By: Hillel Fuld

Working as Community Manager for a company with millions of users is not a simple task. You need to walk the fine line of being overly professional and therefore boring, and on the flip side, too personal and amateurish. Richard Barley, the Community Manager of Tweetdeck does this perfectly. Anyone who has ever had a question about Tweetdeck knows they can ask him on Twitter and expect a response within seconds. Richard keeps his audience interested and displays a high level of professionalism in his work.

I have been in touch with Richard for close to a year now and must have asked or forwarded hundreds of questions his way, never once did he ignore a question or brush it off with a “leave me alone” kind of answer.

With all the 3rd party developers out there as well as the new Twitter, the competition is starting to heat up, but I am pretty confident that the majority of Tweetdeck users, myself included, will not abandon this application. The reason is that on top of a superior product created by some amazing developers who continue to innovate, the Tweetdeck team cares about their users and their high level of customer support on and off Twitter proves that clearly.

Thanks Richard for this interview, I know you’re busy, so it is very much appreciated.

The following is the interview I conducted with Richard:

1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you end up at Tweetdeck?

I was working as a consultant for a company based in Maidenhead and had to spend a lot of time staying in the UK (I live in France…). During the evenings I would be tweeting from TweetDeck, a product that I really enjoyed using, and put some of my “spare” time to good use by helping out other users and creating some FAQs about TweetDeck. Given that, at this point, TweetDeck was a one-man operation, my help articles soon became the “missing manual” for TweetDeck.

Eventually Iain spotted me performing my unofficial support role in the evenings and approached me with a view to joining as official Community Manager. Did someone say “Dream job”? Of course it needed no consideration and I joined the company shortly after.

2. We just read today that Tweetdeck is the leading Twitter client after the site and the other apps that are made by Twitter itself. How do you explain Tweetdeck’s success?

I think a large part of TweetDeck’s success is down to the attitude that permeates the whole company of just keeping our heads down and doing a great job. There are no rock stars in the company, no egos, no celebrities. We’re a small but very focused team who have never chased headlines or courted publicity. Instead we have just continued to build products that do a great job and that people seem to love. While that is working for us, we’re going to keep on doing it.

3. I think everyone wants to know how Tweetdeck as a company is going to monetize.
Yes indeed, everyone does seem to want to know this for some reason. Fortunately we have some great investors and therefore have the luxury of time. We have never dived blindly into anything, but have always taken a more considered standpoint. And this approach is reflected in our attitude to monetisation. Of course we will start making money, but how and when is still something that we are carefully considering.

4. What are your thoughts on location? Is Foursquare, GoWalla, or Facebook Places going to win this race and will it be around in five years or is it just a fad?

Considering the changes in technology and attitudes over the last five years, predicting anything further than the next few months is impossible. On the current location “race” though, it is hard to imagine the might of Facebook being overcome by anyone. I would imagine it will be a battle between to the innovation of the smaller players compared to the sheer weight of Facebook numbers. Hopefully the niche players will provide Facebook with enough competition in the space that the consumer wins in the end.

5. How do you think Twitter should monetize its business?

I think so long as Twitter find ways to monetise their own business without it restricting the innovation of other businesses that rely on their services, then they can pretty much do whatever they like. Their forays into “promoted” items seem like a good first step on the ladder, but I don’t think we’ve seen everything they’ve got just yet.

6. You just recently released an Android app, what do you think about the issue of charging for Android apps? Developers are facing a challenge with that.

For many developers, charging for apps is totally the right way to go and good luck to them. Our approach is that we want as many people to use our products as possible, a goal that would not be achievable if we charged to download our products. The fact that this also avoids us getting caught in the complexities of the Android Market charging policy is a fortuitous coincidence…

7. What mobile phone do you use and why?

Having been a Nokia fanboy for many years, the N97 finally killed off my love for that platform. This coincided with getting the job at TweetDeck, so an iPhone 3GS was the logical choice at that point. For all its restrictions and quirks, I love the iPhone and still do. There are no surprises there, you pretty much always know what you’re going to get, even though it may not aways be what you want!

Then as we started to develop our Android app I obtained a Nexus One and I found a new love  The Android platform ticks so many boxes for me in terms of flexibility and features, even if it suffers from a more complex user interface. Once we had a workable app for Android I started using it as my main phone every day and have never felt the need to switch back to the iPhone.

