via:mashable

While protests rage on in Egypt, Twitter called for free expression and transparency in a manifesto published on its blog.

Co-written by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and the company’s General Counsel and former Google lawyer Alexander Macgillivray, the post casts Twitter as a trustworthy messenger, relaying information between hundreds of millions of users, and only refusing to do so if such messages are illegal or spam.

With more than 100 million separate messages transmitted each day, the company says it would be impossible to monitor each and every one. In addition, Twitter vows to refrain from revealing private information about its users, and when it is required to do so by law, it will attempt to notify those users before handing over their information to the authorities.

As longtime dictators and despots blame Twitter as an instigator of their dwindling power, Twitter reminds us that it’s only a mirror on such troubled societies, “providing the tools that foster these discussions.” However, that mirror is turned into an enormous global amplifier in situations such as those in Egypt now and Tunisiaearlier this month.

Meanwhile, Twitter communication is nearly a moot point in Egypt, where there were some reports of cellphone service returning, but Internet service was still shut down today, according to The New York Times. (Update:However, some have figured out clever ways around the problem).

read below:

Our goal is to instantly connect people everywhere to what is most meaningful to them. For this to happen, freedom of expression is essential. Some Tweets may facilitate positive change in a repressed country, some make us laugh, some make us think, some downright anger a vast majority of users. We don't always agree with the things people choose to tweet, but we keep the information flowing irrespective of any view we may have about the content.

Via: Techcrunch

Twitter was valued at one billion dollars in its last round of financing, but we believe it may in fact be severely undervalued relative to Facebook because Twitter’s value proposition is less obvious.

Facebook has utterly dominated the definition of the “social graph” to the point that conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley says that they have “already won social.” Few analysts seem to notice that the particular definition of “social graph” promulgated by Facebook—people you already know in real life—is not the only possible social graph. In fact, Facebook’s future revenue will actually be built on top of another social graph: the social interest graph, aka Pages & Likes.

Twitter’s social interest graph is potentially a huge cash machine that will lift the company out of the red and into the black . . . (Naval certainly hopes so).

An interest graph differs from the “people you know in real life” social graph in that it is:

• Built on one-way following rather than two-way friending
• Organized around shared interests, not personal relationships
• Public by default, not private by default
• Aspirational: not who you were in the past or even who you are, but who you want to be

It should already be clear that the interest graph lends itself brilliantly to commerce.

This explains in part why Facebook is potentially very lucrative: it owns the somewhat-buried interest graph constructed through all of the shares coming from our Facebook friends. As its News Feed grows, so will Facebook’s version of the interest graph.  The interest graph makes itself most explicit in Facebook Pages, which also works on the principles of one-way following, shared interests, public streams, and aspirational relationships.

But Twitter is in theory even better positioned than Facebook to capitalize on the social interest graph. Its keys components are:

1. The composition of the social graph
2. The value of the data flowing through it
3. The volume of the data

By excelling at all three, Twitter is demonstrably superior to Facebook Pages, at least, along specific axes related to revenue potential.

1) Twitter’s social graph is inherently interest-based.

Facebook, as we noted earlier, maintains two separate graphs from the user perspective: a social graph and an interest graph. For most Facebook users, the former is vastly more important than the latte—no one joined Facebook so they could follow Justin Bieber’s Fan Page. Twitter’s graph by contrast is fully interest-based: people use it to stalk celebrities, not to stalk ex-girlfriends from high school.

Twitter’s graph reflects the power-law distribution of human nature. Social hierarchies are rigid and constraining, and slow down the flow of information. On Facebook, unless you are one of his 5,000 closest personal friends, you aren’t going to find out what Mark Zuckerberg likes. But on Twitter, when Demi Moore tweeted at a suicidal kid, she used the power-law distribution—aka celebrity—to help save a stranger’s life.

Twitter’s interest graph seamlessly accommodates whales, including celebrities, professionals, and increasingly businesses. By contrast, it is downright painful to maintain concurrent presences on the dual Facebook graphs—Facebook’s lack of tools to automate Profiles and Pages wastes energy, goodwill, and time. Twitter has no such ambiguity, and as a result it is growing its own kind of lightweight business-related engagement.

2) Twitter connects strangers, creating more value for all.

Twitter data is all assumed to be public by default. Therefore it can be indexed, crawled, searched, and aggregated. Value can flow across the graph to people who don’t know the original poster.

When strangers communicate with each other, they are much more likely to be short-term transactional: ask questions, report news, flirt, buy something. Friends communicate more over the long term, building a relationship over time. Therefore, from an advertisers’ perspective, a Tweet is much more likely to be valuable than a Facebook share.

Businesses make money by connecting strangers. Even on Facebook itself, the most promising applications are there to connect strangers—Zynga, Zoosk, BranchOut, TopProspect. Facebook itself has struggled to allow strangers to connect in commercially-relevant ways: even now, Pages don’t allow users to talk to each other so much as potentially allow businesses to blast news or cupcake offers at their followers.

A follow is the ultimate opt-in. There is no clearer statement of interest on the Internet today, because you are giving permission for that person or entity to push data at you as much as they want as long as they’re interesting to you. Interested intent + Opt-in = The dream of every marketer.

3) Twitter’s usage model encourages volume.

Facebook Pages are rarely visited after an initial “like.”  Community behaviors have not developed around Facebook’s interest graph. Many users consider all Facebook Page messages to be of low value—akin to spam—and therefore do not welcome higher volume.

