A collection and rating of Twitter apps and tools | Yu-kai Chou

A collection and rating of Twitter apps and tools | Yu-kai Chou

(Note: this is a compilation of a few other posts I made. My readers wanted all the apps in one post so they can easily come back to for reference)
I figured that, since am now an official Twitter Consultant and have gotten paid to research over tons of Twitter Apps, I might as well share my list with my readers. Its somewhat brief, but since there are so many I do not want to type out an elaborated report for each of them. I also didn’t include ALL the Apps I tried. I mainly put in the ones that are good because I don’t want to overload you with information. Having a list of 400 Apps doesn’t help your browsing pleasure.

I also thought a rating would be very helpful because people are not interested in knowing all the apps out there. They are interested in which one they should use. With that said, I included some of the apps that are somewhat popular but I think is pretty bad or ones that are just plain out amusing. For a more comprehensive list of Twitter Apps (but without the ratings), check out airabongco’s Squidoo Lenz. Enjoy!

Searching for People To Follow

Twits like Me (Find out people like you): Not particularly good. Couldn’t find relevant people to me. 3/10

Twellow (A Twitter directory sorted by occupation): Excellent. Fast, gets the people you want ranked by followers, and shows all relevant data. 9/10

Just Tweet It (A twitter directory sorted by interest): Decent. A bit unfriendly. 7/10

Twubble (Automatically finds people who are compatible with your interests): Quite good. Fast and easy. Shows you who do people you respect follow. Doesn’t tell you details of person though. 7/10

Mr Tweet (Finds worthy followers that you are not following, and influences beyond your network): Excellent. Like Twubble but better and shows more info, including Tweet Frequency, Ratio, and Behavior(!). 9/10

Twittie Me (Creates a twitter ad for you on front page and allows you to find others): Not that good. Hassle to use. 3/10

Twitdir (Search for words in usernames, locations or descriptions): Quite complete. VERY slow. Average. 6/10

Twitter Grader Search (Search for top Tweeters with certain keywords): Excellent too. Fast
and shows you the top Tweeters regarding each topic. Limited to top people. 8/10

TwitStat (looks at your tweeting behavior): Interesting App, as it can find the “most social” “happiest” “most tired” “most responded” people in the last 14 days. The interface is not very well built, and you can’t really get much of the info of the people. Interesting but not that great. 6/10

Discovering Worthy Topics and News

Topics by Search:

Twitter Search (Search for the latest trends on Twitter): Most basic. Difficult access, but fast and MOST up to date. Also updates real time. 8/10

Flaptor Search (A search tool that can be installed on your browser): OK. Lessup-to-date. Fast. Nice going with browser. Unnecessary if you have TweetDeck. 7/10

Tweet Scan (Search keywords and people on Twitter): Very Slow. Doesn’t find relevant info. Not very up to date. Pretty bad. 3/10

Twitterment (Search Twitter users and topics): Fast but just does a Google search relating to Twitter. Pretty useless. 2/10

TweetDeck Search (Desktop App that also has Search Functions): TweetDeck is one of the most amazing Twitter Apps because it makes almost all your Twitter activities easier and faster. After the DL, its search is easy to access and updates real time. Highly Recommended. 9/10

Topics by Type

Tweetmeme (find out the latest Stories on Twitter by type of file): Well designed, very inviting, good topics, you can choose what type of files you like (image, video, audio etc etc). One problem is lack of info on how its compiled. 7/10

Topics by Hype

Twitturly (Find out the most talked about stories on Twitter based on Links): Good info. Nicely done. Does not show the content very well. 8/10

Twitscoop (A search tool that tracks trends as well as certain events): Well made. Tag Cloud finally put in good use. Easy to browse, easy to access and very up to date. Chosen by Tweetdeck. 9/10

Tweet

Favotter (Find out the most favored tweets): This idea is very good . Fewer tweets get favorited than RTed, so it must be quality stuff. Not much news but some witty lines. Helps you be a better Tweeter. 8/10

Topics by Special Interest

Twistori (Find out what tweeter’s loves, hates, believes, etc.): This is awesome. It lets you understand the world better and connect with people better. However, it does not link to the actual tweeters. A big disappointment. 8/10

GoodBadMe (Keep track of the good and bad on the twitterverse): Interesting idea, but not very well executed. Hard to read tweets, and not very engaging. One of those sites that are fun to know about but wouldn’t really use often. 4/10

Analyzing Twitter Stats

Twinfluence (Measure your Twitter influence through tweets, reach of followers as well as second-order followers): This tool is really good. It is a sophisticated way of measuring how influential you are on Twitter. 9/10

Twitter-Friends (analyzes a whole set of data, especially focusong on how “sticky” you are, as
well as inactive friends or those who are online now): This App seems to have a lot of great features and interesting stats. It brings up a lot of interesting information and quotients about a user. It mostly
focuses on how “social” a user is, instead of how many followers he has. Slightly overboard but quite awesome. 8/10

Twitter Ratio (Find out your friend to follower ratio): I don’t find this one that great. Its just simple math: followers/followings. Yea, maybe you won’t know the EXACT number in 2 seconds, but who needs to know? It adds a little humor to the site though. 3/10

Twitter Counter (Allows you to see your follower growth): This is pretty useful to see if you have been getting more followers than you lose. You can also check out the growth history of friends. 8/10

