In a recent Google Webmaster Help video (see below), Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam Team answers one of the most popular questions that many websites have and that is “Does Google use Twitter and Facebook Links as a ranking signal?”  The definitive answer, from Matt is “Yes”.

To be honest, this rather surprised me because rarely have I ever heard Matt answer a question with such forthright authority.  Usually the answer is more along the lines of “Yes, but…” with all kinds of subjective material added to the answer; making it virtually impossible to detect if what you’re doing yourself actually matters at all.

This question stemmed from a recent article written by Danny Sullivan Editor-in-Chief at Search Engine Land.

In this article (which is a great read by the way), Danny offers responses by both Bing and Google on specific questions such as:

1. If a link is retweeted or referenced a lot in Twitter, do you count this as a ranking signal?
2. Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets?
3. Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending upon who Tweeted it?
4. Do you try to calculate the authority of someone on Facebook?
5. Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight on Facebook depending upon who posted the link?

It’s very interesting to read the answers and even more interesting to associate it with your own activity on both of these social networks.

Part of the curiosity with Twitter in particular, is because Twitter does not follow links.  They used to, but I believe it was back in 2009 some time, they added nofollow to all of their links.

What this means is that even though you’re tweeting a link and others may retweet it, the “nofollow” portion of that link is telling the search engines “Hey, if you see this link, don’t follow it to its destination and give that destination credit for it.”

But what’s so much more important here is what Danny has referred to as “SocialRank”.  And I am totally on board with him here…let me explain…

Years (and I mean years ago) when Google especially was gaining ground as the “go to” search engine, people realized that you could manipulate the rankings by:

1. Stuffing a bunch of keywords into your meta keywords tag (and if you don’t know what this is, don’t worry, it doesn’t matter any more anyway).
2. Stuffing your page full of keywords in order to rank well for the keyword you were after.
3. Hiding text on the page in the same color as the page background so that the search engines could read it but your site visitors couldn’t.

When this failed to work any longer, people realized that links were a major factor in where you ranked.  And so…reciprocal linking came along (that’s when you trade links with someone else in an effort to help increase the importance of your website.)

Again, Google soon realized that this wasn’t really a *true* indicator of authority and so it began discounting these kinds of links.

So it became important to try and get links to your website from other important websites (“important” as deemed by Google), in order to help your own website ranking.  This “importance” at least in reference to Google is referred to as PageRank which you can see by installing the Google Toolbar within your browser.

But…it’s also important to understand that the PageRank that you see in your browser for a web page is NOT the *true* PageRank of a web page or website.  As a matter of fact, it’s quite old information.  According to Google PageRank Data, the last time it was updated was April 2, 2010 (it’s now late December 2010).  So…over 8 months ago.

The fact is, Google updates this internally quite often but what you may be looking at today is in fact, 8 months old.

So, all this comes down to this:  Google has hundreds of ranking factors that determine where to place you within it’s search results and for what given terms.  People know a little about how Google determines importance of your web pages, but like all indicators that we at least know of, it can all be manipulated.  Whether or not you choose to manipulate it is up to your own moral standards, but the one thing that is extremely difficult to manipulate is your online reputation.

Who believes you?  Who trusts what you say?  Who retweets your links?  Et cetera, et cetera…

This is what Danny refers to within his article.  And I truly believe that this is the wave of the future for websites and their owners; simply because it is so difficult to fake.  If people trust you, they’ll read more of your stuff.  If you offer valuable information, you’ll be talked about more online, and so on.

Consider a great example of Mari Smith who is trusted by thousands of people online for her information and advice on how to use Facebook effectively.  She is a fantastic example of how SocialRank likely works.  I guarantee that if Mari posts a link, it’s retweeted and shared on Facebook a thousand times over.  She has “SocialRank”.

Take the time to read the article by Danny – I think you’ll find it very enlightening.

P.S.  The video by Matt is below…

Transcript

If you have a Twitter account, this quick video will show you an easy way to find out how many of those friends you’re following on Twitter are actually following you back.

It’s a free website called Twitter Karma and you can visit this site by heading to http://www.dossy.org/twitter/karma.