You can pick up a follower from anywhere on Twitter, and they can drop off at any time, so you must keep the quality and flow of messages high to be successful. Other users on Twitter won’t put up with your lame tweets just because they went to junior high with you . . . you have to find some interesting “hook” to grow your audience, and you must keep the flow of information coming to keep them, not just place mirrors beside mirrors to make it seem like beautiful content goes on and on.

Now that we’ve analyzed the massive potential value of Twitter, it’s time to address the undeniable operational and structural missteps by the company to date. To take advantage of these opportunities, Twitter must fully embrace three things: third-party developers, Google and Microsoft, and the Open Web.

1) Embrace third-party developers.

Unfortunately, Twitter has lost its way with developers. Six months ago it was a critical piece of infrastructure that everyone wanted to use as the messaging layer for their applications. Now Twitter has turned its back on third party developers because the company thinks it is necessary to own the major clients (web, iPhone, Android, iPad). Hopefully the elevation of Feedburner’s Dick Costolo to CEO signals a shift back to the correct strategy: Don’t monetize the client, monetize the feed.

Here are three things Twitter could immediately do to mend fences with developers in a way that’s also good for the company:

• Embed ads in the search results and tweet stream API calls so any startup using the recently-opened firehose can monetize for Twitter and themselves too.
• Make the client attribution published with each tweet more prominent again to promote different Twitter clients.
• Open the graph API so any startup can innovate on the basis of Twitter’s extremely high-quality follow-based interest graph. For instance, one could imagine building a very accurate spam filter using Twitter’s graph.

These moves would not hurt Twitter at all, and in fact would kickstart their platform efforts versus Facebook Connect. And they’re very much compatible with promoted tweets, promoted accounts, and promoted trends—and the accompanying tools.

2) Embrace Google and Microsoft

Twitter has significant common interests with these two companies. They can help Twitter solidify its infrastructure foundation, invest a half billion dollars to make sure the company has the cash to scale, promote Twitter heavily as the open social network, and help Twitter monetize hugely as full-fledged partners.

3) Embrace the Web.

Twitter has the ability to power the open Web versions of Facebook Pages and Facebook Places, and that’s where the real money is. Don’t make brand advertisers have to think—provide a clear, open alternative to Facebook where they can promote their own Websites and brands instead of on Facebook Pages, and the dollars will start to flow.

The real money comes from two places: search and brand advertising on an open alternative to Facebook.

Memo to Twitter: with search, do not grow a brain. Partner with the best at Google and Microsoft, and you’ll get great AdSense, AdWords, display ads, and mobile ads without having to run all the infrastructure—and manage all the people!—to do it. They should be willing to give you 70% of the revenues now that you’re doing a billion searches a day.

Let’s say you can’t yet get the dime per search average that Google has spent a decade optimizing. Even if you only average 2 cents per search, that’s $20 million in revenue per day. Your cut? $14 million a day. That is real money: roughly $400 million a month, or $5 billion a year. And it grows as your number of searches and average revenue per search grow.

In addition to that, look to brand advertising increasingly moving online. TV money wants to move to the Internet, but right now Facebook Pages are the only place brand managers can make big spends. Come up with a cost-per-follow model similar to Facebook’s $1-per-like model. Heck, maybe even rev share with the consumers who are following, and give new users a tangible answer to the oft-expressed question, “Yeah, Twitter, I don’t get it… WTF?Who really cares?

If Facebook’s revenues are $2 billion and its valuation is $35 billion, then a Twitter with a potential $5 billion in annual revenues is massively undervalued.  Twitter employees and investors understand the potential, as evidenced by the fact that there are currently many unfilled bids on the Sharespost secondary market for shares at a $4.5 billion valuation.  If Twitter can improve its execution and learn to play well with others, this valuation will prove to be laughably low.

The "microblogging" site Twitter isn't just for complaining about work or broadcasting what you ate for lunch. In these tight times, some consumers find that a little tweeting is worth big savings.

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a social media application that allows you to quickly share information with your followers, or subscribers, via 140-character messages known as "tweets."

Many large corporations use Twitter to generate buzz and to develop relationships with customers. Hertz, Marriott and Carnival Cruise Lines all have Twitter accounts.

The upshot: You can connect directly to businesses that offer products or services you want. "I don't know of any site other than Twitter that gives you person-to-person interaction with brands you like," says Jenn Deering Davis, chief of community experience at Appozite, which runs CheapTweet, a Web site that aggregates discounts found on Twitter.

Because the information broadcast on Twitter is so public, companies are likely to pay attention when you tweet about them. That can enable you to reach a company representative with the ability to give you a discount.

Twitter traffic cops

"Most companies with a strong presence on Twitter are monitoring any mention of them on Twitter and will respond publicly," says Lani Rosales, co-founder and president of New Media Lab, a Texas marketing and advertising firm that specializes in social media. "Typically, corporations employ a dedicated social median who spends a great deal of time on Twitter and can be thought of as a traffic cop with access to the decision makers within the company."

Brooke Gorman of Detroit found that to be the case when she tweeted asking for a discount code for a stay at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids, Mich. In response, the hotel's marketing director contacted Gorman. "We worked out a good nightly rate," she says.

Twitter-specific deals

Many firms offer Twitter-specific coupons or discounts, Rosales says. A prime example is Dell Outlet, which sells refurbished Dell computers and tweets coupon codes and other offers. Meryl Evans of Plano, Texas, saved $100 and got free shipping on a refurbished laptop when she sent a direct message to DellOutlet on Twitter, asking for recommendations for a laptop that met her requirements. "They recommended the Studio 1537, and that's what I bought -- a red one too! I don't spend extra on stuff like color, but the deal paid off so I could treat myself," she says.

