There are plenty of people who spend hours of their time on Twitter and Facebook on a daily basis. Add to that hundreds of useful tools that are available for these networks, and you may end up spending all your days on these sites. There are plenty of Twitter tools that can help you get the most out of this social network. Some can help you increase your followers while some others can keep track of your favorite topic. You are never going to be out of options.

If you are struggling to feed your Twitter addiction, here are 5 tools that could help:

Twalkin: a very cool service that lets you connect and start talking with your Twitter friends. If you want to have a private chat with your friends or announce something to a selection of your followers, Twalkin is must try.

Tweeterview: a great tool to interview people on Twitter with and watch other people’s interviews. Helps keep things organized while you interview other people.

Klout: an all powerful tool that dissects your profile and lets you know whether you are making a difference on Twitter. It can show you what areas you need to work on to take your Twitter to the next level.

jotabl: gives you an easy way to add a Twitter shout-box to your website. Just add it to your website and have your visitors connect with you and tweet right from your site.

Tweetwally: Tweetwally gives you an easy way to create a Twitter wall based on a hash-tag, user-name, or keywords. Sign in, and you can even share your wall with others.

There are plenty more tools around for Twitter. Not every tool is going to be useful for your situation, but the above tools do you give you the chance to connect more effectively with your visitors and boost your presence on Twitter.

It took only a small while before people realized there was something wrong with Twitter yesterday. Once the site starts loading slow, and you see the big whale image on your screen, you know something’s happening at Twitter. Apparently, the company had some server issues and has fixed most of those issues by now. A year ago, it would have taken people a while to get informed on any outages. These days, Twitter can’t get away with that. Not when it has millions of people who can’t stop tweeting.

Twitter’s status site was full of news about the state of the network (most of which were not good news).

Twitter has gotten much better these days when it comes to handling the load that it gets from all the tweeters. But it has ways to go to become perfect in that regard. Perhaps what’s more distressing is seeing so many people complain about what they can’t do when Twitter should be used as a tool and not a life-style.

Twitter may be struggling from time to time to keep up with all the traffic that it gets. But that is not going to stop the team from implementing new features. Twitter is in the process of introducing its own URL shortening feature that will not only help users save some characters, but it will reduce the chances of people getting scammed on Twitter.

I don’t know about you, but I will continue supporting third-party URL shortening services out there. It’s never ideal if one company is handling all your data, even if Twitter can use your data to improve its features. Twitter may not be perfect, but it does not have to be. Twitter being down for a few hours should not alter your strategy much anyway.

Social media has become one of the best venues to look for jobs and new opportunities. Since you are dealing with real people on Twitter, you are more likely to find out about open opportunities and hear back from people who are on Twitter. And let’s not forget that Twitter provides you with the chance to find positions that are not being talked about on top job sites. So it never hurts to have your resume ready to go for those Twitter opportunities. That’s where TwitRes comes into play. It’s a very simple to use but essential service for job seekers who want to take advantage of the social media to find new job opportunities.

TwitRes targets both job hunters and recruiters. Job hunters can easily log on to the service by using their Twitter credentials. Resumes can be uploaded in Microsoft word, PDF, or text format. The service keeps track of uploaded resume and gathers statistics for them. You can use the service to find out how many people have viewed your resume and ask for feedback from Twitter community as well.

TwitRes makes life easy for job recruiters as well. They can take advantage of this service to look for candidates and find talent on Twitter. As a recruiter or someone who’s looking to hire someone for your small business, you want to make sure you add the proper hash-tags (#) to your job tweets. So don’t forget about location and skill hash tags.

TwitRes does not guarantee you a job nor it can determine the best candidate for a job. But it does make life easy for anyone who’s looking to take advantage of Twitter to hire someone or get hired. It’s a free service, so it never hurts to try.