8. What are your thoughts on the tablet market including the iPad and the new Samsung Tab? Are they going to kill the netbook and laptop industries?

I don’t think tablets will “kill” netbooks and laptops, but they will certainly make an impact as tablet prices come down and specs go up. Tablets will certainly appeal to some people, and I could certainly see one working well as a pick-up-and-use device in out living room. But netbooks and laptops will always have their place, especially in normal every-day homes. The tablet revolution may come eventually, but it will be a long, long time before the laptop old guard surrenders completely.

9. What would be the most important piece of advice you would give a new developer, whether Web or mobile?

As I’m no developer, this is maybe not an easy question for me to answer. As a user I guess i would say: its OK to be cool, but only if it works. I would rather your app be simple but awesome, rather than cool but trash

10. Since you are the Community Manager for Tweetdeck and not the developer, let me ask you to describe your job on a daily basis. Do you think social media is changing the world of marketing and how?

My job as Community Manager has several facets, which make it the best job I have ever had.

There is the support angle – reaching out to people on Twitter with answers to questions or cries for help. We (myself and @conradoldcorn) also operate the TweetDeck Support site, where we answer support tickets, respond to forum posts and ensure that we have a good supply of support documentation at all times.

There is also the content angle – authoring or editing posts for the TweetDeck blog and acting as the “voice” of TweetDeck. While we are a team of many individuals, maintaining a common tone in our products and official communications is an important part of my role.

On the flip side of this is the idea of being an advocate for the users. While we have our own roadmap and our own ideas about our products and services, is important that we listen to the opinions of our users to ensure that we are always moving in the right direction. It is not unusual for me to stubbornly stand my ground over issues that I know are important to our users, when the rest of the team is trying to do something different. It’s okay though, they don’t stay cross for long

As someone who uses TweetDeck constantly every day I spend a lot of time testing new features, which is always exciting. Of course I love to tease my followers with such snippets too…

And there are a hundred other little tasks that make up my days too, such as finding and sharing interesting and relevant articles and blog posts around the web and reaching out and commenting where people have taken the time to blog about TweetDeck. Seeing my role as a “marketing” role, without social media it would be impossible to perform. Without the likes of Twitter and Facebook, how else would I reach out to over half a million people instantly?

From a broader perspective, marketing in general is certainly being changed by social media. However, for every great Facebook pages or clever viral videos, there seem to still be a hundred ill-conceived Twitter spam campaigns. It seems to be a case of two steps forward and one step back, but at least its heading in the right direction.

By: Hillel Fuld

Not sure if you heard yet but Twitter invited pretty much every single blogger (well almost) to their headquarters yesterday for an announcement. There was a lot of speculation about what they were going to announce, but I don’t think anyone hit the jackpot. Twitter is revamping the Web interface completely so it resembles the iPad Twitter app, which I reviewed here. The new Twitter will be rolling out gradually but eventually everyone will be using it.

Here is Scoble’s video of the announcement if you want to watch how it went down.

Here is the thing with this announcement, it is a lot more than just a new redesign, it really does change everything. One of the most blatant characteristics about the micro blogging service, and what separates it from other social networks is its absolute simplicity. Twitter is a platform with an API upon which thousands of developers have created applications.

In terms of Twitter the company, this simplicity is a two edged sword. On the one hand, the Web interface is completely idiot proof so anyone can sign up for the service and begin tweeting immediately. When the user becomes more of a  Twitterholic (it happens to the best of us), they can switch over to using a more advanced client such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic. These clients are much more developed and have many more features than the Web interface but they are not for everyone. So that is the advantage of the Twitter interface we have been using until now and the down side of the new design. It will be more complicated for some but more importantly it signifies a change in Twitter’s philosophy of keeping it simple.

On the flip side, I am no expert on this stuff, but I am assuming that since a quarter of the 90 million tweets sent every day include links to articles, pictures, or videos, every time a user has to click on one of those links and thereby leave Twitter, the overall traffic to Twitter.com sees the effects. With the new Twitter that will resemble an app, the links will all be displayed in line as part of the stream, which will obviously boost Twitter’s traffic significantly. I am assuming this is what lead to the decision to launch the new design along with bringing it up to speed with the best of the Twitter clients out there.

