For those of you that dont know what twitter is, its definately one of the following according to Google Definitions:

• chitter: make high-pitched sounds, as of birds
• chirrup: a series of chirps
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
• a succession of chirps as uttered by birds; to utter a succession of bird's chirps; (of a person) to talk in an excited or nervous manner
  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/twitter
• twittery - that twitters
  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/twittery
• twittering - twitters fundamental question is “what are you doing?” This is can be in its most simplistic for a one or two word answer, but when developed this is a tool that lends itself to developing understanding and potential starting collaboration.
  edorigami.edublogs.org/2007/11/05/blooms-digital-taxonomy/

If you're still not sure which one of the above we are likely to be talking about, the following top twitter tools recommendations will not be of much use to you at the present time.

Productivity Tools

PowerTwitter.Me

This new Firefox add-on allows you to view video & music embedded in Twitter post (AKA Tweets),  view & share images, search and track tweets, and see whats currently popular. furthermore you can also do cool stuff like Facebook updates, expanded urls, hashtags and peek.

Platform: Firefox. Chrome & Safari coming soon.

Twitter: @powertwitter

TwitterTools

Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

Twitter Tools integrates with Twitter by giving you the following functionality:

* Archive your Twitter tweets (downloaded every 10 minutes)

* Create a blog post from each of your tweets

* Create a daily or weekly digest post of your tweets

* Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post

* Post a tweet from your sidebar

* Post a tweet from the WP Admin screens

* Pass your tweets along to another service (via API hook)

Platform: Wordpress

Twitter Search Box Plugin

What's the one thing you wish you had more than anything else in theworld? That's right, a Twitter plugin for Firefox's quicksearch.Because the only thing holding you back from total personal fulfillmentis making it EASIER to Twitter away the day.  

Platform: Firefox

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air desktop application, currently in publicbeta, that looks to capture the abundance of social media and displayit in a unique columned user interface.

In recent months there has been an explosion in social media withhundreds of services offering an abundance of information to themasses. TweetDeck is a realtime application that allows users tomonitor that information in a single concise view. TweetDeck currentlyintegrates services from Twitter, Twitscoop, 12seconds, Stocktwits andnow Facebook.

Platform: Mac OSX, Windows (XP & Vista), Linux

Twitter: @TweetDeck

HootSuite

HootSuite is the ultimate Twitter toolbox. With HootSuite, you canmanage multiple Twitter profiles, add multiple editors, pre-scheduletweets, and measure your success.

HootSuite lets you manage your entire Twitter experience from one easy-to-use interface.

Creatingan account is easy. Enter your Twitter username and password, and add aprofile for each Twitter account you wish to manage. Got more than onetweeter per profile? Add multiple editors. 

Thenget going! Post live or pre-schedule tweets. Check stats and analyticsright from the dashboard. Search Twitter for keyword information. Reply@ and Direct Message the folks in your conversation. Do all this andmore from one fantastic interface.

Platform: Web based

Twitter: @HootSuite

Networking Tools

TweetWheel 

You may have a 100 or even 1000 followers. Which of your followers knoweach other? Tweet Wheel helps you find out visually. Note, if you havea LOT of followers, this will take a while.

The account I searched on had around 300 followers and it looks likeTweet Wheel limits the display to 100 or so. There’s only so much roomon the screen, and the Twitter API may be a limiting factor here.

Platform: Web based

TwerpScan

It'll check the number of followers of everyoneon your contact list, the number of people they are following, and theratio between those. If the person is following more than (n) people(can be customised), and has a followers-to-following ratio higher than 1:(m) (can be customised), you'll be notified by a link.

Platform: Web based 

Twitter: @twerpscan / @carlo

Twitt(url)ly

Twitturly tracks the URLs flying around the Twitterverse and provides aquick, real-time view of what people are talking about on Twitter.

Each time someone tweets a URL to their followers on Twitter, Twitturlytakes note of it and applies it as a vote for that URL. The more votesa URL has in the last 24 hours, the higher it ranks on Twitturly'sTop100. It's that simple.

Whether people link directly to the final URL, use TinyURL, Snipurl(snurl), or any other URL shortening service, we always count the"votes" correctly because our spiders actually visit every single sitebefore it gets displayed here.

To keep things fresh and the quality high, the Twitturly Top100 onlyshows the 100 most popular URLs over the last 24 hours. The 24 hoursare constantly sliding and because of some extra smart algorithms, youalways see what people are currently talking about. And yes, to preventgaming of our site, those extra smart algorithms catch pretty much allof the spam and robots on twitter too.

Platform: Web based

Twitter: @twitturly / @jstrellner / @alum / @tonyfonseca

Do you use Twitter? Do you have any other tools and/or applications we have missed? If so please let us know your thoughts on Twitter and any tools you have used. Any recommendations will be reviewed and added to the list above.