Twitter's ability to tap into the knowledge of many people at once can also help you save. If you follow the right people, they will tell you about discount codes or promotions that could take hours of Web searching to find on your own.

For instance, Kim Gorode, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was unsure how to get the best deal for a rental car on Priceline.com, so she tweeted some questions. A representative from online travel community BidLessTravel gave her bidding advice and also sent her a coupon to save 15 percent at Budget Rent A Car. Priceline didn't have any economy cars available, so she used the coupon. "I saved about $30, which was a tank of gas, so I consider that a pretty good deal," Gorode says.

Follow these tips to tweet to your pocketbook's best advantage:

Target your tweet. If a company is following you on Twitter, you can send a private direct message, as Evans did with Dell Outlet. If the company isn't one of your followers, you can address a public tweet to the company. To do so, use the @ symbol at the beginning of your tweet. For instance, if you want to finagle a deal with Marriott, begin it with "@MarriottIntl." Or, if you're polling your followers about deals, ensure that your tweet shows up in search results by using the # symbol. For instance, if you're looking for coupons from Hertz, end your tweet with #Hertz.

Be flexible. Even if you can't connect to your first-choice company, a tweet may still get you a good deal elsewhere. This past June, for instance, Gorman wanted to stay at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel for a weekend trip to Nashville, Tenn., but the hotel was out of her price range, and she had no luck when she tweeted asking if anyone had a discount code. "But instead I was contacted by a boutique hotel that offered me a rate $30 cheaper a night than the Internet rate," Gorman says.

Cast your net wide. Following your favorite brands is a good start, but you'll have more discounts at your fingertips if you also follow people whose passion is saving money. "There are a lot of bloggers who search for coupons and deals, and blog and tweet about them every day," Davis says. Examples include couponjunction and coupongeek. Follow them on Twitter at www.twitter.com/couponjunction and www.twitter.com/coupongeek. You can also follow services that tweet information about discount offers. CheapTweet collects deals broadcast on Twitter by retailers and consumers, then posts them on its Web site. Deals that are rated highly by users as well as those mentioned most often on Twitter make it to the top of the list. Follow them on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cheaptweet. RetailMeNot.com and Rollback.com post coupon codes you can use in online shopping, and both sites tweet about some of the codes.

A woman walks by a huge picture of North Korea's local market near the border village of China at Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Aug. 19, 2010. AP

Account ‘praises, promotes and glorifies’ North Korea, illegal information banned under country's National Security Law

The official Tweet Button has arrived; and while it’s as simple as a single click to use for the vast majority of end users, it brings scores of questions for casual and professional bloggers and other publishers.

How can I put a tweet button on my WordPress.com blog posts? How can I check the stats for my tweet button links? How do these buttons work with Blogger?

Here are a few quick pointers for how to use the official Tweet Buttons for fun and profit. If you have questions about how to integrate the buttons with a specific platform, be sure to let us know in the comments; the Mashable staff and community would love to help you out!
The Basic Code

First of all, Tweet Buttons work with a little bit of HTML and a little bit of JavaScript. If you go to Twitter’s page on the buttons, you’ll get an auto-generated snippet of code to pop into your site’s HTML wherever you’d like the button to appear. Alternatively, you can use an iFrame, remembering to use query string parameters to customize the button’s behavior. You can choose one of three design styles, as well.

If you’re relatively code-savvy and you feel like getting fancy, you can also build your own dang Tweet Button using this link (that’s twitter.com/share) and customizing the styling and behavior of the button itself any way you choose. Alternatively, if you’re not terribly code savvy or you’re using a platform that won’t let you edit too much of the code yourself, you can always use the same URL to create a text link that mimics the behavior of a Tweet Button:

Integrating With Your CMS

The cut-and-paste JavaScript method should work just fine for many mini-blog platforms. On Tumblr, just navigate to the customization interface, select the Theme tag, and edit the HTML, inserting Twitter’s code in any block where you want the Tweet Button to appear.

If you use Posterous, head to the Look and Feel section of your dashboard, click the Edit Theme button, then click the Advanced tab. From there, you should be able to click the link that reads “Enable advanced theming.” This will open up a different interface that will allow you to edit the code for your blog; again, just past the Tweet Button code anywhere you’d like the button to appear.

However, if you run a blog on WordPress.com, you probably already know that JavaScript doesn’t play very nicely with your content management system, and you might not be interested in building your own button from scratch. We’re happy to report that there’s a simple, built-in way to add Tweet Buttons to all your posts automatically. Simply open your Appearances menu, click Extras, and select the option that reads “Show a Twitter Tweet Button on my posts.” Many thanks to The Next Web for passing on this handy tip!

If your blog is on the Blogger platform, there’s a different little trick for you to try. Once you login to your Blogger Dashboard, you’ll need to navigate to the Design section, then select the option Edit HTML. Then, check the box reading “Expand Widget Templates.” Once you’re there, you’ll be able to paste in a code snippet, which will put a Tweet Button on all your blog posts. To grab the code and get details on how to edit some of the button’s parameters, head over to Blogger Plugins.

Extras: Browser Plugin and Stats

And if you’d like to have a Tweet Button with you at all times as you browse the web for great content from your fellow bloggers, here’s a handy Chrome extension that just might become a favorite. It functions just like Twitter’s official Tweet Button, being built on the same code, and it shows you the tweet count for each page as you navigate around the Internet.

