AJ Vaynerchuk

Last night I was browsing through Twitter looking for a few more interesting people to follow on Twitter. By chance I landed on Jessica Mah. I knew a little about Jessica, mostly that she was another young entrepreneur, and figured she would be interesting to follow.

Within a few minutes I received an instant message from someone who wasn’t on my buddy list. Obviously enough it was Jessica, her opening message went a little like this,

“Hey its Jessica Mah, I found your IM on twitter!”

From there me and Jessica went on to have a lengthy conversation about anything and everything. Rather than simply relying on Twitter to “meet” people, AOL instant messenger gave me the opportunity to truly “get to know” someone. From here I expect me and Jessica to chat a few more times and ultimately hang out this summer in San Francisco while we both try out some internships ( I will be at Revision3, Jessica will choose her next home within the next few weeks ).

So what are you waiting for? If you aren’t super private or shy, I highly recommend that you throw up some more contact info on Twitter. You never know when you will stumble upon some interesting conversation!

side note: Obviously AOL instant messenger isn’t the only program that allows you to chat with new found friends. Using any instant messenger service works in this situation, I just prefer AOL instant messenger.

Protecting Your Personal Brand on Twitter

“Twitter accounts will soon be like (but not on the same level) domain names. Your name is your personal brand, and if you do not own the Twitter handle for your full name you are setting yourself up for a fall, just as if you did not own your full name dot com.”

An Analysis of Twitter’s New Profile Page Display

“Twitter did some spring cleaning. Part of that spring cleaning was a new profile page display for users who are not signed in.”

How to Link Twitter to Facebook

“Want to link your Twitter account to Facebook so that your status updates sync? Easy, here’s how:”

When 140 Doesn’t Cut it, Ways to Shorten a URL on Twitter

“Twitter only allows you 140 characters for you to get your message across. Since you are promoting a link, you will want all the room you can get for “the pitch.” Some links can be rather large(even 140 characters themselves) and the solution to this is a URL shortner.”

5 Twitter Bots Worth Using

“Twitter Bots can make the Twitter experience that much more effective. Here is a random list of bots that you may or may not enjoy:”

About Twitter Snooze

Twitter Snooze is a new Twitter Web App that allows you to temporarily unfollow friends on Twitter. TwitterSnooze is inspired by a Merlin Mann post and was written by Andrew Parker (aka @andrewparker).

Why should you use it? (In their words)

“It’s a good tool to avoid a blast of tweets from a conference you are not attending… just snooze the conference goers for a few days.”

“It’s a nice way to get back at someone for saying something stupid… give them the silent treatment ;)”

“It’s a good way to ignore someone that just flooded your timeline for no good reason… but it was just a one-time offense and doesn’t merit permenant unfollowing.”

How to use Twitter Snooze

Using Twitter Snooze is super easy! All you have to do is head over to www.twittersnooze.com and fill out a form on the site. All you need to do is enter in your user name and password, followed by who you want to “snooze” and how long you want to “snooze” him or her. If you want, you can announce your snooze on Twitter.

Introduction

New web apps are coming out for Twitter all the time. Here are three web apps you may have not had the enjoyment of stumbling upon:

Twitt(url)y

Direct Link: Twitt(url)y
Product Page: Twitt(url)y
In their words:

“Twitt(url)y is a service for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on Twitter.”

Kinda reminds me of Techmeme. Twitt(url)y does a nice job of cleanly organizing top tweeted links without any (noticeable) bugs. Hats off to the team for making a site that many others have tried to make.

The Twitter Blacklist

Direct Link: The Twitter Blacklist
Product Page: The Twitter Blacklist
In their words:

“This is a list of known spammers of various kinds on Twitter.”

Basic concept that is being used for the greater good. Loving the ratio guide since it quickly shows you who the worst spammers are. Actually, is it possible to have “worse” spammers? Yeah, I think, or at least guess so.

Twistori

Website Link: Twistori
Product Page: Twistori
In their words:

“This is the first step in an ongoing social experiment, based on twitter. inspired by wefeelfine and drawing data from summize, hand-crafted by amy hoy and thomas fuchs.”

Beautiful design! Great job Amy and Thomas! Not only is the design cool, but the concept is super original. Basically Twistori allows you to choose an emotion, and track tweets regarding that emotion. The integration of summize is extremely well done.

Conclusion

It is great to see more and more Twitter web apps being made. It is even better to know that the quality is not suffering due to the mass production of these apps and bots!

What do you think?

Do you find these apps useful? Which of these three is your favorite? Let me know in the comments section!

I, along with all of you, have friends who have no idea what Twitter is. Playing off that idea, here is what happens when you link your twitter to your Facebook status:

What about your friends?

Some of my friends are so confused by my “twittering” that they call me out on it on Facebook. I have also hung out with some friends (the ones that I see every now and then) and had them ask me why the heck I was always “twittering.” Do your friends react the same way? What is the funniest thing a friend has said to you about your Twitter habits?