Although this seems to work fine (and I used it all day today for searches), you seem to be limited to the first four search results only.  So this wouldn’t be something that you could use for deep searching.   But if you are looking for the correct URL of a website, the Wikipedia entry for something, basically anything that would – in theory – show up in the first few results, then you could use these bots instead.   No different from Google’s “Are You Feeling Lucky?“.

The bots are for Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger (so no AIM love it seems).   But a lot of people now have a Google account so the lack of AIM shouldn’t be a hindrance.

Just add the following chat bot depending on what service you use :

Google Talk – sbot@bot.im
Yahoo Messenger – searchbot@ymail.com
Windows Live Messenger – searchbot@live.com

As soon as you’ve added the account to your contact list, it should go online virtually right away and then you can start searching.

Searching is very straight forward.   If you want to search Twitter, just type t and then your search term.   So :

t makeuseof.com

and this will give you :

I think for Twitter, 4 results is not really enough. You need probably at least 10-15 to give you a better overview. 4 is just too random.

For Google, type g followed by your search term.   For Bing, precede your search query with b and can you guess what it is for Yahoo?   Yep, you guessed it!  y.   I know, it’s tough to follow but I’ll try and not get too far ahead, OK?

So searching Google for MakeUseOf :

And you get pretty much the same results with Yahoo and Bing.

There’s not much more you can say about it – it’s just a no frills search function for your IM program which will give you the first four results for any given search query.  I am personally finding it very useful because if I am in a Firefox tab and I don’t want to break the writing flow by opening up a new tab for Google, I can just quickly open up my Pidgin program with a keyboard shortcut and quickly type a quick search into one of these bots.

I look up all my dictionary definitions using Google using the define search parameter and I thought for a moment that I could use this bot to make all my dictionary lookups without having to open the browser.   THAT would have been REALLY useful. But the define parameter doesn’t work with this bot.   Strange.  I hope the bot writers can fix this little glitch.

Make the define parameter work so you can do dictionary searches and increase the number of search results to between 10-15 and these bots will become even extremely more useful.   What do you think?  What else could they add to make these bots even better?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Turn Your IM Program Into A Productivity Tool Using Imified (23)
• How to Expand Google’s Universal Search (20)
• Update all your Social Status Messages with Ping.fm (14)
• Trillian Astra – Is It the Best Instant Messaging Client Now? (16)
• Translation For MSN: Auto Translates Messages While Chatting (17)

The problem, though, is that Twitter does essentially nothing to help you find interesting people. There was the whole @replies debacle, where Twitter took away the ability to see who your friends are talking to – that was almost a disaster for discovering new people.

Even after that was fixed, Twitter made it easy to search for interesting tweets but not as much for doing a Twitter search to find interesting people. That’s what TwitterHIT is out there to remedy. TwitterHIT is all about finding new people and new friends on Twitter, by providing some unique search options.

The first thing to do is log in – you use your Twitter account credentials – which always makes me nervous – but in a few hours of using it, TwitterHIT didn’t ever tweet anything or take information I didn’t want it to. It appears, at least for now, trustworthy. It does send one tweet when you follow people (a super-cryptic one at that), but it’s harmless enough, and easy to delete.

Once you’re logged in, you’re brought to the “start” screen (above). On that screen, you get two different boxes – a space for keywords, and one for locations. The keywords are essentially like any other Twitter search, but the location-based search is what makes TwitterHIT great.

Let’s say, you want to find people in your city who like to play squash. Type “played squash” or “playing squash” into the keywords, and then your location in the bottom field. All the people on Twitter who are near you will be returned to you, and they are the ones who have tweeted about their squash-playing activities.

TwitterHIT conducts a Twitter search, finds the results and presents them in a list on the results page, with usernames, pictures, and latest tweets all on that one page. It returns 20 results, and with an upgraded account – 200. The free account always did me fine, though. Browse the list, and toggle the checkbox next to anyone you want to follow. At the end of the list, click the “Follow These People” button, and TwitterHIT automatically follows them for you.

If you want to, you can then repeat the whole process. There are some seriously annoying ads that come up after each “Follow These People” session, but they go away after a few seconds.