Sadly, for the time being, there’s no real way to check the stats on tweets for your posts — not yet, anyhow. At Chirp, Twitter’s developer conference earlier this year, execs hinted that some interesting analytics packages were in the works. We’re speculating that taking control of retweets is a first step toward competing with companies like Bit.ly in offering stats and metrics on Twitter sharing of posts and pages. Perhaps there will be a free or inexpensive stats package for casual bloggers, small businesses and others who want more than just a tweet count, too.

Consider it a sign of the times, or even just success that Twitter now has a policy in place to handle ownership of a user's account once they've died.

As expected, interested parties need to send in several pieces of information about how they relate to that person before Twitter will take action.

Once the proper credentials have been sent to the company (via e-mail or snail mail), Twitter is then able to do one of two things: either remove a deceased user's account entirely, or provide an archive of all that user's tweets so family members can access them offline.

According to the new policy page, the steps required to get to either of these options include:

1. Your full name, contact information (including e-mail address), and your relationship to the deceased user.
2. The username of the Twitter account, or a link to the profile page of the Twitter account.
3. A link to a public obituary or news article.

Jeremy Toeman, who is the CEO and founder of Legacy Locker--a site that acts as a digital safe for things like Web site log-ins, and messages to family members that can be accessed after a person dies -- thinks Twitter's relationship requirements just aren't good enough. In a post on Legacy Locker's company blog Toeman notes:

"This policy lacks the concept of desired intent. What if an individual wanted their Twitter stream archived (and not just by the Library of Congress)? What if another user wanted it wiped out (a challenge with any service, we acknowledge) completely?

What about any situation wherein the desires of the user who dies are in conflict with those who support them, or a conflict within the surviving family members?"

Those certainly aren't easy questions, which is why Toeman suggests that users not rely on Twitter, or other online social services like it, to create more comprehensive postmortem policies that can factor in these kind of potential problems.

Instead, Toeman suggests supplementing those safeguards with the use of Toeman's own service, which lets users write down their log-in information, and explicit wishes for what to do with various online accounts after they've passed away.

Coming back around to Twitter's new policy though -- how does it compare to Facebook's, which has been around since October?

Facebook's system has two options for the deceased: either removing their account, or "memorializing" it. Unlike Twitter's options, memorializing means the account lives on in Facebook's system, and other Facebook members can interact with the deceased member's wall.

What's interesting about what Facebook put into place, compared to Twitter, is that there's still a great deal of emphasis put on privacy and what can be done with the information that user has posted to the service.

For instance, only that user's friends can still visit the profile or find it in Facebook's public search tool. And Facebook goes so far as to remove all status updates and contact information, as well as bar that user from showing up in the company's advertising or communication nags.

A more notable security measure on the Facebook front, compared to Twitter, is that it also keeps future log-ins of that user from occurring, meaning friends, family members, or any third parties that have access to the credentials cannot continue to use the account as they could have before.

This runs counter to the thinking over at Legacy Locker, but takes the onus off the company for having to juggle who has access, or in putting that responsibility back on Facebook.

Given the Web's relatively short existence and people's penchant for hopping from one social service to another, it's hard to imagine Facebook and Twitter remaining as important a part of users' lives 30 years from now as they are today. But that doesn't mean policies like the ones mentioned above shouldn't exist.

If anything they should be spelled out as clearly as possible, with lots of tools and options available for family members -- especially in the area of recapturing uploaded content.

Facebook has gone from 300 million to 500 million users in less than a year, with few signs of that slowing down, and with any growth like that (and to some degree, Twitter's as well) policies about a user's death can end up being just as important as those you agree to when you first sign up.

Musician Kanye West performs onstage during the 2010 BET Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium on June 27, 2010 in Los Angeles, California.

Kanye West doesn't like his new rug. The rapper appears to be redecorating his house — buying gold-encrusted goblets, coveting 19th century artwork, and turning his home "real Kingish," as he puts it. But the rugs are all wrong. "I specifically ordered Persian rugs with cherub imagery!!!" He wrote on Twitter on July 28. "What do I have to do to get a simple Persian rug with cherub imagery uuuuugh."

Oh, Kanye. We've missed you.

Hip-hop's most ridiculous rapper has been relatively quiet in recent months — ever since that 2009 MTV Music Video Awards outburst about Beyonce's "Single Ladies" video being better than Taylor Swift's (which, by the way, it was) and someone on his PR team told him to shut it until the backlash died down. Well, time's up. Kanye has a new album out in September — formerly called Good Ass Job, it's currently without a name — and the promotional firestorm is kicking into gear. Kanye has already performed at the BET Awards and appeared at the khaki-clad offices of Facebook and Twitter. Then, on July 28, he opened a Twitter account. And here's what we discovered: Kanye is funny.

His blog, Kanyeuniversecity.com, has made us laugh for years, but it was sometimes hard to tell if we were laughing with Kanye or at him. The all-caps rants — such as the January 2009 post that began with the phrase, YOOOO WHY WON'T YOU LET ME BE GREAT!!! and ended with the request that we all "LOOK HOW FRESH MY SUIT IS" — seemed to be accidentally hilarious. And when fans complained that he showed up two hours late for a 2008 Bonaroo performance, Kanye didn't apologize, he blogged an obscenity-laced rant and called everyone at Bonaroo "squid brains." Basically, Kanye seemed like a diva. But on Twitter, he's different. He's more sarcastic, even tongue-in-cheek. Maybe we've had Kanye all wrong.

