Handful of people I talk with, still don’t understand what social media is, and what is all the buzz around it. So I gathered few presentations from slideshare for the next time someone needs to hear the story.

Going Social

Easy reading. Nice and flowing presentation, especially up till slide 36

| View | Upload your own

Introduction to Social Media

Nice graphics

| View | Upload your own

Social Media Is…

Another flowing presentation. Its all about the conversation

| View | Upload your own

Social Media & Marketing

A bit more heavy stuff. Start at slide 21.

| View | Upload your own

What can be added about twitter that has not been said already? I guess not much. So much on going buzz! It is amazing.

Hats off for the twitter team for having a product / platform that gained so much buzz and being able to maintain it over time. I guess it helps that influential bloggers have adopted twitter and promote it like they are on the payroll of the Public Relation team.

So much buzz, I had to check it out. So I opened a twitter account and joined the party. Do I like twitter? Yes, for many reasons: well, it is fun; Short and to the point message are always better then long ones; Seems an excellent place for networking, and getting to know people who share the same interests as yours and get to know them on a different more personal level then reading their blog and for a few other reasons.

As you get more people on your network it gets more interesting. You are welcome to introduce yourself and follow me on twitter.

Now days, it seems Twitter is gaining momentum and increasing rate of growth. Still many of the users are early adaptors, web geeks and social media enthusiastics. Twitter has basic functionality and still lacks useful features (for example – following conversations, advanced search).  Many potential enhancements can be added. To fill this gap, so many Twitter mashup sites started to show up. But you really have to be a big Twitter fan to go through the effort of using multiple tools. The gate for Twitter to become more mainstream is to fix the scalability issues and enhance the application with necessary features.

Twitter has captured the imagination of so many talented developers who adopted the API and created many Twitter tools. The useful API helps to keep the buzz going and a major contributor to Twitter’s success. Included is a list of the mashups that seem most useful, either by providing a new missing feature or excel in design or innovative idea. Probably the list is not complete, so if you are aware of additional worthy Twitter tools, let me know and the list will be updated.

Twitter Tools

Statistics

• http://twist.flaptor.com/ - Graph comparing key words mentions over time in twitter conversations
• http://tweetstats.com/ - Nice implementation of graphs. Check how active people are
• http://www.twitterholic.com/ – Top 100 users with most followers, friends or most twits

Follow the conversation

• http://www.twitterverse.com/ – Cool! What is being discussed today in twitterland
• http://twitturly.com/ – Aggregates stories in last week according to twit count. Very useful
• http://quotably.com/  – follow the conversation. Nice application, but seems there is a bug. It is not following conversations properly. At least there is a fix threading option.

Search

• http://summize.com/ – excellent search tool
• http://www.tweetscan.com – Simple and intuitive search

Finding new friends

• http://www.crazybob.org/twubble/ – Suggests people to follow based on common friends count
• http://whoshouldifollow.com/ – Suggests people to follow based on popularity and Location
• http://favotter.matope.com/en/ – Find interesting twits favored by followers

         Twit for fun

• http://twittervision.com/ –> love this app. Hypnotizing.
• http://twistori.com/ – tracks feelings from twitterland
   

Other tools

• http://www.twhirl.org/ – Desktop client for twitter, based on the Adobe AIR platform
• http://tweetburner.com/ – shorten URL and track click statistics
• http://www.tweetwheel.com/ – Visually see friends connections to your other friends. Nice idea but a bit hard to see

Extra twitter reading

• http://twitter.pbwiki.com/ -
  Twitter WIKI fans
• http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/twitter-guide/ -
  Well organized Twitter Guide
• http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9697867-2.html -
  Newbie’s guide to Twitter
• http://www.doshdosh.com/ways-you-can-use-twitter/ -
  Different Ways to Use Twitter
• http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/01/23/9-benefits-of-twitter-for-bloggers/
  Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers
• http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/04/05/my-essential-twitter-tools/ -
  Essential Twitter Tools
• http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/22/twitter-may-not-have-to-care-about-uptime-any-longer/
  About Twitter’s success
  
• http://www.centernetworks.com/twitter-monetization-2  -
  monetizing suggestions for Twitter
• http://flowingdata.com/2008/03/12/17-ways-to-visualize-the-twitter-universe/ -
  Different ways to visualize twitter universe