Also part of TwitterHIT’s upgraded account (which you get either by paying $147 or completing a trial offer through an affiliate like Blockbuster) are several other tools – following back your followers automatically, automatically retweeting things with certain keywords, and the like. These all sound like ingredients for a spammy Twitter account to me, or may come in handy for someone who uses Twitter for business purposes – the free version’s got the one feature I really want to use.

TwitterHIT is great for making Twitter a more localized version of itself, and helping to bring you into contact with people you might actually develop a relationship with outside of Twitter. There are more and more people on Twitter every day, and TwitterHIT offers one great way to find the people near you who might actually be relevant to you both on and off Twitter.

How do you find interesting people, not just interesting tweets, on Twitter? Don’t forget to share with us in the comments.

Image Credit: the trial

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Stay Socially Connected Online With Yoono (18)
• Psst…Do You Plurk? (21)
• Kwippy – Social Networking…Revised. (BETA Invites Included!) (5)
• 4 Ways To Find New Twitter Friends (12)
• 4 Tools to Update the Status Messages the Easy Way (10)

One of my favorite stories regarding this topic just happened a few days ago. Shaquille O’Neal, a popular basketball player and a popular Twitterer, found out via Twitter that he was being traded. Funny stuff. But the point is, if you want to know what’s happening, immediately, Twitter’s where you want to be.

Unfortunately, Twitter’s search engine leaves a lot to be desired. The native search frequently brings up incomplete results, both in a current search and going back. Plus Twitter search seems to frequently be down, and always be shoddy.

The best alternative, and a great way to track and search Twitter, is Scoopler. Scoopler is a fast, real-time or in other words live search engine for Twitter – that’s also got some cool features of its own. It does its main job well, and adds just enough features to make it miles ahead of Twitter’s own search.

For the sake of full explanations, Scoopler also searches results from Flickr, Digg, Delicious, and a few other sites – given the relative slowness with which these sites are updated, Twitter tends to both dominate search results and be the most functional use of Scoopler’s search.

Scoopler’s search is truly real-time. When you search for a word or phrase (pick your own, or use one of the popular ones Scoopler suggests), you’re taken immediately to a waterfall-looking column of tweets, that updates as new ones come in. Frequently, it’s too fast to read, especially if you’re tracking a popular subject; you can easily pause the updates if you need to catch up.

In addition, Scoopler does an excellent job with multimedia stuff – videos, images, links, and the like. Within the stream of tweets on your topic, Scoopler extracts all the videos, image, and links to a convenient sidebar, where it organizes them by type, and by the number of shares. If a video is being passed around, you can see it without digging through the stream to figure out what it is you’re looking for. You can easily share anything on Scoopler, too, just by clicking “Peek.”

One thing I like to do periodically is click the “view all” button on the home screen – this tracks all of the most popular topics at once. First of all, the speed at which they update is crazy. Second of all, it’s a lot like skimming news headlines, and is a great way to get caught up on what’s happening.

One day, I predict, Twitter will fix its search – it’ll probably look a lot like Scoopler, actually. But for now, Scoopler seems to be one of the best of a small number of Web apps that let you search and track what’s happening on Twitter and in the world, pretty much at the speed of light.

As Twitter becomes even more of a source for breaking news, editorial opinion, and the like, keeping tabs on what’s hot on Twitter will become even more important and useful. Scoopler’s an excellent and simple way to do exactly that.

How do you search Twitter? Is there even a need to? Go ahead and discuss in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Tools, Apps and Bots to Improve your Twitter Experience (31)
• Send Tweets & Make Video With The New & Improved Twhirl (12)
• Search Google, Yahoo, Bing & Twitter From Your IM Program (16)
• How to Track Breaking News Alerts Online With Twitter (5)
• Find Out What’s Hot Right Now On The Web With OneRiot (5)

Even though it can get extremely frustrating (I know first hand), the best thing you can do is not give up and keep searching on a consistent basis. If you’ve tried all the usual places like CareerBuilder and Monster and had no luck, here are 8 more that will hopefully get the ball rolling for you.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is definitely growing in popularity for job searching. When searching for jobs, you have the option view jobs that are exclusively on LinkedIn or jobs from the Web.

My favorite thing about LinkedIn is the ability to send and receive recommendations from co-workers and peers. Recommendations are the best way for a company to learn more about you from the people that know you best.