According to Twitter, here are some things Kanye West has done in the past two days:

• Flown on a private jet

• Complained that the private jet he flew on was too small.

• Called himself king and then posted a photo of one of Napoleon's thrones

• Drank wine out of a gold goblet

• Bemoaned the lack of cherubs

• Listened to the "William Tell Overture" ("Classical music is tight, yo")

• Listened to Leonard Bernstein. ("[His] flute player is snapping write now!!! Are those Christmas bells?")

• Put fresh flowers in his house

• Explained what it was like to date a model: "I had to learn to like small dogs and cigarettes"

• Asked for decorating advice: "Is the Versace sofa too hood? Might need to cover it in plastic!!!"

• Ordered his salmon cooked medium instead of medium well ("I didn't want to ruin the magic")

• Posted photos of Louis XIV's credenza

• Asked someone to give him this horse

Close to 300,000 people are now following his Twitter account and looking at his pictures of furniture. The number of people Kanye is following? Zero.

It seems that Kanye West is doing a tour of the Silicon Valley’s nerd hubs. After freestyling over at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California, the other day — and subsequently joining Twitter  yesterday — he jammed on over to Twitter Central and treated Biz Stone and Co. to a performance as well.

As pointed out yesterday, Kanye West has an almost embattled relationship with the micoblogging service. Last year, he busted out with the following rant on his blog — which now only yields an “Error 404″ when you try to locate it. Regardless, here it is:

“I DON’T HAVE A F*CKING TWITTER… WHY WOULD I USE TWITTER??? I ONLY BLOG 5 PERCENT OF WHAT I’M UP TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. I’M ACTUALLY SLOW DELIVERING CONTENT BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME AND IF I’M NOT AND I’M JUST LAYING ON A BEACH I WOULDN’T TELL THE WORLD. EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS I NEED LESS OF. THE PEOPLE AT TWITTER KNOW I DON’T HAVE A F*CKING TWITTER SO FOR THEM TO ALLOW SOMEONE TO POSE AS ME AND ACCUMULATE OVER A MILLION NAMES IS IRRESPONSIBLE AND DECEITFUL TO THERE FAITHFUL USERS. REPEAT… THE HEADS OF TWITTER KNEW I DIDN’T HAVE A TWITTER AND THEY HAVE TO KNOW WHICH ACCOUNTS HAVE HIGH ACTIVITY ON THEM. IT’S A F*CKING FARCE AND IT MAKES ME QUESTION WHAT OTHER SO CALLED CELEBRITY TWITTERS ARE ACTUALLY REAL OR FAKE. HEY TWITTER, TAKE THE SO CALLED KANYE WEST TWITTER DOWN NOW …. WHY? … BECAUSE MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS LOUD!!!!!!!!!”

Now it seems that West has full-on embraced the service, even noting once — in the midst of a torrent of tweets — “awwwww man this is addictive I might get in trouble on here!!!!” So much for only blogging “5%” of what he’s up to.

When it was written about his entrance on to Twitter yesterday, West had around 20,000 followers — now he has 228,862.

What do you think of the rapper’s reversal of his previous opinion? Do you think his embracing social media can save his tarnished image? Let us know.

“140-character status updates to a network of followers.” That makes Twitter sound simple. But in fact, the social information platform has grown to be much more complex than its 140 character-limit suggests. The site not only connects people, but has also become an intricate information resource for everything from news to shopping deals.

Yet in many ways, the site’s actual functionality hasn’t exactly kept up with user interactions. Twitter’s interface has remained simple, which is why a lot of tweets take place through third-party sites and applications that make the experience more useful.

We’ve compiled a list of the top 20 third-party websites for making your Twitter experience more useful and easier to manage. Although this does not include the many desktop or mobile applications that are available for Twitter, we hope that it will make your browsing experience more enjoyable as you dive into the Twittersphere. Also, as a one-stop shop for Twitter apps, check out OneForty. We’d love to hear what’s missing from this list, including sites that you find useful in the comments.

Web Applications: HootSuite and Brizzly

With its recent update and HTML5 support, social media dashboard HootSuite has become one of the most useful Twitter web applications not only for individual users, but teams managing several accounts. In some ways, HootSuite has the look and feel of TweetDeck with the big differentiator of it being a web-based application, not requiring any downloads.

HootSuite enables you to update to multiple accounts at once, and supports Twitter, Facebook profiles and pages, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, WordPress, MySpace and Foursquare. Similar to TweetDeck, these features make the application useful for maintaining your overall social presence. Moreover, you can allow other users to jointly update an account, integrate Google Analytics for your stats and schedule tweets and updates ahead of time.

The HTML5 interface enables you to easily include an image or file with your update by simply dragging it from the desktop into the message box, which will automatically upload the file with an “Ow.ly” shortener for sharing. The fast loading of the dashboard is perhaps one of the most notable improvements, making the site more usable for users who manage dozens of accounts. If you don’t like Hootsuite, you should also check out Seesmic, which has a lot of similar features, but a different interface.

Brizzly has a different functionality from Hootsuite, but may be more appealing because of its simple interface. Brizzly is specifically focused on Twitter and no other networks, which makes the experience somewhat less distracting. It also includes subtle, but worthy features like automatically expanded URLs, which shows you exactly where you are going if you click, and displays replies and direct messages in a threaded form, making it easier to follow the conversation.