Here is the thing, I am not sure this is going to work. I know I am personally not going to stop using Tweetdeck based on the design Twitter announced yesterday. Putting aside the debate about native apps vs Web apps, Tweetdeck (and Seesmic Desktop 2) still blow the Web interface out of the water. I can give many examples of why this is, and the truth is, I have not even tried the new interface yet (Twitter, send it to me already) but there is no way it is going to be as customizable as the average Twitter client.

To name one concrete manifestation of these shortcomings, take Twitter Lists. Many people, myself included follow a whole lot more people than they can ever really follow. What I mean is that I follow close to 11,000 people but I do not read every single tweet sent by those people. I set up lists of people I really enjoy and connected with, and I focus primarily on these lists. That takes my 11,000 people that I follow and turns it into  around 600 or so. A lot easier to manage.

With Tweetdeck, I deleted my All Friends column since as I said it would be impossible to follow and added my list there instead. That is not going to be possible on Twitter.com. In fact, it is even worse than that. On many Twitter iPad apps, you have one click access to your lists, on Twitter.com, at least according to Scoble’s blog post from the event, accessing your lists on the new Twitter will involve multiple steps. That to me is a deal breaker.

As I said, I have not tested out the new Twitter yet so some might say I am jumping the gun with formulating an opinion about it, but based on the initial reviews, the video below, and what I expect to see, I am pretty sure many people will move over to the Web interface, but at this stage, it will in no way kill off the proliferation of 3rd party Twitter apps. They will continue to flourish in the near future.

For a more complete overview of the new Twitter, see the TechCrunch post or the TheNextWeb post.

What are your impressions of the announcement yesterday? Do you think this is going to improve or deteriorate the quality of the overall Twitter experience? Please let me know in the comments or connect with me on Twitter.

By: Hillel Fuld

Ever since I joined Twitter pretty much, there has been an ongoing debate as to the best 3rd party client to access your tweets. For you newbies out there, let me explain what the heck I am talking about. Twitter? Ever hear of it? Well, it is all based on an ultra simplistic website called Twitter.com, upon which an entire industry was built. Among the endless Twitter services out there, the most important is the actual software you use to access Twitter.com.

I think it is safe to say that most people who join Twitter use the Web interface at least in the beginning, but at some point, switch over to a Twitter application that enables them to follow their Twitter stream more effectively than the website. How is it more effective? Well, that is a tricky question since the Web interface is updated frequently. Since the site now includes Auto Refresh, a RT button, Twitter Lists, and notifications of new tweets, the advantages of using a 3rd party client are not what they used to be. Having said that, it is still more efficient to use a client that enables you to add your Facebook account, Linkedin account, built in search, lists, groups, and many more features. The big question is, which client is the best?

There are those, myself included, that swear by Tweetdeck. Then there are the other applications, which include lots of different options, but from what I can tell, the most popular one is Seesmic. Seesmic has some seriously good Twitter applications across multiple platforms, and I personally love their Android app, but have never made the switch from Tweetdeck to Seesmic, mainly because I am used to Tweetdeck.

However, as of a few hours ago, Seesmic acquired a company called Ping.fm, which enables you to post your tweets to 50 different social networks in one action. This is huge! I have been looking for such a solution for a while since I generally post content on anywhere between 10-20 sites, and until now I had to do it manually. I think this acquisition might mean goodbye to my beloved Tweetdeck, at least for now.

As soon as the new version of Seesmic is released, which knowing their track record, won’t be long, I will be giving it a shot. Will let you know how it goes. What application are you using? Will news like this make you switch to Seesmic? Please let me know in the comments.

By: Hillel Fuld

One of the most common questions people have asked me about Twitter (besides of course “why do I care what you’re doing?”) is how on earth I follow so many people.  The question is a valid one since at a following list of over 4,000 people and counting, it is not humanly possible to read every tweet, every thought, or every link that people share. The basic premise of following people on Twitter is that you are at least somewhat interested in what they have to say, so the question of how I follow them all is a good one.

The answer is somewhat complex. To simplify things, I will say that the real answer is that I do not. Yes, all these people appear in my Twitter following count, but in reality, I follow only a small percentage of them. So the next question is “If you don’t really follow them, why do you follow them”? You confused yet? What that means is, if I am not really following those people or reading their tweets, why bother following them at all? The answer is etiquette. Twitter etiquette is a very interesting thing, and one that I am not going to get into here, but suffices to say that if I only followed the small number of people that I either know personally or was genuinely eager to hear what they had to say, I would not see the benefits of the diverse and amazing Twitter network I have today. Like I said, I am not going to go into detail about that here since I can write an entire blog post about that topic.