Of course, a complete and up-to-date profile will also give you a better chance of being recruited by employers.

Indeed

Indeed is one of the job search engines I use regularly and is very easy to use. To start, simply enter the type of job you’re looking for and the desired location. There are a lot of options for refining your results such as by salary estimate, title, company, location and more. You can also save any search as an email alert or subscribe to the RSS feed.

As you can see below, Indeed also has extensive advanced search features.

Yahoo! HotJobs

Many people already know about Yahoo! HotJobs. If you have a Yahoo! account, once logged in you will have the pleasure of seeing recommended jobs for you right on the homepage. Also, just like Indeed you can save your search as en email job alert.

What I like best about HotJobs is that you can hide jobs from certain companies. The only downside to that is that there’s a limit of 20 companies so, you can’t hide anymore than that.

TwitterJobSearch

Since Twitter is growing more popular each day, there’s no surprise that there’s a Twitter job search engine. To start just enter the type of job you’re looking for and location (optional) or, click the “Browse” button up top to browse by category. Jobs are listed as tweets so you can see who tweeted it and when. You then have the option to view the actual job listing, retweet it, or follow the user that tweeted it.

SimplyHired

SimplyHired powers a lot of the job search engines that you can find on numerous social networks such as LinkedIn, MySpace, and Plaxo. Once again, searches can be saved as email alerts or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.

SimplyHired goes a step further than Yahoo! Hotjobs with the blocking feature; you can block all jobs from a certain company or from a certain website. The best feature, in my opinion, is the option to allow access to your LinkedIn account. By doing this, you can make connections with others that work at a company you’re applying to.

LinkUp

LinkUp is one of the most unique search engines I’ve seen mainly because everything is done in the same window; no need to open other tabs or windows. After getting your search results, clicking on a listing will open it up a new tab (as pictured below) in the same window, which saves you time and helps reduce screen clutter. You can also apply to jobs right in the same window. From within the LinkUp tabs you can then view other jobs from the same company, view or make connections from LinkedIn (just like SimplyHired) or pick a suggested category.

Craigslist

A well known site for everything from selling items to finding an apartment, Craigslist is also a great site for job hunting. With Craigslist you can search by specific cities and regions.

What I like about Craigslist is that you don’t have to sign up in order to search or respond to listings. Most listings include an email, so applying for a job is as easy as clicking the email link, writing a quick message and attaching your resume. The job section is broken down by categories and you can even subscribe to the RSS feed for a certain category so that you can stay updated on new job listings.

NotchUp

NotchUp is also very unique in that it serves as your own personal career agent. Although it is free to join and use, membership is by application or invitation only. Once you are a member, NotchUp allows you to set a price of what your time is worth and upload your resume. From there, your only job is to sit back and wait to be contacted by potential employers.

Once contacted, these companies will then have to pay you to interview with them. Yes, you heard that right, you get paid to interview for jobs! Applying for membership literally takes 30 seconds, as you can see below there’s not much to fill in.

I wish everyone the best of luck with their job searches. If you know of any other great sites for job hunting please feel free to let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Search Craigslist With The CraigsList Reader (Windows) (26)
• Top 8 Things For Bored Teenagers To Do Online [Part II] (9)
• Top 5 Free Resume Hosting Websites (30)
• Top 10 Most Effective Job Search Websites (24)
• Tips & Sites For Finding Freelance Blogging Work (Part Two) (2)

But any hesitations about going back to my ex were finally swept aside when it was announced that a new beta version of TWhirl was in town with snazzy new features. I foam at the mouth like a rabid dog for snazzy new features! Hold me back!

It has to be stressed right away that the new version is NOT on the TWhirl homepage but rather here and you have to put your name and email address in the required boxes. You will then be immediately emailed the download link. Yes, you are signing up for an email newsletter list but you can easily unsubscribe afterwards.   But you might want to stay subscribed because a couple of days after I subscribed, they came out with a new improved version of TWhirl with some bugs removed and another download link.

So after using the new version for a few days, let’s take a look at some of the new features, which I have to say are extremely impressive.

An Easy To use Search Tool That Keeps On Searching

This was the feature that really struck me about the new TWhirl as I do a lot of searching on Twitter to see what people are saying about MakeUseOf stories and this really is a remarkable feature.