Filtering Through the Noise: TwitterTimes and Paper.li

After you log in with your Twitter username, The Twitter Tim.es creates a page that displays stories by filtering through what the people you follow have tweeted the most in a more presentable stream that is updated regularly. Though the design of the interface isn’t the best, The Twitter Times is effective in showing you who has tweeted the story along with the story headline and blurb to give you an idea of what it’s about. In some cases, the site shows you the full text of the post. It also gives you options to view popular stories on Twitter from media sources and Twitter Lists.

The site helps you filter through the noise and keep up with what is trending among the people you follow. If you’ve been off the grid for a couple hours, you can get a sense of what people are sharing and the news that is important among your Twitter community at any given moment.

Paper.li has similar functions but a different presentation. Users can create their own “newspaper” based on who they follow. Users can also create newspapers based on a Twitter hash tag or a Twitter list. Instead of a stream, Paper.li presents content by creating a custom homepage that separates content based on popularity and topics. The site does a great job of making the content visually appealing by including thumbnails, YouTube videos and blurbs.

Trends: TweetMeme and Trendistic

TweetMeme is best recognized for its bright green buttons on websites (like this one), enabling users to easily tweet the article they’re reading. All of the information is collected at TweetMeme from across the web, giving a good sense as to what is trending on Twitter. The site enables you to filter by categories and topics (entertainment, gaming, etc.) and to showcase the most retweeted links. You also get a brief blurb from the link being shared and are able to filter by news articles, images and videos.

Trendistic also works well, but specifically for bigger Twitter trends and how they have performed over time. The site gives you an idea of current trends and presents them in a graphic format, showing you the percentage that the trends account for at any give time. For example, on July 8, “heat” accounted for 1.8% of all tweets at 9 p.m. during LeBron James’ big announcement that he would be joining the Miami Heat. You can also sort the trend based on timeframe, and get a code to embed the chart on your site.

Twitter Lists: Tlists and PubliTweet

Tlists is a Twitter Lists directory where you can search by list topic, view popular lists, and create your own lists. Users can also apply to join a list, and the creator is then notified and can approve them to join the list depending on whether they are a good fit. Lists are a great curating tool in rounding up like-minded tweeters in one place. It functions not only as a directory, but also as a stream of useful information around a specific subject. But after you have that list, how can you make it more presentable?

PubliTweet takes your Twitter Lists and makes them a lot more useful. It does this by providing a nice embed code that presents the lists in a handy stream that includes the text of the tweet, headline, thumbnail and blurb of the article they are sharing. You can take the code and plant the list anywhere on your site. Not only does PubliTweet make your Twitter Lists more useful visually, the tweets are also more shareable through convenient Twitter, Facebook and e-mail share buttons.

Hashtag Stats: TwapperKeeper

TwapperKeeper and Trendistic are great tools for getting some basic stats on how much a specific hashtag on Twitter is performing. Though there are several other sites that give you more options (often for a price), these two sites are simple to use in getting a general overview. TwapperKeeper lets you create an archive for tracking a specific hashtag, keyword, or username and collects the data and the number of mentions. If you’re interested in getting a sense for how many times a specific hashtag was tweeted, it gives you a total number, along with the ability to search precisely through the archive that you created, listing the recent tweets that have been tracked. The beautiful part is that you can also export the data and analyze it to your liking.

Embedding Tweets: QuoteURL

Though Twitter released a script that allows interactive tweet embedding, the code has had some issues and isn’t always ideal. QuoteURL seems to be the best option for creating embedable tweets. The app enables you to add multiple tweet URLs and embed them into a post. You can also embed an individual one, but if you want to get a stream of tweets to embed, this is the tool to use.

The application gives you a nice, clean embed such that users can see the text of the tweet, but it also preserves the interactivity of being able to reply, click on the username, or any links within the tweet. Essentially, it mirrors the experience a user has engaging with individual tweets on Twitter. This makes your tweets a bit more useful than just a screenshot, however, many sites and blogs have yet to adopt it because the embed doesn’t show up in blogger’s RSS feeds.

Location: MapMash.in and Monitter

Though Twitter has launched its own location feature with Twitter Places, which will likely be expanded in the future, there are several other sites that showcase location-based tweets. Local Twitter Trends displays trends in major cities and allows you to click on the keywords to see what people are talking about. It’s very simple and to the point, giving you an easy way to track the conversation in a specific place.

However, if you want to track news on specific topics, monitter might be the better choice. This site allows you to not only search for a specific location, it also lets you track three specific searches within that area — in real time — and displays the results in an easy-to-view, three-column format. You can also adjust the radius of the area that you’re searching.

Discovery: WeFollow and Twellow

WeFollow is a Twitter directory from Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, that emphasizes topics that users associate themselves with. Anyone can easily add themselves to the directory by simply tweeting out the hashtags that will make their usernames searchable in the directory. The site is great for discovering new users that you might share common interests with. It also enables you to view the top users in each category.

Twellow’s tagline is the “Twitter Yellow Pages,” and aims to be the directory to search for Twitter users based on industries and topics like biotechnology, food, home and garden, etc. In a lot of ways it is the ultimate directory for Twitter, also enabling you to search for users based on area. It also offers a very useful search engine.

Influence: Klout and TwitterCounter

Type a username into Klout and you can get a sense for how influential that user is on Twitter and their behavior. Klout gives you a score out of 100 based on reach, amplification and network after being compiled from numbers like the total retweets, message reach, unique mentions, retweeters, and more. The cool feature is the influence matrix, which defines the user and gives you a brief description of their behavior on Twitter. Klout also tells you who the user influences and is influenced by, as well as a topic summary of their tweets.