Once you’re there, enter in your Twitter username and password and then click the large “Whack!” button.

Depending upon how many people you follow, the process could take a little bit.

The first page you come to is a list of all of your followers as well as those who follow you.  The names on this first page are listed by the last time that the person updated their status on Twitter.

If you scroll to the bottom of the first page you’ll see those people that you either follow or who are following you that have not updated in some time.  If you no longer want to follow them, just simply click the box next to their Twitter name and then click the button at the very bottom of the page that says “Bulk Unfollow”.  This will clean those users out of your list.

In order to find out who YOU are following that is not following you back, go back up to the top of the page and from the “Show” drop down list, choose “Only Following”.  This will bring back a list of those people whom you are following but are not following you back.

You can either check each one individually or scroll to the bottom of the page and choose “Check all” and then click “Bulk Unfollow”.  This will unfollow everyone that you have chosen on this page.

As you continue to get more followers, you’ll want to visit this site on a regular basis – even as frequently as once a week.  Doing this will help you keep your Twitter list nice and clean.

Twitter is a website where you are able to update your status as frequently as you like. Your updates are restricted to 140 characters so Twitter as well as other sites that limit your updates to little bite-sized pieces of text are oftentimes called “micro-blogs”. The purpose of Twitter is to build your brand, interact with other people, share links, and simply grow your business.

Here are 7 easy steps to using Twitter.

1. The first thing you’ll want to do is set up a Twitter account if you haven’t already. Simply go to Twitter.com and click the green “Sign up Now” button. Enter some basic information about yourself and then create your account.
2. Next, set up your profile. Once you’re logged in, click on Settings at the top right of the page and then click on “account”. Add your name, your website address, your location, and most importantly a Bio about yourself. This bio will be one of the most crucial factors that help people decide to follow you and your updates or not. Tell people what you do and who you are. It’s confined to 160 characters so pull out your best written materials!
3. Third, click “picture” and add a profile picture preferably one of yourself. If you use the default icon that Twitter gives you this will limit the number of people who will follow you.
4. Fourth, Design your background by clicking on “Design”. If you’re just starting out, you can simply choose a default design that Twitter offers. However, you will eventually want a customized background for your business or website. There are many services online that allow you to do this free of charge.
5. Begin to make some status updates. What are you doing right now? What are you working on? Did you find an interesting link that you’d like to share? If you’re brand new to Twitter and don’t yet have many status updates (also called Tweets), or those status updates are nothing but attempting to sell something, you won’t get a lot of followers which is central to Twitter. Instead, post informative updates, interesting links, and anything else that you would like to share without having that link be self-serving.The more tweets you make at Twitter, and the more often you do so, the better the chances you have of getting more Twitter followers. Keep in mind that each tweet is limited to 140 characters so when you share a link especially, the characters in the link will be included in your 140 character limit.
6. Next, begin to get some followers for your new Twitter page. Click on “Find People” at the top right of the page then enter in a name in the search box. You can also connect to your Gmail, Yahoo or AOL email accounts and find people you may already know who are on Twitter. Additionally, if there are people whose websites you visit on a steady basis chances are they have a Twitter account. Visit their website or blog and look for a link to their Twitter account.
7. Finally, don’t be afraid to tell people you have a Twitter account. This will assist you in getting more Twitter followers.

The bottom line is with Twitter, is building trust first and then selling to those people later. No one wants to be marketed to all of the time so you ought to make your Twitter account something helpful to others first and foremost and make the helpful posts the bulk of your tweets. You can still market to your followers you just don’t want to make those the vast majority of your status updates.

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First, my apologies for doing two blog posts in one day.  I felt that this was just far too interesting to not pass along and I’m sure you’re going to be hearing a LOT about this in the upcoming days and weeks.

An interesting story just came across my desk (read email) about how Twitter is currently beta-testing something called the “Discovery Engine“.

This improvement to Twitter which is currently being beta tested by a few users, places a search box at the top of the page and then displays the results of that search within your current Twitter window.

If you currently use Twitter, you know that all the Tweets of people you have chosen to follow show up in your own Twitter window in real time.  With the new search feature that Twitter is testing, whenever you search on a term, your Twitter window will then be populated with those users you follow who have referenced that search term themselves.