Let’s say I enter the search term “makeuseof”

Once you get the results, you can then “activate” a tab at the top of the app.

Doing this, you can make a line of tabs at the top of the app for various search terms.  I made a few, one for MakeUseOf, another for Open Culture (a favourite website of mine) and another for my own blog, Better Than Therapy. You can then easily click between tabs to see the new Twitter search results coming through for those search terms. If you want to make more tabs, just expand the app by dragging it with your mouse.

What’s even better is that you will be notified by TWhirl when a new Tweet comes through which matches your search term. So it constantly monitors your search terms for you and returns results, just like Google Alerts.

Post To Ping.FM And Jaiku

I don’t see why Twhirl added the Jaiku option since Google recently announced that they were trashing Jaiku.  But there is the “post status updates to Ping.FM” option for people who use that.

Since I don’t use the service, I don’t really have much to say about this aspect of TWhirl but I’m sure that people who do use it will find it useful. As for the Jaiku part, I’m sure it will disappear pretty soon once Google gives the service the ol’ heave ho.

Add Other Accounts To TWhirl

As well as Twitter, you can add four other accounts to your TWhirl app (see screenshot above). I briefly added my Friendfeed account but I swiftly removed it again because there was too much noise and I was unable to keep up with all the updates pouring through the app.

With Seesmic, you can record videos from the app itself as well as view your inbox, listen to videos, follow people and look people up.

All in all, this is a pretty sweet app and I think I am now firmly back in love with TWhirl. Oh and in case you think that lime green is totally gross (or “watermelon” as they like to call it), you can change the colour to a variety of others including black, orange, purple, blue, grey and red. So don’t fret about the decor, luv.

So goodbye TweetDeck and thanks for all the tweets.   I’m now sticking with TWhirl and I recommend you to switch too if you’re into Twitter. This little baby is one hot app. Remember, it lives here, NOT on the TWhirl homepage.

If you decide to give it a go, remember to come back and let us know what you think about it in the comments!

UPDATE (31 January): there is now a new version of TWhirl (8.8 K) which has a spell checker built in. So if you previously subscribed to the mailing list, downloaded the older TWhirl and then unsubscribed again, you’d better sign up again to get the new download link!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Two Undercover Twitter Clients That Don’t Let Others Know You Are Tweeting (17)
• Twittastic Desktop Twitter Client With Nifty File Sharing Tools (11)
• Tools, Apps and Bots to Improve your Twitter Experience (31)
• Search Google, Yahoo, Bing & Twitter From Your IM Program (16)
• Scoopler – Cool Real Time Search Tool for Twitter (12)

1. Twitterank

Twitterank was created by a bored Google employee one night as he battled imsomnia in a hotel room.  What makes it different from all the other Twitter ranking sites out there?

Well for one, it’s largely based on the number of @replies you’ve received instead of the number of followers you have.  More over, he actually used the philosophy behind the Google Pagerank algorithm to put it together.  Pretty neat, huh?

There was some early controversy over this app because it requires your username and password.  Some people feared it was a scam set up to harvest Twitter accounts.  Fortunately the Googler, Ryo Chijiiwa, confirmed to everyone who he was and made it clear that the Twitter API requires the user info in order for Twitterank to do what it does.  I believe it is safe and it has been used by thousands of Tweeps at this point.

Here’s my Twitterank, if you’re interested. Note: You will need to actually update your Twitterank every once in a while, as it does not track you automatically.

2. Twinfluence

Now if Twitterank and some of the other rankers aren’t enough for you, consider this an upgrade.  Twinfluence doesn’t just simply rank how “popular” you are, it ranks the amount of potential influence you have on the Twitterverse at large.

The readout screen is actually pretty complicated and for a full explanation (done very well, I think) check out their FAQ.  In short, the second order followers number (or “Reach“) tells you how many followers the people following you have in total.  You can see above that this is a surprisingly large number, even with a small number of primary followers.  The other metrics are summed up as follows:

• “Velocity” is the rate at which your Reach increases every day.
• “Social Capital” indicates how influential those followers are (this is where they begin to lose me).
• “Centralization” is how much your influence is based on a small amount of users.

Ironically, I got the same percentile ranking on both items #1 and #2…they must be somewhat legitimate, right?