So, how do I follow 4,000 people, but really only follow 200? The answer until last week was groups. I access my Twitter on a 3rd party application called Tweetdeck. I use Tweetdeck on my home PC, my work Mac, and sometimes on my iPod Touch. One of the reasons I chose Tweetdeck over the many Twitter clients on the market, was that Tweetdeck was the first client to offer the group functionality. What I did was simple. I took all the people I knew interested me, plus all the people I communicate with regularly, and combined them into a Tweetdeck group called “Primary”. I created an additional column in Tweetdeck for my Primary group and set the program’s notifications to notify me of new tweets in that column along with my replies and DM columns. The All Friends column, in which the rest of the 4,000 people appear, became my secondary focus.

Let me clarify that if I said I never paid attention to the All Friends column, I would be lying. I read it regularly, but then we come back to our original question of how it is possible to follow 4,000 people. So, I skim that column and pay more attention to my Primary group. OK, so that was my solution until recently. A few weeks back, Twitter released a new feature called Lists, which was meant to draw people away from 3rd party applications and back to their roots of using Twitter.com. The idea was identical to the Tweetdeck groups. You would be able to create lists of users and follow those lists.

I was one of the first to get this feature, and quickly began making my lists, based on my Tweetdeck groups. However, I immediately learned that life without Tweetdeck was not so simple. To make a list, I had to add each person individually, by finding someone that interested me, opening their profile, and adding them to the list. The process took a few minutes per person, and multiplied by 200, that was time I did not have. The time was only the beginning of where Twitter lists fell short.

Other issues I had with the new list feature, was that in a totally counterintuitive way, to follow the members of a list, you need to add them one by one. Additionally, the new retweet feature that Twitter recently announced was not supported within lists. So, what good is it if I can follow the most interesting people in my network but not share their tweets with my followers? These are just a few of the list issues I had. The main one, however, was that these lists were only available on the Web, and let’s be honest, how often does the average Twitter user actually use the primitive interface offered by the Twitter.com website? The lists were not available on Tweetdeck, they were not supported by UberTwitter, which is my all time favorite mobile Twitter client (BlackBerry), and they were not supported by Echofon, my preferred iPhone Twitter app.

All that changed yesterday. I am now testing a pre released version of UberTwitter and it not only includes lists, it implements the list feature to perfection. More about the new Ubertwitter when it is released. However, as much as I loved the new Uber, that was not the big news of the night. Tweetdeck released a major update (more like a totally new application, but we will call it an update) yesterday, turning Tweetdeck into a program that pretty much covers all my social media needs. I literally do not need to ever open up Twitter.com, Facebook, or even Linkedin anymore, anything and everything (almost) I would do on those sites is now available within Tweetdeck, and most of the features are actually easier to use within Tweetdeck as opposed the site itself.

I am not going to give a full review of the new Tweetdeck now, but I will just give you a short list of the new features. They include full Linkedin integration, Go To Profile, the new retweet function in addition to the old way of retweeting, geo tagging tweets, and full list integration, which makes the whole concept of Twitter lists completely manageable.

Basically, using the new Tweetdeck, I converted my Primary group into a Twitter list called Favtweeps in just two clicks. The new list, as I mentioned will now be available to me on all platforms. I can actually use Twitter effectively on my BlackBerry now not having to follow 4,000 people. Until today, I would basically use Twitter on my phone to reply and DM people, but only rarely actually followed the stream since it was too overwhelming. Now that I have my lists on UberTwitter, the way I use Twitter will completely change.  Echofon has not added lists yet, but Twittelator Pro has, and I am sure the iPhone Tweetdeck app will be updated shortly.

Not only that, but between my multiple Twitter accounts (work and personal), my Linkedin, and my Facebook, chances are, I will be spending much more time in front of my Tweetdeck. By the way, I never created a MySpace account, but you can add that too if you have one.

In conclusion, let me just say that two of my favorite Twitter clients just got a whole lot better, and the new features are actually going to change the way users access their Twitter and various social networks. There are two problems I can see arising from these new developments. The first one is that Twitter.com’s number will continue to fall. They have been on the decline for months now, since most people do not use the Web interface, but rather depend on the API via external applications. With these applications offering everything the Web offers and a lot more (url shortening, picture, video, and audio upload services, as well as auto complete of names), I cannot think of any reason users will continue to use Twitter.com.