If you have been following this blog, you have probably realized that I am not a big fan of automating Twitter tasks. There are plenty of tools on the market that you can use to completely outsource your Twitter work. But what’s the fun in that? It’s similar to traveling miles to get yourself to a party and then decide to sit outside or in the corner without interacting with other people. Of course, Twitter tools do have a place for active Twitter users. Unfortunately, there are only 24 hours in each day, which means somethings should and need to be outsourced if you are to get the most out of Twitter.

I got familiar with Market Me Tweet on Twitter. There was a discussion about branding one’s tweets on Twitter, and that’s when Market Me Tweet comes in. It’s a Twitter management tool that allows you to brand each and every tweet of yours. But this tool is more than just about branding your tweets. You can use it to manage multiple accounts and monitor your replies, direct messages, and  other people’s time-lines using this software.

Of course, just like any other Twitter tool, Market Me Tweet has a controversial feature as well. The Reply campaign with all its templates and automation capability is something you want to look at with caution. You certainly don’t want to spam Twitter. Besides, I am not sure how template messages can help you build real relationships. It may work in the short-term, but that is not the right approach for the long-term.

There are a lot of things to like about this package. It’s nice to have an option to find new followers and manage existing followers with the smart algorithm feature included in this software. The fact that you can use this account to manage unlimited accounts is a plus as well. The software is pretty affordable as well. So it may be worth checking out if you are planning to move to a premium brand management tool for Twitter. Just don’t spam Twitter, but you already knew that.

Being involved on Twitter is more than posting philosophical quotes or retweeting what others have to say. Twitter is an extremely powerful tool for businesses who know how to use it. There are plenty of ways that businesses can get value out of Twitter. They can listen to what people have to say about their niche and pick up ideas for future ideas. They can also track their reputation on Twitter. Best of all, they can provide real-time support to customers via Twitter. That’s where Followbase comes in. It’s an interesting service that lets you get in touch with other companies’ support teams and get help via Twitter.

FollowBase is pretty simple to work with. It’s essentially designed to help people get the support they need via Twitter. If you happen to be a business owner, you can just add your company by entering the Twitter account for your business. The fun part starts when you claim your forum on FollowBase. That will allow you to communicate with your customers more effectively and keep the spammers out as well.

The service is also helpful if you want to find out more about your competitors and how they handle their customer service on Twitter. It can certainly be used as a learning tool. The forum is pretty flexible as you can customize the look and feel, add employees, and even upload your company logo to the site.

So why is FollowBase important? It’s more the concept here that matters rather than the execution. Twitter has applications for business and can help small & big businesses support their customers more effectively. Sooner rather than later not having a Twitter account for your business will be similar to not having a business phone #. So if you haven’t taken advantage of Twitter already, now’s a good time to start.

The number of social media experts is on the rise. In fact, that number may be growing as fast as the number of new blogs. There are a lot of people who are looking for new ways to market themselves to employers and their clients. Being a social media expert (or claiming it) is certainly one way to gain some extra attention. But social media is not about what you claim you know. It’s not even about what you do know. It’s more about what you can do with the knowledge you have.

You can be an expert in Google Wave or Twitter. You may know all the commands and even spend hours everyday playing with these services. But if you don’t know how you can provide value to your company through these services, you are not really an expert. There are too many people who spend their time going to conferences, picking up industry jargon, and claiming things that are not necessarily true. These won’t really make you an expert in the field of social media nor does the fact that you can set up a blog by yourself.

Most of us have seen the movie Matrix. There is a big difference between knowing you can do something and actually walking the walk. If you are planning to get a job as a social media expert, you want to be able to demonstrate what you can do with the social media. That’s more than having a certain number of followers on Twitter or blogging everyday. Think about it. An employer that is going to give you a chance with its social media program is going to expect you to give it a good return on investment. As a social media expert, you are going to have to use services such as Twitter to listen to what customers have to say, analyze their ideas, address their negative feedback, and bring prospects on board and help them make their decisions in an easier fashion. You may also have to run contests, out-reach programs, and social media ROI analysis for your company.

