Features:

• simple web UI
• colorful, cascading display of tweets
• search on any term(s)

The Good:

Visible Tweets is an interesting way to display a stream of tweets on any given topic. Tweets are displayed one at a time on a colorful background, with one tweet cascading/rolling into the next.

The Not-so-Good:

The visual display of Visible Tweets is rather appealing, and we liked it a lot. While Visible Tweets can search on any term or trend, it is not a hard-core search tool. It doesn’t pretend to be, which works out just fine.

Tweetwave.com Rates It: ★★★

Features:

• simple web page displays a stream of random tweets, one at a time
• tweeter’s avatar displayed (including link to twitter.com/username page)

The Good:

Everytweet isn’t so much an application as a diversion. It has a somewhat hypnotic effect to it, as completely random tweets scroll past. There are no other uses for it, no configurations, no other displays. It is simply there to provoke thought or reflection, and that’s not a bad thing. You can visit the Twitter.com page for each tweeter if you want to follow things further.

The Not-so-Good:

The mesmerizing quality of Everytweet can suck you in, running the risk of minutes, if not hours, of “wasted” time, unless you like that sort of thing.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ★★★

Features:

• website allows users to create and send tweets for $1 each
• tweets will be included in a book

The Good:

According to the 1 Million Tweets website, one of the objects is to raise money for charity (10% of all proceeds). That is a good thing. The site also allows for promotion of companies and causes via 1 Million Tweets.

The Not-so-Good:

1 Million Tweets isn’t so much an application as it is a project. If you want to pay $1 per tweet to participate in the project, that’s fine. At least some of it will go to charity. Simple math tells us that if one million tweets get sent at $1 each and only 10% goes to charity, then 90% (an awful lot of money) will go to the project developer(s). By sending a tweet through 1 Million Tweets the user is granting an irrevocable license as to the use of its content.

It isn’t for us to say whether this is good, bad or ugly, but there are some things users may want to consider before participating.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ★

Features:

• web UI “piggy-backs” on Twitter via the Twitter API
• easy process: create new Twitter account, register at GroupTweet.com, group members follow it, send tweets to group as DM to registered account

The Good:

GroupTweet is a very good tool to send private tweets to select groups. It would work well in a corporate or club setting. The process required to get it to work is simple.

The Not-so-Good:

GroupTweet has a singular purpose, and carries that out very well. The only thing we can pick on is the apparent lack of a stated security policy regarding protection of passwords (they may well be protected, but that isn’t indicated).

Tweetwave.com rates it: ★★★★

Features:

• web UI is a dashboard for social media accounts, including Twitter, Seesmic, Flickr, Facebook and FriendFeed
• all Twitter operations supported
• tagging and groups can be created
• schedule tweets for future publishing
• TwitPic support
• search feature across several social media platforms
• massive amount of custom configuration available
• reports
• detailed profile information can be created
• tutorials
• view conversation threads
• URL shrinking

The Good:

Where to begin? PeopleBrowsr is a dream come true for serious social media users. You can do all the usual Twitter operations and parse and display tweets in an almost endless variety of ways (as well as generating reports), but it is the ability of PeopleBrowsr to stretch across different social media applications that really makes it powerful. You can, for example, view (and search) user info in Twitter, FaceBook and Flickr all in one dashboard. Views are in “stacks” and can be configured as lists, avatar grids or mapped with Google Maps.

The Group and Tag features give PeopleBrowsr one of the main benefits of TweetDeck, without the Adobe Air issues. The Reports feature provides a huge amount of detailed information about how and whom you tweet, as well as other things like StockTwits recommendations. You can post from the dashboard directly to Twitter, FriendFeed, FaceBook or Identi.ca.

PeopleBrowsr packs an amazing amount of stuff into its UI.