3. Tweetwasters

This is a little bit of a different kind of ranker (and the last one on this list).  Tweetwasters measures how much time you have wasted making up silly things to post on your microblog.  The site essentially takes the number of tweets you’ve made over your entire time on Twitter, multiplies it by 30 seconds (the assumed average time per tweet) and give you some nifty stats on your total usage.   Tweetwasters is a little more on the fun side than anything else.  I ranked very poorly on this one, but check out the Hall of Fame…that’s a lot of misspent hours!

4. Twitter People Search

Twitter’s built in search may not be new, but it was recently restored to being more useful, so I thought I’d include it in this list.  They’ve reinstated the name search feature so instead of having to use Google to search for your friends on Twitter, you can actually use Twitter itself.  I’m not exactly sure why this was taken away, but now it’s back!

Just click on the “Find People” tab at the top.  If you want to search Twitter normally, just click “Search” at the bottom.

5. Twitter Venn

This app is really neat.  Enter any three search terms and Twitter Venn will construct a Venn Diagram (remember those?) for those terms.  You can see where each set of terms overlaps.  Also, it creates a tag cloud for each term to show you other words commonly associated with them.  It takes a few seconds to load, but I think it’s worth it.

Here’s what “Make,” “Use,”and “Of” look like on Twitter Venn.  Thanks to Violet Blue for clueing me into this app on her blog.

6. Twollow

If you want to use your Twitter account as a way to track all of the people talking about a certain thing, Twollow is the app for you.  You can set Twollow to look for any keyword and then automatically follow people that tweet that word.  This is great if you want to track mentions of your name, website, product, or (if you’re daring) favorite topic.  Just take care you don’t become a spammer.

There are both free and paid versions.  The main benefit to the premium account is that you get more keywords to track and email notifications.  Personally, I think the app is decent without paying the extra money.

7. Twilert

Similar to Twollow, Twilert sends you email alerts when specific keywords are mentioned on Twitter.  If your following/follower counts are keenly tweaked, you may not want to actually follow everyone who mentions you or your products online, so this is a much simpler solution.

One nice thing is that you can schedule your alerts (or “Twilerts” if you like) to be delivered once a day, once a week, or once a month.  For smaller keywords, you might want more emails and visa versa.

8. Twiddict

They say “necessity is the mother of invention.”  Well if ever there were a necessity for something, it would be for Twiddict.  Twitter has been doing much better recently in staying online, but sometimes the network does go down and many tweets are sadly stifled.  If you log into Twiddict at just these times, you can tweet with impunity and when the network goes back up, Twiddict will automatically load them into your account.

What happens when Twitter is running fine?  Twiddict will still allow you to post regularly through it and it will forward them to Twitter for you.  There is a handy indicator under the update box to let you know that status of the Twitter network.

9. Twitpay

These next few are still free, but are money related.

Twitpay allows you to pay people (or get paid by others) for various things on Twitter.  If you want to pay someone using Twitpay, simply send a tweet saying “@user twitpay $number for reason” and Twitpay will instantly figure out what you want to do and change your balance on its website.  You can enter in Paypal information and pay out what you owe.  If you want to collect what has been paid to you, you can get it in the form of Amazon gift cards (though they are apparently working on getting more payment methods).

There is a 5 cent commision fee for payments over a dollar (free for less than that), but that’s still better than most online payment systems.  Plus it’s definitely free if you’re on the receiving end!

10. Magpie

Of all the apps on here, I think Magpie has the brightest future.  People have been looking for a good way to monetize their Twitter accounts for a long time – especially power users – and this may be the solution.  Magpie inserts special “#magpie tweets” into your feed at intervals that you choose.  Each one contains a small ad that directly earns you money as soon as it goes onto your feed.

There are tons of customizable features.  You can choose how often they go up (how many regular tweets need to be between each magpie tweet), what the hashcode looks like (the #magpie part), where the hashcode goes in the message, and whether or not the ads need to be screened by you before they go up.

I’ve been using the service for a while now and I’m very impressed with it.  While there are a lack of advertisers so tweets are usually more scarce than your chosen ratio of tweets/magpie tweets, the interface is very easy to use.  If you want to see how much you could potentially make, just type your name into the box on the homepage and it will generate an estimate.  Just keep in mind that until their advertiser base is a little larger, it probably won’t be quite as high as the estimate.