Twitter Grader (find out your twitter grade. Computed based on how complete your profile is as well as the number and influence of your followers.): I don’t necessarily find the Grader that great. It does factor in some interesting things like how complete is your profile, tweeting behavior and follower influence, but overall it is somewhat dull because it doesn’t show you anything besides a number. Nice interface though. 6/10

Tweet Stats (Graph your tweet activity): This is probably the best tool to measure how you waste your time on Twitter. It not only tells you how often you tweet, it tells you when you usually tweet, on what device. 8/10

Twit Graph (Graph your tweeting activity): This is OK. Has potential, but can’t compare to Tweet Stats. The information is not particularly useful either. 5/10

TwiTemperature(Measures how “hot” are you by comparing you to what others are tweeting about): I find this somewhat meaningless. If you are saying what everyone else is saying, you are hot. If you can come up with original things to say, you are freezing. The humor and image makes a good laugh though. 4/10

Desktop/Mobile Apps (Will only cover the best ones)

Tweetdeck (Allows all twitter functions, search, groups, twitscoop): This is the most powerful Desktop App up to this point. It allows you to have a real-time keyword timeline, twitscoop, 12seconds.tv, and all that good stuff. The only problem is that it takes out the entire screen. 9/10

DestroyTwitter (Desktop AdobeAir App that allows all twitter functions): DestroyTwitter has been getting a lot of hype lately. However, I think it is subpar. The advantage is that it takes a lot less RAM than Tweetdeck. However, it does allow multiple tweetstreams, as well as groups. Also, the interface looks nice but is not as usable. There’s a lot of unnecessary mouse movements and clicks here. Constant updates can be nice or annoying. 6/10

Twitterfon (Allows people to use Twitter on the iPhone, including search): This is the best FREE iPhone app. The user interface is awesome, easy to use. You can look at anyone you want and see your conversations. 8/10

Tweetie (Allows people to use Twitter on the iPhone, including handling multiple accounts, inline web browsing, Geotagging and searching). This is by far the BEST iPhone Twitter App. It has all the functions you would dream of, and people rave about it all the time. The only problem is that it costs $3, but most think its worth it. 10/10

Managing your Friends/Followers

Tweet Wheel (See which of your followers are following each other): This is a decent tool that’s pretty and interesting. However, the outcome can be kinda confusing and it is REALLY REALLY slow. 5/10

Twitter Karma (Find out who is following and unfollowing you. Have a mass follow and unfollow tool): This tool is awesome. It allows you to trim your following list fast by who is not following you, or who never updates their tweets. The only problem is that it does not allow to sort by followers. 9/10

Qwitter (Get notified whenever someone unfollows you and shows you the last tweet): This is OK but not really THAT useful. It makes you feel down whenever there’s a separate email telling you you lost someone, even though you may have gained 5x more followers that day. Somtimes its late too. 6/10

Socialtoo (Notifies you of who unfollows you and has an unfollow back and auto-DM option): This is kinda like Qwitter but much better. First it sends all your follow/unfollow stats together in one email so its not as upsetting when you get the email. It also allows you to message people who follow you and unfollow people who unfollow you. 8/10

Powering up your Tweets

TweetDeck (Desktop App that allows you to do almost everything on Twitter): Again I praise Tweetdeck. Although the tweeting feature is not as powerful as the others (scheduled tweets, auto-follow), the stream of friend and search tweets makes it VERY easy to reply, DM, or RT anything. You can also upload an image with Twitpic, shorten your tweets by abbreviation, your own selection of URL shorteners. The biggest weakness is that it doesn’t help you manage multiple accounts. 9/10

HootSuite (Helps you manage multiple accounts, Schedule Tweets, Auto-follow, DM all followers and tracks the analytics for the shrunk links): Hootsuite is a superb web application that helps you handle multiple Twitter Accounts. I use this to manage my clients’ accounts and it works very well. The cool thing is that it automatically tracks the traffic for the shrunken links, so you can see how effective are your tweets. The only thing that truly annoys me is that their shrunken links have an annoying promotion bar on top, which would affect follower experience. 9/10

SocialToo (Helps you automate your Twitter experience, including Auto-follow, auto-unfollow, auto-DM new followers, and create surveys): for an automator, SocialToo is pretty cool. It has a clean interface and is very simple to use. It allows you to unfollow all the people who secretly unfollow you as well as auto-block auto-DMs from other SocialTooers. Finally, it allows you to create surveys for followers. Quite limited in tweeting but good other than that. 8/10

Tweetlater (Scheduled tweets. Automated follow and DM new followers. Handle multiple accounts. Keyword alert): Tweetlater is a pretty decent system. Its not as friendly as SocialToo and the user-interface is actually very confusing. However, it does have a neat combo of tweeting for multiple accounts (which SocialToo does not cover). 7/10

Tweet Manager (Scheduled tweets, automated follow and DM new followers, Keyword follow (!). Handle two accounts, DM all followers, auto-reply, Scheduled Tweets): Tweet-Manager is a pretty cool site. The user-interface is very clean and easy to use. It also has a special keyword follow function. Perhaps because it is a bit new, some of the features do not work yet. One obstacle is that it only allows users to schedule 6 tweets at one time (and they need to clean up themselves). 7/10