TwitterCounter tracks the top accounts and lists on Twitter based on how many followers they have and gives you some more basic numbers of influence based on growth and rank of the user’s account. The site provides some basic graphs tracking the number of the follower, following, and tweet growth over time, even setting a predicting number for where you will be in the future based on your average growth. It also enables you to easily compare several accounts at once, and build a handy widget for your site that tracks and displays recent Twitter visitors to your site.

Photos and Videos: TwitPic and yfrog

Among the first sites to make sharing photos on Twitter easy and popular, Twitpic is still one of the best. It’s also useful to browse through the public timeline of photos uploaded, and now you can even tie location to the photos you upload. It also lets you group photos into events, which is great for organization.

Yfrog lets you not only upload photos, but videos as well. The site is also extremely useful and easy to navigate. One simple Yfrog feature that Twitpic fails to include is a site search. Yfrog allows you to sort videos and pictures based on popularity, and showcases top search trends on the site. You can also easily share the photos across platforms and get an embed code for the image. Here’s an example of Glee star Mark Salling’s Yfrog post about a recent big catch:

Polls: PollDaddy and TwtPoll

PollDaddy has an easy integration for creating a quick poll that can be easily distributed on Twitter. The setup is easy. You create a poll question, select the answers (multiple choice, etc.) and the order you want them to appear, enter your username and post it to Twitter. The site sends a nice clean tweet with a link to the poll where users can vote. After setting the poll up, it is also quite easy to embed the poll into a post. It’s also worth mentioning PollDaddy has a great WordPress plugin that enables you to easily create polls within the content management system.

TwtPoll is similar to PollDaddy but has a different interface and allows users to answer questions through different formats, such as text, images or videos, Twitter handles or addresses.

It takes only a quick glance at the most “faved” and retweeted updates to know that tweeters love the funny. A good 140-character quip is a jewel in any Twitter feed, and the network has impacted humor for pros and amateurs alike.

If you tweet with the right crowd, Twitter can be a hilarious non-stop party. And if you follow professional comedians who use Twitter well, you’ve got a free, live, unfiltered stand-up show right in your feed. Many humor pros have used the medium to reignite their careers and reach new fans.

But is Twitter humor different from “traditional” humor? And what happens when the television, publishing, and performance industries are set aside in favor of direct “social” comedy? We spoke with some hilarious tweeters to get their take on these trends, and on what it means to get a laugh in the digital age.

The One-Liner Renaissance

You’ve only got 140 characters to fit the setup, punchline, and some breathing room for retweets. Depending on your comedic style, Twitter might be the perfect medium, or your greatest challenge. In either case, the cap has propagated a culture of “one-liners” or “riffs,” and the funniest of the Twitterati have been hitting them home for some time.

“The people that get a lot of play [on the funniest Twitterers lists] are people who keep it really simple,” said comedian and writer Paul F. Tompkins, who hosted VH1’s Best Week Ever and tweets regularly in between stand-up gigs. “In that arena, it’s so digestible. You get it: This is a joke.”

“Even the longest stories in your act should be succinct,” said stand-up comedian and writer Steve Hofstetter. “Twitter’s focus on the economy of words is a good thing.”

For pros who have been joking in other media, it takes some work to adapt. “I enjoy the challenge of, How can I sound like me in 140 characters?” said Tompkins.

The writers and performers of the 90s cult comedy TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 have found Twitter to be the perfect channel for their brand of one-liner comedy. Their more recent venture, RiffTrax, is their digital way of talking back to bad movies, and their promotion is highly social.

“We have been working in the quip business for quite a while, so [Twitter] works well for us,” said Michael J. Nelson of RiffTrax. “But I think it’s allowed people to find their comedic ‘voices’ in an environment somewhat safer than a bar. Fewer Piña Coladas being blended during your punchlines. Less flying food.”

“It’s amazing how much people love delivering one-liners. It’s like crack,” said Kevin Murphy of RiffTrax. “You could say it’s cultivated a more literary form of one-liner. Hasn’t cut down on the volume of dick jokes, though.”

“It’s not surprising that a big share of riffs we put into a RiffTrax movie are 140 characters or less. WE HAVE BEEN TRAINING ALL OUR LIVES FOR THIS,” Murphy added with capitalized emphasis in an e-mail interview.

The flip side is, there’s no filter. The publishers, editors and producers through which we have traditionally gotten our comedy don’t exist on Twitter. So you get the good with the bad.

“Good: There’s a lot of genuine wit out there, from many different and unexpected quarters,” said Bill Corbett, the third comic brain behind RiffTrax. “Bad: The Tweet-groaners that are trying way too hard, and still seem too long at 140 characters. So it’s a renaissance just like the actual Renaissance: Amazing art, but with occasional outbreaks of bubonic plague.”

Social Performance

Funny, audience-building tweeters, as well as established Twitter-savvy celebs can click a button and send laughs out to hundreds, even thousands of fans. There’s no gig to arrange, book to publish, or episode to shoot. It’s become a very direct and personal form of comedy for many writers.

“I think the ‘publish yourself, whenever you want!’ aspect of Twitter greatly appeals to professional writers and comedians,” said Corbett. “Most of us have the faith, and perhaps the arrogance, to believe that we are almost always worth hearing or reading. Most of us are mistaken, of course,” he added, including himself in this category. “The idea of playing whenever you want to an ever-waiting audience is rather addictive.”