11. Twitad

Twittad takes a little different approach to the Twitter monetization ballgame.  Instead of inserting tweets into your Twitterstream, it simply uses your background as a billboard.  Twittad makes it easy for advertisers to create a custom backdrop and then allow users to list their accounts for a certain amount of money over a specified amount of time.  It’s a fairly simple system.

The service monitors what your background is so that if you change it before the time is up, the payment stops.  Again, the main stumbling block for this service is the number of interested developers.  It never hurts to list yourself up there, though, so I suggest you try it out!

12. Twitbacks

Going off of the Twitter background theme, Twitbacks is a nifty tool to help you create custom background for your own Twitter account.  There isn’t actually a whole lot TO a Twitter background, since most of it is covered up by the Twitterstream, but the left sidebar and the general wallpaper are completely customizable.  Remember, you can also change other parts of your Twitter page in your account settings to match your new background.

It’s free if you leave on a little line about Twitbacks (which is very unobtrusive), or you can pay to have that removed.  The service has gotten much better recently, as you can now go back and edit your background multiple times without re-entering information.  This is important because sometimes you need to rejigger your text to make it look nice in the skinny sidebar.

13. Twitblogs

This reminds me a lot of iTweet, which we reviewed a while ago.  It’s actually very similar to Posterous, too.  Twitblogs is not a complete Twitter interface clone, but instead it’s more of an extension.  If you want to post directly to Twitter, you can use the Twitter tab to do so.  If you have “more to say” and need a space greater than 140-160 characters, Twitblogs provides you with a special little blog space dedicated to your own Twitter account.

Just go to Twitblogs and log in and you’ll given a space at “Twitblogs.com/yourname”.  There is essentially no set-up and posting is about as easy as you might imagine.  It even tries to replicate what your normal Twitter page looks like, though if you have a repeating background it doesn’t pick that up as well.

Here’s a little sample Twitblog post I made.  Once you have made your Twitblog post, it will use the title as your tweet and add a shortened URL of the post location behind it.  I think I’ll be using this one from time to time.

14. Post Like a Pirate

This is a fun little app I discovered while searching around online.  National Talk Like a Pirate Day is come and gone, but you can still get your peg-legged posting on with Post Like a Pirate.

Originally the service was designed for email only, but they added on a Twitter function so you can tweet as much as your parrot.  The line for your Twitter account still says “Email” for some reason, but that’s the place to put your username.

15. @tweetbomb

This last Twitter gift isn’t an app or website at all!  The @tweetbomb account has exploded (get it?) recently all over the Twitter landscape.  Every day at 3:33PM, a lucky (or possibly unlucky) user is chosen to be Tweetbombed.

When this happens, everyone following the @tweetbomb account sends a simple @reply with nothing after it to that person.  Typically this overwhelms the user, who may or may not even know what Tweetbomb is.  Of course this usually makes that user much more popular and nets them a number of followers.  This tends to mitigate the shock and awe.

Unsurprisingly, Twitter originally banned the @tweetbomb account because it violated their terms of service. When this happened, @tweetban came along to advocate for the reinstatement of @tweetbomb. As you can see, Twitter relented and the game continues every day.  Who knows…if you pop up on their radar, you might get Tweetbombed yourself!

From all of us at MakeUseOf, have a wonderful winter holiday!

If your favorite app isn’t on here, we’ve either covered it in a previous article (there are quite a few) or I’ve never heard of it. In the latter case, be sure to mention your favorite service in the comments…we do read them and it will help us figure out what to feature next!

And finally, make sure to follow MakeUseOf on Twitter.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Who’s Following You on Twitter and are You Following Them? (11)
• Twittastic Desktop Twitter Client With Nifty File Sharing Tools (11)
• Track Your Twitter Popularity With TwitterCounter (10)
• Too Much To Tweet? Tweet It With Twitblogs (5)
• Send Tweets & Make Video With The New & Improved Twhirl (12)

So, I wanted to point out a few of the newer sites that have surfaced and are very useful in helping you find people to follow on Twitter.

Twitterel

Twitterel is a great way to find Twitter users with the same interests as you and is very easy to use. To get started you’ll need to enter your Twitter username and password. Once you do that, you can enter keywords based on your interests in order to start finding people.