The Not-so-Good:

As good as PeopleBrowsr is, there were a few things that we would like to see in future releases (beta coming soon): (1) the ability to manage more than one Twitter account from the same dashboard, (2) the ability to view stats on links tweeted and (3) a bookmarklet/widget tool to allow for tweeting directly from a web page or blog post. **Note: PeopleBrowsr has fixed (1) above – users are now able to manage more than one Twitter account from the dashboard.**

Tweetwave.com rates it: ★★★★★

Features:

• Manage multiple accounts (personal, business etc)
• “Your Replies” sidebar, updated real-time
• “Your Direct Messages” sidebar, updated real-time
• “Your Hot Topic” box for a search term, updated real-time
• Friends Timeline, with inline display of tweets which has been replied to
• Groups and tags, for categorizing your friends
• Power User of the Day – linked badge for most proactive feedbackers
• Inline reply, re-tweet, DM for any tweet or user
• Search box, conveniently placed between tweet box and timelines (look above)
• Complex searches, with option to save search query for later use
• Monitor saved search queries, and sort them descendant by number of found tweets
• Followers list, displaying their latest tweets info, with inline follow link
• No page refresh! One time load, then all Ajax
• Favorite tweets list
• “@You & RT” search, to look for tweets about you over Twittersphere
• Sliders for setting auto-refresh rates, based on your needs at a particular moment
• Video replies for inline tweets, using Seesmic.com video services

The Good:

tweetvisor is a great tool for managing multiple Twitter accounts. It allows you to view your timeline and friends timeline, make groups and perform searches and tag results. There are all kinds of tools in tweetvisor. Multiple account management is a big plus, but the ability to make groups of friends/followers is a huge bonus. Search topics can be made “hot topics” and tracked on an ongoing basis. Almost every feature of tweetvisor is configurable by the user. tweetvisor could well be “TweetDeck plus”. On top of all that, it is browser based, so you don’t have to worry about API limits.

The Not-so-Good:

tweetvisor is good, good, good, but if we could point out one thing on this side of the ledger it would be that there is almost too much jammed into the UI. All kinds of useful information is tucked away as you access features. It just felt a little “cramped”. One other thing: it would be great to be able to schedule tweets for future posting. There.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ★★★★★

Features:

• web UI displays world or USA map with tweet locations marked by hearts
• tweets displayed along with avatars
• click on heart to display more details of tweet/er

The Good:

geoheartbeat is an interesting way to view tweets based on geo-location. It is a combination of Twitter and Google Maps. You can manipulate the map in many ways. As you drill deeper into the map, more Twitter users from each “Metropolis” are displayed.

The Not-so-Good:

Although the geoheartbeat site has a blog, it would be very nice to have additional information about how it works, and how tweets end up on the site.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ♦♦♦

Features:

• open re.twt’d website and most retweeted items display automatically
• users can select timeframe of hours, day, week or fortnight
• displays the popular tweet and the following retweets
• allows for reply or retweet from within the application

The Good:

re.twit’d is a good tool for finding out which tweets are the most popular/retweeted. You can also see who is doing the retweeting, and reply to or retweet the original popular tweet right from with the application.

The Not-so-Good:

re.twit’d serves its purpose quite well. It would have been nice to see a little more information about the application and how it works, but functionally, it is fine.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ♦♦♦

Features:

• twoxit.com provides code for copying to place a Twitter update widget on websites
• widget available in five color schemes
• two sizes of widget (180 x 130 px and 468 x 60 px)
• Twitter username & password required to send tweet via widget
• character countdown

The Good:

twoxit is a good way to get a Twitter update widget onto your website or blog. The widget itself comes in two orientations and five colors with a character countdown to keep you on track. It is easy to simply copy the code provided at twoxit.com and paste it into a website. Tweets go through fine.

The Not-so-Good:

We know why both a Twitter username and password are required to send tweets, but there is no information on twoxit.com about how the API is used or a privacy policy of any kind (even one that says “we have no control over your information”). It would be useful to see that information. The idea of twoxit was conceived on February 17, 2009 and launched February 20, 2009, so it really is in its first beta iteration. There are bound to be fixes along the way.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ♦♦♦

Features:

• view tweets from public timeline geo-located on a spinning globe
• login with Twitter credentials and tweet from twittearth (your tweets show up more or less right away)

The Good:

twittearth provides an interesting representation of the Twitter public timeline, with a spinning globe showing night and day. Tweets are shown and the user represented by curious little icon/figurines. The entire effect can be rather mesmerizing.

The Not-so-Good:

Although tweets made from twittearth show up on the globe representation, during our test drive they did not actually go through to recipients or show in our own timeline. That was disappointing, to be sure. Also, huge time-wasting potential with twittearth. It’s cool to look at, but can be hard to leave alone. Hmmm.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ♦♦