We all know the gold standard of Twitter applications such as Tweetie and Tweetdeck, but since those services hit the web over a year ago, Twitter has unrolled new features such as geolocation and lists. As a result, some of our favorite apps from months past haven't always taken advantage of Twitter's changes.
Below are some of the newer Twitter tips, tools and applications that lead the way for the next generation of Twitter lovers.
Geochirp
For some publishers, the question "what are you doing?" isn't nearly as important as "what is going on around me?" Geotweet allows users to pick a geographical area and then search the tweets in that area for a certain term. Want all tweets about the Reds in Cincinnati? Easy.
The service also providea an RSS feed that, when combined with online couponing, could provide some revenue to local news outlets. Imagine responding to tweets containing the word "hungry" with an restaurant's online coupon?
Your own URL shortener
Most people use services like bit.ly to shorten URLs for Twitter. However that puts your links out of your control. If the service you use were to go out of business, all of your links would be broken. To prevent this, Lifehacker has a guide on creating your own URL shorter.
Tweetbeep
Right now, if you wanted to receive alerts when a term was mentioned on Twitter, you would either have to repeatedly search for it on Twitter’s homepage or use a complicated combination of Google Alerts and RSS feeds.
Save the hassle with Tweetbeep, a service that will email you whenever a specified phrase is tweeted. The service is free up to 200 alerts.
Favestar.fm
Twitter is a gold mine for one-liners, consise philosophical thoughts and just down-right entertaining chit-chat. The problem, though, is that after a few days the tweets are unavailable by Twitter’s search.
Enter favestar, the service that tracks the web’s most-favorited tweets. You can see the most favorited tweet of the day, or search a list of a particular user’s most popular tweets.
The service seems harmless, but before you know it, you’ll spend your lunch break digging through the day’s best tweets.
Listorious
One of the new(ish) features of Twitter is lists, a way for users to categorize followers. Trouble is, there is no ranking system or directory on the site.
Listorious helps fill that gap highlighting noteworthy lists (try CNN’s Gulf oil spill list, for example) as well as help you find lists curated around nearly everything imaginable. Also check out Tlists for similar functionality
Just for fun:
Say Tweet – Overlays recent tweets around a photo of your choice.
Spreadtweet – If your boss is strict, spread tweet allows you to read twitter in Excel. Though if you have to resort to reading a microblogging service in a spreadsheet, you should probably find a new job.