The other problem I foresee, and judging by the time I spent playing with the new Tweetdeck last night has already started, is that Twitter addicts all around the world will lose the battle to their addiction. Not talking about myself of course, but if a person was accessing their Twitter on Tweetdeck before, but once leaving the computer, would be available to spend time with their spouse or family, pretty sure people are going to be spending a lot more time on Twitter now with all these new features supported by the various clients. Suggestion? The next version of Tweetdeck should include a cap on the amount of time users can spend on Twitter daily.

Either that, or get ready to start seeing a lot of new T.A.A (Twitterholics Anonymous Association) centers forming across the globe.

So, do you share my enthusiasm about the new Twitter features? Please let me know in the comments!

As I thought about the next topic for a blog post, I could not help but get drawn back to Twitter (you can follow me here). It is what interests most of my readers, and the truth be told, it is what interests me.

This week, Twitter experienced a game-changing event. My wife joined! Now, Twitter is a lot of things, but I never knew it was  a good luck charm, a few hours after she joined, she went into labor and gave birth to a beautiful little girl.

The reason I mention my wife joining is because when she joined, I started to realize that there are some very basic terms that are unknown to new Twitter users and are not explained well anywhere. I figured I would take the task upon myself to explain to the millions of the people out there who will be joining Twitter over the next year or two, what they need to know. Before I do that, it is important to understand what Twitter is. You can understand it better by reading this post.

After you understand why one should tweet, you should read the first 5 things you should do after registering for Twitter. Read about that here. Now, that you have the basics, here are some terms you need to know in order to make use of Twitter in the most efficient way.

1. Reply (@): Twitter has a every unique replying feature. Whenever a person’s name is preceded by a @ symbol, that means that the sentence (tweet) that follows is directed at them. So if you are using Twitter on the Web, which you should not be (talk about that more later), and you want to reply to someone, simply type @ and then their name, then type the reply. There is also a reply icon on the Web interface that inserts the reply prefix automatically. On all the Twitter clients, there is a reply button for every tweet, which makes the process much easier.
2. DM (D): A term you are sure to see in people’s tweets is DM. It stands for Direct Message. This is like email for all intents and purposes. It is as if you have a Twitter inbox. Only you can see your DMs. As opposed to replies and regular tweets, DMs are completely private. This feature is used if you want to write something privately to someone, but more importantly, if you are writing something that your followers will not find interesting. One of the more annoying things on Twitter in my opinion, is when people have long threaded conversations, and you as their followers have to see it all. Not only does it not interest you most of the time, but the whole concept of viewing threads on Twitter still has a lot of room for improvemt. It is quite challenging to really understand an entire conversation from beginning to end using Twitter. So stick to DMs if you are replying more than twice to someone.
3. Retweet (RT): Retweeting is one of those things that can make or break your Twitter experience. Let me try to explain it to you in simple terms. If someone tweets something that interests you and you feel it would interest your readers, you retweet it for your readers. What it does is basically quotes that person’s tweet and gives them the credit, so people can see the tweet and then choose to follow that person. It is pretty much parallel to forwarding an email. The original person who tweeted might have 50 followers so only 50 people are exposed to the tweet. Whereas you might have 5,000 followers and by retweeting it, you increase that person’s exposure and distribute the tweet you felt was interesting. However, retweeting is really much more than that, it serves a purpose much more important than forwarding a tweet. It contributes to the entire concept of the Twitter community. You share someone else’s wisdom, and they will in turn share yours. Sharing, promoting (people), and distributing is what it is all about. I would love to perform an experiment and see how someone does on Twitter without tweeting one single thing and just retweeting other people’s interesting tweets. I am sure they would have themselves a very respectable Twitter network in a very short period of time.
4. Hashtag (#): Hashtags are a pretty simple concept that really enhance the Twitter experience. They enable easy categorization of tweets for effective future searching. That means that if for example, you are tweeting about the iPhone, you simply insert a # before the word iPhone. Anyone who then searches hashtags.org or Twitter search, for the #iPhone term, will come up with your tweet as well as all tweets on the subject. Hashtags actually add a lot of fun to Twitter. For example, someone came up with the hashtag #fiddme, I am not sure why it was not named #feedme, but basically if you are eating something good or that looks nice, you can take a picture of it, tweet it and include that hashtag for people to be able to see a lot of interesting foods being consumed by Twitterers all over the world. Why do I need that? You don’t, but it is fun. Another hashtag is #Followfriday. This is one that you do need if you want to really get ahead in the twitterverse. Every Friday, you recommend some good people to follow and include the #Followfriday symbol. I have found many great people using this tool, and like RTing, it enhances the twitter experience by building strong and  mutual Twitter relationships.
5. Twitpic: This tool enables you to share pictures with your followers. Not much more to say about it besides upload a picture to Twitpic, uncheck the box that tweets it automatically for you (annoying), copy the URL, write something about the picture in Twitter, then paste the URL for your followers to see. I do not need to tell you how many words a picture is worth, so sometimes it is helpful to stop telling and start showing.
6. URL Shorteners: This is something you might see in tweets and become very confused. So let me explain it to you. Since Twitter only allows you 140 characters, it is not the most effective way of tweeting if you are going to share a link with your followers that is 70 characters long. By the way, I did not think links deserved their own bullet, but you should share links often on Twitter, and not just write random thoughts. People like to read articles and posts, and not just hear your thoughts on certain matters. Anyway, back to URL shorteners. There are endless sites that offer this service. It enables you to share a long link with your followers and still have room for your thoughts about the link you are sharing. The most common and easiest of them in my opinion is TinyURL, but there are so many to choose from, including Digg’s own shortening service. The important thing is to use one, and not waste space on a URL, does not really matter which one you use.
7. Tweetdeck: Before I explain, I have to warn you that there are many people who disagree with me about this Twitter tool and prefer others like Twhirl, although I have to say, I do not understand those people. Tweetdeck is the most popular, sophisticated, effective, and useful 3rd party Twitter application out there. If you can only install one Twitter application, Tweetdeck should be it. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I would say the greatness of Tweetdeck is that it automates all the above points in a very simple interface. You can reply, DM, retweet, shorten a URL, and share a Twitpic without ever leaving Tweetdeck. The newest version also includes a cool feature that when replying to a tweet with a hashtag, the hashtag is automatically generated in your reply. I could go on for hours about the greatness of Tweetdeck, but I will just name some awesome features offered by Tweetdeck:

• Facebook Integration: You can now share your tweets with your Facebook friends if you choose by simply selecting a checkbox near the Tweetdeck tweet box.
• Twitscoop: This cool feature enables you to  see the trending topics on Twitter. So if Gmail is down, chances are everyone is talking about it, you can then read what people are saying and share your thoughts with people you do not follow.
• Twitter Search: It is as it sounds. No need to leave Tweetdeck to search for certain tweets, you can just open another column that will notify you when someone tweets about your search term.
• Groups: This is one those features that after using it, I do not understand how I got along before it. If you are following over 1,000 people, how can you possibly read everything? You can’t! So you create a group of the people that generally tweet interesting things and follow only that column. It makes the Twitter experience so much easier.

8. TwitterFon: I would love to somehow check the correlation between Twitter users and iPhone owners. Judging by the frequent iPhone trend on Twitter, a lot of Twitterers use iPhones, so I thought I would let you know which iPhone Twitter app has all the competition beat, hands down. Twitterfon is the number one iPhone app for Twitter in my opinion. I am not going to go into the detailed comparison between Twitterfon and Tweetie, you can read that here. What I will tell you is the fact that Twitterfon notifies you of new tweets, replies, and DMs makes it the app for me, period.

9.   Topify: I have discussed Topify before, so I will just say that it is one of the most useful Twitter services out there. It replaces the annoying and useless Twitter emails you get when someone follows you, with a useful and informative email. It also allows you to follow back by replying to the email. Topify also enables you to reply to a DM via email and the best part is that the developers really listen to customer feedback and improve the service accordingly and consistently.

10.   Wefollow: I have also discussed this service before, so I will tell you that when my wife joined Twitter, this is the first place I showed her. WeFollow is the best and most  effective way of finding people to follow. It is a Twitter directory based on tags people give themselves, and is organized in a very user-friendly way to enable you to build yourself a quality Twitter network in a very short period of time.

As you can see, I have a lot to say about Twitter. I will just say that when you do join, this post along with the Top 5 Reasons to Tweet and Top 5 Things to do after Joining Twitter, will give you a head start and assist you in maximizing this amazing social networking tool, no matter what your goals are in using Twitter.