Tompkins views it as a much more social experience than performing via traditional channels. “I end up thinking of it in way more intimate terms because people are talking to me directly when [they] respond to what I’ve written. I don’t think of it as 50,000+ people expectantly looking at me,” he said. “It just feels to me like I’m another person on Twitter. I read other people’s stuff, so it’s like, ‘Here’s my contribution to what everybody’s talking about.’”

The real game-changer for performers seems to be in the dialogue. “One of the things that’s been so great is to find out that my fans are funny. The people that like me are actually funny people themselves,” said Tompkins. “That’s so satisfying and so flattering. It’s like, ‘Wow, smart, funny people like what I do.’”

But Hofstetter has reservations about how much Twitter is impacting traditional comic reach. “Well, most comedians aren’t playing to thousands on [Twitter]. I don’t think it’s changing the industry, as it’s exceedingly rare for someone to get famous [from] Twitter. Typically, the famous people have a big audience and the non-famous people do not.”

The Perfect Marketing Channel

Plenty of businesses look for ways to be fun or personal on social networks in order to build a market for their products. For many tweeting comedians, the medium is the message, and snagging “LOLs” on Twitter is both an art and a marketing strategy.

“It’s changed my way of looking at promotion, really,” said Tompkins. “How do I boil down my essence in this very limited amount of space to give people an idea of me and the way that I’m funny to maximum effect? It’s been an enormous boon for my career.”

Tompkins noted that Facebook Groups come in handy as well for organizing attendees at his live performances. When enough fans commit to a show in a particular city, he’ll book it and perform for them. Twitter is a way to drive people back to the Facebook Groups, and get the word out about committed performance dates.

“There’s always conjecture with social networks about ‘how long is it going to last,’ and ‘people are done with that one, now they’re on to this one.’ For people like me, it’s not all one or the other. It’s using all of them in conjunction with one another to cover all your bases. And it’s fairly easy to do,” Tompkins said.

In addition to their in-studio work, the RiffTrax crew also perform “live riffs” on movies which are simulcasted to theaters nationwide. Much of their Twitter engagement — which includes contests, giveaways, etc. — revolves around these events, and the performers tend to get the most play when tweeting with fans from their personal accounts.

“I don’t have huge numbers of followers, but I suspect a large percentage of those I do have actually care, at least a little bit,” said Nelson. “So people are happy to hear when we have events coming up.”

“We announce to our tweeps, and then they spread the word,” Murphy added. “People link up, meet up at events, tell each other about the surprise live events we’ve been known to do. It’s a hell of a lot more fun and exciting for people than looking at an ad.”

Corbett concurred. “I wouldn’t expect people to follow or enjoy a constant commercial, but I think it’s fine to promote your work in the context of a mostly for-fun account. Mike, Kevin and I all seem to follow that pattern, actually, whereas the RiffTrax account is mostly business.”

But the line between performance and promotion can be a delicate one.

“I have people unfollow me, and they’re like, ‘It’s too much self-promotion, I’m just here for the comedy, so I’m unfollowing you,’” said Tompkins. “So what you’re saying to me is, ‘Hey, you’re not giving me enough comedy for free, so I’m bailing on you.’”

“[T]he relative anonymity allows people to heckle you and run,” Nelson added.

For comic tweeters, it’s about finding the right balance. “We never really stay too serious in any of the four accounts. That would be just plain weird, given what we do,” said Corbett.

The Culture of Riff

One trend that has arisen in snarkier Twitter circles is the habit of talking back to popular culture in real-time. Tweeters riff on live television, sports, and the news regularly. And depending on who you follow, the results can be hilarious.

“Oh, I love it,” said Tompkins. “I think of Oscar night for something like that. To see a bunch of funny people all making comments in real-time as this thing’s happening — that’s like a gigantic party with the funniest people you could imagine. It’s great.”

“It has made live television relevant as fodder, I suppose. Though I’ve worked in TV, I’m delighted to see anything that makes it less passive and brain-deadening,” said Corbett. “Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of a culture where everyone riffs everything all the time. It could get so self-referential that the universe swallows itself. On the more positive side, people seem happy when they’re creative and interacting with each other, especially for some laughs. It’s hard to think of that as all bad.”

“[I]t gives the audience a voice of their own,” added Murphy. “And that’s really damn cool.”

The “LOL” vs. Real Live Laughter

For the average humor-tweeter who doesn’t have access to a comedy club stage or her own television show, 140-character accolades will have to suffice. But for the current generation of pros who cut their teeth on stage and screen, a retweet or an “LOL” is nice, but not quite the same as the real thing.

“It’s great to hear that people are laughing and retweeting, but a laugh from an audience is something special — sort of a neutron star of delight,” said Murphy.

“Nothing beats a real, live laugh for maximum joy in the moment, unless that laugh is from a mad scientist bent on world domination. Then it’s a little awkward,” Corbett added.

But all the comics we spoke to noted that the retweet has become something special for humorists — something that doesn’t have an exact real-world equivalent.

“What’s really gratifying to me is when people pass on the things that I’ve written,” said Tompkins. “I’m really flattered that people are passing my ‘message of comedy’ along.”

“A retweet is more gratifying than a laugh,” Hofstetter added. “It’s the equivalent of someone re-telling one of your jokes after a show. And not botching it.”

Time will tell if comics who start out in social media (on Twitter, blogs, and the like) will ever be able to reach the mainstream audiences that their predecessors did through television, film and print. We’ve already seen some crossover, and we expect more of it as newer artists use social media as a starting point, rather than a supplementary channel. For the moment though, entertainment, like all industries, straddles the line as it sorts out its digital future.

To wit, Tompkins added, “As much as I love the Internet, nothing beats real life