You can even give them your email so that you will be updated whenever there might be someone new that interests you. What’s great about Twitterel is that you can follow people that you find right from their site, without having to open up a new page to go to Twitter to follow them.

CityTweets

“The CityTweets Network is made up of individual pages that track (near) real-time Twitter activity for individual cities, listing Tweets from and about that area.”

CityTweets is still pretty new so there are not a lot of cities listed but it’s extremely easy to request a CityTweets page for your city.

Personally I don’t know too many people from my area who actually use Twitter, so I feel that CityTweets can really be beneficial once it’s really built up. I’d love to be able to tweet to others in my area about how boring it is! Also, it could be a great way to organize a local Tweet Up.

Just Tweet It

Just Tweet It is not only a directory for Twitter users but they’re THE directory for Twitter users!  Since the directory is organized by category, it’s the perfect way to find other Twitter users like you and with the same interests.

What I love most about Just Tweet It is that they have quite a few feature spots on their homepage. There’s a spot for a Featured Tweeter, Newest Tweeters, Recent Blog Posts, and Latest News & Links. You also have the option to add your own name to the directory so that you can get found by other Twitter users like yourself.

Twitter Adder

Twitter Adder is pretty much like one of the hundreds of MySpace Adders they have on the internet. You enter your Twitter username and password and then they will add 20 random friends for you. Now, I’m not sure if Twitter Adder is a good thing or a bad thing but it’s not my style. I like to pick and choose who I follow to make sure we have at least a little something in common. I’m not sure if adding random people is such a good idea. What do you think?

Twannabe

Twannabe is a little different in that it lets you see who your “Twitter hero” is following (that you’re not following) so that you can then in turn follow them. I guess it’s nice if there’s someone on Twitter that you really want to be like; hopefully the people that they follow will interest you as well.

You’ll need to enter your Twitter username and password along with the username of your “Twitter hero” and then the magic begins. Next to each person in the list is a follow button but, unlike Twitterel (above), it opens up a new page to the users Twitter profile and you have to follow them from there.

Monitter

Monitter was covered here on Make Use Of already a few months back and I really feel that it’s a great tracking tool for finding new people to follow. You can monitor numerous keywords at a time, kind of like Twitterel (above).

The difference with Monitter is that everything is updated in real-time. So, you can see new tweets as they are posted. In my opinion, this is definitely one of the best tools out there for monitoring what’s being talked about on Twitter.

Twitter Search

Many people already know and use Twitter Search on a regular basis; I practically live on this site. Twitter Search is another great way to find out what’s being talked about on Twitter. I use it all the time to find others who are tweeting about things that I’m interested in.

Though it’s not updated in real-time, it does let you know when there is a new tweet about what you’re searching for along with the amount of new tweets that have been added. If you have Greasemonkey installed though, there is a great userscript that will allow Twitter Search to auto-refresh so that you won’t have to keep refreshing it manually.

Twubble

“Twubble can help expand your Twitter bubble – it searches your friend graph and picks out people who you may like to follow.”

Twubble has actually been around for awhile but I still feel it deserves to be on this list just because of how easy and useful it is. You can follow users straight from the Twubble site – in one click. Twubble also adds a Google icon next to each user which allows you to Google them (opens in a new page).

Follow Cost

Follow Cost is fairly new and adds a little twist; it shows you how annoying it would be to follow someone on Twitter. I think Follow Cost works best in conjunction with one of the above mentioned sites.

Once you find someone you’re interested in following, you can check them out here to make sure they’re not a “Nuclear Follow Cost” (which is not good by the way). You’ll see the Average Updates per day and Last 100 Updates per day for them. This info can then help you to make an educated decision on whether you’d like to follow that user or not.

Which sites or tools do you use to find new people to follow on Twitter? Which one is your favorite? Which one have you found the most useful?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Send Tweets & Make Video With The New & Improved Twhirl (12)
• Search Google, Yahoo, Bing & Twitter From Your IM Program (16)
• Scoopler – Cool Real Time Search Tool for Twitter (12)
• Find Cool New People With a Twitter Search Using TwitterHIT (5)
• 15 Twittery Things For Your Holiday Enjoyment (38)