It seems like everyone is on Twitter these days, but are you following everyone you should? With so many users, it can be hard to find the right people to follow - you might even miss finding some of your very own friends on the service, especially if they joined later on, after you did your initial search for friends. To help you out, we've provided five web apps that can help you locate some of the best people for you to follow on Twitter.
A new little Twitter app has recently burst onto the scene, and this one, despite its silly name, isn't any trouble at all - it's actually quite great. The app is called "Twubble" and it's designed to help you find interesting people to follow, a task it accomplishes by searching your social graph.
Using Twubble is very easy - simply visit the Twubble web site and click "find some friends." If you aren't already logged into Twitter, you'll need to input your credentials, otherwise, Twubble will just begin fetching a list of friends. The friends are ranked by how many of your friends are following them, and then, with one click, just as if you were on Twitter itself, you can follow your newfound friends.
Twubble
Twitter Local is a handy service that helps you find people using Twitter in or around a certain area. You can enter a city, state, or zip, and the range of miles around the area to search, and Twitter Local will display the rests generated as an RSS or XML feed or you can click to see the latest tweets coming from that area and just subscribe to people from there. Twitter Local even has an Adobe AIR app available.
Twitter Local
Know your friend's name or email but not their Twitter username? You can enter one or more email address or names into the search box on TwitterWho, which will then retrieve a list of possible matches, if the name is common, or the link to a person's Twitter profile if it makes a match by email address. The tool uses Twitter's built-in people search at twitter.com/invitations, but unlike that form, you can enter in multiple items at a time, one email or name per line, as opposed to having to search out your friends one-by-one. (Plus, it's not broken, like Twitter search was a few minutes ago).
Twitter Who
The app called "Twits Like Me" is designed to help you find other Twitter users who share your interests. To use the service, enter your username in the box provided and click "who is like me?" The service searches for other users who tweet about the same things you do. Don't forget to check the box to exclude your current friends from the search results if you're using the service to find new people to add.
Twits Like Me
Now that you've added some friends, how about adding some of the more prolific twitterers? The site TwitDir can help you locate some of the top Twitterers, in the following categories: the Top 100 Followed (looks like Jason beat Scoble - bribes do work!), the Top 100 updaters, the Top 100 favoriters, and the Top 100 followers. Want to get on one of these lists, the new "tops" section shows you what numbers you would have to beat to get there.
TwitDir
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
I'd not heard of TwitDir or TwitsLikeMe and, after a quick experiment, they both seem pretty cool.
Sadly, when I tried TwitterLocal almost everyone near to me was just posting noise - so no new follows for the Leeds tweeple.
Posted by: andymurd | April 8, 2008 1:05 PMTwitDir looks very useful. Unfortunately, the traffic from this post is maxing out their SQL server. RWWebbed :)
Posted by: Dave Donohue | April 8, 2008 1:21 PMHad only heard of (and used) TwitterLocal. Great links; thanks Sarah.
Posted by: Easton Ellsworth | April 8, 2008 1:22 PMand if you want to feel like you are watching a global pingpong match, check out http://twittervision.com/ it's way cool for a visual representation -- heard about it @itconference08
Posted by: Carter F Smith | April 8, 2008 1:24 PMTwubble is pretty neat. However, ultimately it is a Twitter who's who sorta list. Still very cool to build a list of interesting people. Great post.
Posted by: Louis | April 8, 2008 1:26 PMThanks for the post. I have never seen so many twitter data-mining apps posted in the same place. I really like the idea behind Twits Like Me.
Posted by: Phil W | April 8, 2008 1:43 PMThis is a good list, Twubble is new. I mostly use http://tweetscan.com to search twitter via keywords to find friends that way. More twitter apps are launching by the day.
I'm @waynesutton on twitter and I tweet a lot.
Posted by: Wayne Sutton | April 8, 2008 2:52 PMIs it me or are Twitter companion apps the new Facebook apps?
In all seriousness, I'm glad I found this post, particularly for items 1 and 4.
Posted by: Mark DykemanTwubble was excellent! I've just doubled the number of people I follow (at least) and I think I'll be back, as the list can only get more specific.
Thanks!
Posted by: Phil Nash | April 8, 2008 4:56 PMtwitDir so cool
Posted by: Pangoo | April 8, 2008 11:06 PMBut jiwai & zuosa at china also easily using
I guess now you can add in the new Twitter location search as a way to find friends in your area (new search box at the top). Example: http://twitter.com/tw/search/users?q=san+francisco
Posted by: Mike D. | April 9, 2008 1:26 AMLove the idea of Twits like me.... we'll see how effective it is.
Posted by: todd lucier | April 9, 2008 6:52 AMIt would be really nice to have this sort of application to navigate other social networks. . . is there anything like this for Digg? Stumbleupon?
i want to be a king
Posted by: june | April 9, 2008 7:15 AMWow! These are great ways to add friends on Twitter..^^ honestly I haven't tried any of them yet...now I'm getting excited to try each one..thanks a bunch for sharing Sarah..^^...It's a great help!
Posted by: Federal Watch | April 10, 2008 3:16 PMTwitter Local is pretty cool, unfortunately I can only find 4 people within 30 miles of my town that are on Twitter and I know 3 of them personally.
Posted by: Michael | April 10, 2008 3:38 PMThese are all great apps! We just launched a twitter friend recommendation service of our own at http://WhoShouldiFollow.com. Give it a try, we'd love to know what you think.
Posted by: Gary | April 29, 2008 11:48 AMThanks for the post. I have never seen so many twitter data-mining apps posted in the same place. I really like the idea behind Twits Like Me.
Posted by: website design | May 6, 2008 5:33 AM