The best way to master the above tasks is by doing it and practicing your craft. If you own a blog, you can use it to run contests (on your blog or Facebook page). You can also practice determining your own social media ROI to make sure you are ready to do it for your employer. The same approach applies to other tasks as well. The moral of story is, you can’t just claim you are a social media expert. That means nothing these days. There are over 15,000 of them on Twitter already. What makes you stand out?

You know it was bound to happen. Twitter has been looking at multiple ways to generate revenue and take its business to the next level. So are tweeters. Sponsored Tweets is a cool service that brings advertisers and Twitter publishers together and let tweeters make money from their sponsored tweets while enabling advertisers to reach out to influential users in the community to push their message out. Here is how the service works. Advertisers create opportunities and tweeters take advantage of these opportunities to make money on Twitter. You will need to disclose that you are being sponsored by someone so the transparency is there. Here is a demonstration of how this service works:

When I first heard about this service, I was very skeptical about it. I am by no means a big fan of advertising on Twitter with my own tweets. Twitter is not a direct revenue channel for me or my business, but it is a great traffic driver for our products and the content our company produces. I have to say I was surprised by the number of celebrity and popular twitterers who are taking advantage of this service to make a few bucks online. If you happen to be into advertising on Twitter, this service can certainly come in handy.

Think about it. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get the message out about your product to thousands of folks on Twitter by partnering up with a Twitter user who has 200,000 followers? Maybe you want to work with someone who has millions of followers. Those sponsored tweets will cost you but just think about the number of people who will instantly check your product and may even give you feedback on your work.

I found the advertising interface to be very easy to use and intuitive. The fact that you can define how much you want to pay for your tweets and when you want them to go live makes this channel well worth a test.

You can also target your potential partners with tags and language. I have just started testing this service but choosing your tweeting hours is the best option to go. Just make sure you match your hours to the location you are targeting (the time is based on Eastern Time for now).

Sponsored Tweets is a very interesting service for advertisers and certainly worth a try. While I admire how the service is put together, I can’t see myself making money off of it by tweeting sponsored tweets. At the same time, if you have a product that you want to push in front of a large community, this service is well worth a test.

There are plenty of Twitter automation tools around. These days you can automate anything from sending messages, planning direct messages, and more with your Twitter account. Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should do it. There is such a thing as Black-Hat and White-Hat tweeting. Have you wondered why you get unsolicited messages on Twitter when you talk about topics such as VOIP or Web hosting? There are a lot of people who make a living out of selling these services to others, and Twitter is their next playground. Some have gone even beyond that and send you harmful links wrapped within an innocent @reply. So there are a lot of things that you shouldn’t automate or do no Twitter. But small businesses can certainly benefit from outsourcing some of their Twitter tasks. You don’t want to everything by yourself and lose sight of what really matters.

If you are looking to manage multiple accounts, vet followers, or find suitable people to follow, the following 4 Twitter automation tools come in handy:

Tweet Adder: one of the most powerful and controversial Twitter automation tools on the market. Let’s you do all kinds of research on Twitter and even find friends to follow fast. The controversial feature (auto-follow) is best left to black-hats. But there are a lot of positive things you can get done with Twitter including but not limited to deep research, account management, and friend management.

TwitterFeed: one of the best tools out there if you want to automate feeding your blog to Twitter. You can not only define how often your want your feeds to be posted, you can also define tags for your posts. Your clicks are tracked as well which is a big plus. It’s a free tool.

Humming Bird: comes with everything you need to manage multiple accounts, add friends, and find targeted followers. The service is quite smart and makes following and unfollowing people less of a pain. Basically, it helps you find and friend people who you have not unfollowed before and set yourself up as an authority twitter figure.

Social Oomph: a very handy service that enables you to manage your twitter accounts and connect them to your blogs easily. You can also use it to find people to follow, set up direct messages, unfollow people when they unfollow you, and much more.

If you are planning to abuse the above services, let’s hope you get suspended soon. But if you are truly interested in saving time and effort and build a real Twitter presence, the above tools come in handy. They don’t do everything for you, but they do save time.

