitter gadget - and works really well.

3. Powertwitter Firefox addon. Powertwitter is similar to Tweetree in that it adds functionality to each message, except that you simply visit Twitter.com while using Firefox and it:

-search and recent searches
-search scoped to a specific user
-status history peeking on mouseover
-Facebook status updates
-inline YouTube, Flickr, TwitPic, Google Maps, song.ly, and more
-url expansion
-url translation to page titles
-open web update (news feed) mapping
-custom settings
-@mentions
-photo uploading
-link shrinking
-#hashtags

4. TwitPic. TwitPic is a way to share photos on Twitter. You can MMS a photo or email one to TwitPic and the subject line you use will be used as the text in a tweet that links back to the photo. Here is my TwitPic page. If you are a Flickr user, they recently released an update that works similar to TwitPic.

5. Picfog. Picfog is a fun little site that aggregates all the most recent shots from TwitPic. It's fun to watch the slide show and see what others are posting in real time.

6. iPhone/iPod Touch users: TwitterFon is an awesome free app to read/post on Twitter.

Got a suggestion or a tool that you use? Share it below.

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