Because links are still links, and although they won’t help your search engine rankings, you can still profit from them. Aside from the obvious (the links will bring in traffic), there are other things that good links on Twitter can do for you. Link building should be that of your primary concern (aside from giving value to the Twitter community with interesting Tweets, that is).

Everyone would gladly go in more detail on how to gather a wall of followers that would be greater than the Great Wall of China, except for the simple fact that it’s too easy to write about. Just put up a search at Twitter for keywords of your niche, follow the people writing about them, write your own interesting stuff and voila – you now are a proud owner of a user base that’s quite targeted. If you’re picky enough, you can only follow people that have their own sites, because you only want to target them. Or not to, if the niche you’re targeting is quite small.

It’s easy to work once you have a user base. Most of the things you need to do are too obvious to mention. The key, the Rosetta Stone of Twitter link building is that you should never forget that you need to offer an awful lot of value in order to build links through Twitter. Most of the people on Twitter have more than just a blog, they have their own sites, maybe they’re from a government-related institution and they’ll link you just like that.

A smart thing to do is to set up a Twitter search to the address of your URL (although you may miss something because of the shortening services), write/get valuable content and wait for the links. Once you figure out the way that you’re getting that attention, you’ll soon be able to repeat the process with relative ease. Valuable content is crucial because if you want to build links, you will need someone to RT (retweet) your tweets with links in them.

All in all, link building through Twitter is not a waste of time only if you find professionals of your niche and build mutual relationships with them by connecting with them regularly. That way you will not only build good links from trusted sites, but you’ll also stay connected to the news of your niche. Don’t worry if links don’t come too well, because the main thing that Twitter accounts for sellers is the incredibly targeted traffic it brings.

Tweetdeck
The most popular Twitter client in the world, according to Compete.com.
Has a clean, web 2.0 look and the simplest installation in the world, thanks to Adobe AIR, also supports Facebook and many other sites. Perfect for the average Twitterer, but lacks the support of multiple accounts.

Twhirl
One of the most popular Twitter applications up-to-date. It is simple supports multiple accounts, searching for your replies, shortening URLs and much more. The only downturn it has is that you can’t view the complete profiles directly in the application, thus disallowing you to follow people you could want to follow through your friends’ profiles.

Splitweet
The application made exclusively for having multiple Twitter accounts. Has a nice, clean design. Although it’s for multiple accounts, it isn’t a device for an average spammer.

Qwitter
Qwitter is the simplest web-based Twitter application which notifies you via e-mail when someone stops following you. Easy to use and perfect if you’re worried about what impact your tweets can leave on your followers.

Monitter
Monitter allows you to dig through real-time trends on Twitter. It might come in handy for journalists, as Tweets are often long ahead of the traditional media.

Twitpic
Twitpic is an on-line picture sharing service for Twitter. Automatic posting via Twitpic is available in many Twitter desktop applications. Supports posting pictures with e-mails from your mobile phone.

Twitterholic
A webpage designed purely for Twitter statistics, namely, the count of your followers. For example, twitterholic.com shows that there currently are thirteen proud Twitters that have over a million followers. You can also check your ranking in the pretty clean page.

Twtpoll
Twtpoll.com offers the chance to create and manage polls to use through Twitter, Facebook and many other social media sites, a must have if you want to know what your audience thinks.

Topsy
Topsy is a fresh, Twitter powered search engine. It has a lot of potential, as it digs mostly through social media sites, thus providing only and only fresh content. If Topsy spreads out, we should likely get an answer from Google.

All the applications mentioned here is but a fraction of what the web is offering for fellow Twitters. There will be many other fresh and innovative applications, made exclusively for social media sites. In 2009, the web is starting to gain a form one could only dream about when the web first appeared in 1980s. User generated and user moderated content will leave a great scar on anyone in business, who doesn’t consider the demands and the tolerance of the public.

Before you start Tweeting, here’s the basic vocabulary of Twitter:

To ‘follow’ someone means to subscribe to another users’ tweets, or follow to subscribe from them. You may want to follow only followorthy users as they give you more valuable content than the others.
To Retweet or RT means to re-tweet tweets tweeted by other twitters, this can help you a lot, as it shows that you don’t care to put yourself in front of others.
You can also send Direct Messages (DM) to other users; they can only be seen by the users you send them to.

You now know the basic vocabulary of Twitter and chances are you didn’t even need that. And now, you’ve registered and now you want to post tweets. Your first tweet should usually say nothing more than a simple hello. When you have posted your first tweet, it’s now time to gather followers. You may want to find Twitters in your area at first, your friends or business partners. To do so, you can use Twitter’s own search engine.

Now you have followed some people, some are following you back, so your follower rate is growing steadily. What now? Engage in conversations. It’s easy. You can do it through the web or even get a fancy Twitter desktop application from the list at Twitter.com, as it is easier to track your replies and tweets with them. Also, using Twitter applications is a must if you plan on having more than one Twitter account.

How to formulate a tweet? For one, be briefer than the 140 character limit, as it makes the reader to actually read the tweet you’ve made – countless new tweets appear each second and the longest ones can actually be skipped by the average viewer.

Offering value to your followers or any outside reader is a must, if you want other Twitters to love you (retweeting and replying to your tweets equals love in Twitter). Be it an interesting link, or a personal reply, it can reach to your audience, as long as it’s interesting.

When all is said and done, all you need to do is post tweets. And gather followers. As for the gathering of followers, you need to consider one reason – why would you want to gather them? Will you twit purely for meeting people with shared interests, to advertise your business or something else? It’s entirely up to you; you’ll get followers no matter what you post. People will retweet your tweets from time to time, as long as you don’t come off as trying to take value (getting followers no matter what) from the other twitters.