Those of you who have been on Twitter for a while have probably realized the need for a retweet button under each tweet. It’s not too inconvenient to copy and past tweets and add RT information to them. But it’d be much fun if you had that ability on Twitter. In truth, you are going to get that ability on Twitter soon. The company has been testing the “retweet” feature for a while now, and if you happen to be one of the lucky ones to have the feature activated on your account, you can test the feature by yourself.

So here is how the feature works. You see a story that you want to retweet, you click on the retweet button, and Twitter asks you whether you want to retweet the story. Twitter does the rest for you.

The Retweet feature is certainly convenient and fun to play with. Keep in mind that it’s a new feature so it will take some time for Twitter to get everything right. But while many are excited about the introduction of the new feature, there are people who are upset about the way Twitter has implemented the feature and for a good reason. Twitter does not allow you to add your own take on these stories when you retweet a post. So essentially, you post a piece of article with all the attributions but without your take on it. It’s also regrettable that you can only see RTs from the people you follow. So if you are not following the top dogs in your niche, you are not going to see the stories that they like.

The first issue is not something that can’t be fixed. The way Twitter has implemented it can certainly make things get done faster. I do believe that Twitter needs to add another option to the above pop-up to allow us to add our own take to stories. Maybe we will see that when the feature is released to everyone. The 2nd feature and the way it’s been implemented are actually something I do agree with. If you are not following someone on Twitter, you probably don’t want to hear from them. Besides, you don’t have to be following everyone to get those top stories on your timeline. If you are following people who truly provide value in your niche, there is a good chance they’ll catch the top stories and tweets from other top people around the world. So you don’t have to follow everyone in the world to see those top retweets. If those who you follow catch them, you will as well. That’s why you should only follow people who provide real value. There are just too many folks who follow a lot of people in hope of getting followed back. That’s not what Twitter was designed for. So I wouldn’t put any blame on Twitter for how it has implemented the second feature.

The good news is that we are finally going to get the retweet button on Twitter. It may need some work and not everyone is going to agree with everything, but it’s a nice step forward.

What’s your take: do you have an issue with how Twitter has implemented the retweet feature?

The iPhone may be a killer smartphone, but I personally use it to manage my Twitter and Facebook accounts when I am traveling or where I don’t have access to the Internet. There is no question that iPhone is one of the most social media friendly smartphones on the market. At the same time, not everyone can afford paying thousands of dollars for a 2 year AT&T contract. And unlocked iPhone can cost you a good amount of money as well. That’s where TwitterPeek comes in. It’s a device designed for those who can’t get enough of Twitter, but don’t want to pay for a hefty wireless/data plan from AT&T.

TwitterPeek is not a device that will ever go mainstream. It’s a niche device made for Twitter junkies. If you happen to pick up the model with a life-time of service, you can use your gadget on the road (as long as you are in the coverage area)  to tweet, respond to your followers, and track their activities as well.

There is a lot to like about TwitterPeek. While it’s not as stylish as let’s say the iPhone, it is compact and very easy to carry around. The device comes with decent navigation capabilities. If you have owned a Blackberry in the past, you are not going to have any trouble using TwitterPeek. The fact that you never have to pay for going over the limit with your messages is a big plus. You also don’t have to wait for your device to download tweets for you. You get a live snapshot of what’s happening on Twitter with TwitterPeek.

The battery life is long enough to let you go on the road for a few days without having to charge your device. And you got to love the vibration feature as well. As a proud owner of Peek, I can tell you that nothing is more fun than getting reminders that you just got a new message. Not the only device that comes with that feature but still fun.

Will TwitterPeek be a hit like the iPhone? I doubt it. It’s a nice device for Twitter junkies who need a dedicated device. It’s certainly a fun gift to give to the young members of your family. At the same time, if you can afford an iPhone or the Droid, you may want to keep your $200.

Your take: would you give TwitterPeek a chance?