This post is a continuation of Saturday’s which can be found here I recommend reading it first.

Ok so continuing where I left off Saturday night (Sunday morning technically)..

Twitter has a few neat ways to contact people, if you are “Friends” with someone (meaning you are both following each other) you can send that person a “Direct Message” which will only be visible to them. You can mention somebody by typing the @ sign and then their name (like @tfantina), this tweet will be visible to everybody who follows you and the person you mention will also be notified even if they don’t follow you. The highest complement you can give on Twitter is a re-tweet. If you like somebody’s tweet and want to show it to your followers just type “RT” then mention the person and paste their tweet ( “RT @tfantina ‘Some how I always cross the border during rush hour.’”).

So far I’ve covered the basics of Twitter, however it’s much more fun once you start checking the amazing apps that have sprung up around Twitter.

Some people will tell you to download a desktop app for Twitter like
“Tweetie” or “TweetDeck” however I don’t use either of these, however if you are tweeting from a smart phone or an iPod Touch I recommend getting an app for it. When it comes to apps here is a list of ones that I could not live without (this is relative we are talking about a micro blogging service);

Brizzley is a fun app that displays pictures and video in tweets (usually you have to click a link to see them), among other things it also allows you to organize people you follow into lists. I highly recommend it, it’s currently in beta however if you want an invite just drop a line in the comments and I’ll hook you up first come first serve.

Tinyurl is good when you have a super long URL that you have to fit into 140 characters or less (they usually shorten any URL to about 30 characters).

Twitpic allows you to post photos to Twitter from you cell phone or the web.

Tweetstats is cool if your geeky like me and want to know the statistics of your tweets (time of day you tweet the most, day of week you tweet the most, where most of your tweets come from, ect.).

There are hundreds of cool apps for Twitter, a good place to start looking is Oneforty.com they have organized most of the major apps for you to try, rate and review.

Sorry it took so long, Twitter’s a bit of a hard sell at first but I take it with a grain of salt and appreciate all the neat apps and trends.

Image: Pasquale D’Silva courtesy of Function