The use of Twitter was incorporated in various Instant Messaging services back when Twitter started in 2006. The IM support was discontinued as Twitter gained some degree of popularity without the aid of Instant Messengers. Twitter has a lot more to offer than IM services. For example, new people to talk to. Your contact list in IM might be restrictive if you want to meet new people with shared interests. Twitter has no such restrictions – you can talk to anyone you like to talk and probably someone who you just couldn’t reach via IM.

One of the reasons why the use of Twitter has risen is the extensive availability of Twitter desktop applications. They offer almost the same degree of customization as IM’s do and usually allow the user to use other social networking sites with them. For example, Tweetdeck, a Twitter desktop application, also supports receiving Facebook updates, and will add the support of other applications in near future. The sense of a desktop application also gives the feel of an IM, so the user gets comfortable with the new service early. It’s arguable whether or not the Twitter applications will gain more popularity, but the applications are something that a casual IM user would probably be more interested in than posting from the web.

There are, however, some exclusive things that Instant Messaging services offer, like a real-time chat. Twitter conversations can long for days, with one party withdrawing from the conversation whenever they like to, and recover them whenever they like to, which is quite unsuitable for any kind of business, except for working at the post. Also, Twitter will probably never have Voice over Internet Protocol support like the instant messengers do, but the most important thing is the word “instant” in “instant messenger”

What it comes down to is this – whatever you may be using Twitter for, remember that it’s just a tool for tweeting aka microblogging. And altogether, microblogging means that Twitter is somewhere between blogging, instant messaging and social networks. People used IM’s for the sake of meeting new people and creating superficial relationships just because there wasn’t anything else available. But now there is, and it looks like that the IM’s are going to lose at least some of their users to Twitter – how much – it’s entirely up to the current trends of the users.

1. Work on your profile.
It’s the only thing that your potential followers can see. Customize it; make it beautiful, it’ll work and attract followers. At least if your profile is beautiful.

2. Participate in Twitter games/trends.
My profile recently got quite of an attention (read: followers) because I submitted some entries to #twitterfilms. Put yourself on the line with stuff like this. Once you have a load of followers, you may also start games yourself. It’ll get you even more followers.

3. Off-Twitter relations which drive traffic to your Twitter.
This should be the first on the list, but for some reason, it scares people away quite a lot. It isn’t hard to add a link to your Twitter at your e-mail and forum signatures, is it? People who have a load of followers weren’t made famous exclusively by Twitter.

4. Start a contest.
“God, this is overused”. Well yes, it is, but it’s also effective. There are a lot of things you can make contests about even without prize money or material prizes. You can offer links from your site, free e-books or exclusive content. Anything works, as long as it is valuable.

5. “Retweet, Retweet!”
Keep your eyes open for something funny, retweet it first by using the RT button. How does it help you? You’ll gain value in the eyes of the person you tweeted, and if you offer something valuable in the future, it’s more likely that the person that you retweeted will retweet your message too!

6. Be intelligent and open to discussions.
There isn’t anything much to add here, is there? That’s a crucial rule for gathering Twitter followers. Make your Twitter more about other people, only then you’ll get noticed yourself.

7. Follow people in your niche.
It’s a more targeted audience, it’s a smarter audience and audience that will listen more to what you say.

Twitter is mostly NOT about content. It’s about making other people feel evaluated by you, your tweets, and a great deal of the followers you’ll receive is from your online reputation. While you may get a lot of followers explicitly through Twitter, there will probably be a lot of problems in sustaining the growth of the numbers. Here is a zen of Twitter – Twitter is merely a reflection of the outside world, and your popularity on the outside world reflects the one on you’ll have on Twitter. It is, however possible to get some results by Twittering directly, but they won’t be as big as they ought to be.

However, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an interview with Reuters that the company is capable of developing its own viable business model, and does not need the financial security of a parent company.

Stone added that Twitter would be open to working with Google in the future, especially as it has just launched its own real-time search functionality on the site.

For now it will be business as usual at Twitter.

Now the race is on to see who can attract the most “followers.” The offline version of popularity contests has officially been transferred online.

When a new medium like Twitter becomes so mainstream so fast, you have to wonder how long the tool will be useful. Twitter is already being used extensively by marketers, so we can probably expect more of the future message to be commericial in nature.

It’s hard to argue with the success of the service. Twitter has built a system that’s easy to use and free. People have adapted to their online infrastructure in droves.

As Twitter evolves, more and more people will find ways to monetize their use of the service, and undoubtedly the service will find ways to generate revenue commensurate with their explosive growth rate.

“Through Twitter, the popular social networking and messaging service, Broward County Public Schools posts updates, called “tweets.” Twitter users who choose to follow the District through the account called “browardschools” will get these updates or “tweets” on their Twitter home page. Users can also receive tweets through a variety of methods, including text messaging, RSS aggregators and third-party applications. This provides the District an additional method to deliver information expediently and directly to students, parents and the community,” the school district said in an annoucement.

The idea is simple. Interested students or teachers with Twitter accounts can sign up to “Follow” the updates from the school system.

Undoubtedly more and more organizations will follow suit because Twitter is an easy site to use, and many people already have accounts there.

You can easily check out Broward County’s Twitter implementation.

The technology is easy to use:

To send a tweet about a site you have joined, click the invite link in the members gadget, then click the Twitter icon on the share tab. The next time your followers sign in to Twitter, they’ll see your tweet containing a link to the interesting site you’ve found.

Friend Connect by Google seems to be growing relatively rapidly. I’m seeing it on more and more websites and that’s the whole point. If people get used to seeing this widget, they might just adopt the platform on a massive scale. If they do, the internet will become a place where you “log in” once and maintain your profile across all the websites you visit. This would make life easier for most users, and would also help websites grow by leveraging the trusted profiles of the major internet portals.