This new feature also allows you to save searches.  So if there is a search that you do on a regular basis, you can tell Twitter to keep this search phrase available for you and it will do so by placing it on your Twitter window.

I’m still not certain (since this new feature is still in beta) if that means that the search terms you have saved will be available for others to see.

Twitter is also testing out trends.  Another program called Tweetdeck does this already but Twitter is now testing it out within their own program (again, in beta). Essentially how this works is that Twitter will be able to determine what topics are “hot” right now.

So what does this have to do with Google?

As it stands now, whenever Google decides to add something to their index regardless of what that “something” is; a blog post, a news story, an updated web page, etc., Google’s bot first has to find that information, add it to its index, sort it out to see where it belongs and then eventually have it show up on a related page.

Here’s a great example.  Let’s say that you’re an American Idol fan.  You watch it religiously and just can’t wait to talk about the latest “Idol” that has been voted off.

Since the results are read (and not known) until it’s revealed on the air live, no one (aside from the group who tallies the votes) knows who will go and who will stay.

But once those results are read you can bet that hundreds if not thousands of Twitterers are talking about the results within seconds after the vote has been read live on air.

The problem is that in order for Google to show this information in its search results, it first has to be placed in print somewhere online.  One could argue that the Twitter feed itself that is updating could be considered part of that “print”.

Where the delay lies however, is that Google’s bot needs to first find that information, organize it, decide where to put it, and then finally start to display it within their search results.

Since Twitter is “powered by the people” this information is instantly available and no one has to sit around and wait for news on the topic.  If you want to know, just login to Twitter and see what people are saying.

What’s interesting is that Google just earlier this year set up their own Twitter account and this has led to a lot of speculation.

Is Google “checking out their competition?”

Is Google going to make an offer for Twitter?

Do Twitterers even want that?

You can bet that Google is smacking themselves over the head wondering “why didn’t I think of that?”  (I personally picture Homer Simpson saying “D’oh!”).

None the less, it will be an interesting story to keep tabs on.  What have you heard through the Twitter grapevine?

I’ll be posting the show here if you want to listen in.

Transcription of the Webcast is below

Links I talked about in the webcast

Twitter

Follow Me on Twitter

Get the Twitter Book for Free

Visit YouTube EDU

YouTube

Official AdSense Blog

Wordtracker

Detecting Commercial Intention

WebReader

The Google search used in the example

Matt Cutts talks about Universal Search

******* TRANSCRIPTION *******

The first thing I want to talk about today is some SEO news that you might find interesting.

One of those things is that YouTube has now added a Twitter button. If you haven’t noticed, Twitter is absolutely everywhere today and if you’re not using it for your business, you’re missing the boat. It’s free to sign up and you can do that at Twitter.com. If you’d like you can follow me there too my Twitter name is KristineWirth.

Sometimes I am just shocked, literally and I don’t know why really but when you hear of big names using Twitter it really stands up and makes you take notice. For example, yesterday I was watching the NASCAR Sprint Cup race on Fox and heard the announcers saying that you could now follow them on Twitter at NASCARonFox. That really shocked me. Not exactly sure why but you can bet it was impressive, especially when you heard D.W. (Darrell Waltrip for those of you who are not NASCAR fans) talk about making Tweets. Not what you expect to hear during a NASCAR race when it’s all about restrictor plates, brake calipers and lugnuts. I was impressed. Can you tell I’m just a bit of a tomboy? Maybe that’s why I’m in such a male-dominated business?

But back to the YouTube Twitter thing. If you visit any video on YouTube, you’ll notice that next to the spot to put the video on MySpace and Facebook is now a spot to Tweet the video at Twitter. Tweets are the posts you make at Twitter. This link is now located right there at YouTube under the video window.

When you click on the link it takes you to your Twitter account (of course) and automatically adds the link to the video into your Twitter window. Just another way to keep the ever-growing Twitter population interested.

Now, this is great for those of you who market online simply because you can obviously post a quick Tweet to one of your own videos at YouTube. Just remember, no one likes to be marketed to all the time so don’t forget to tweet other videos too even those funny ones that you don’t think are “professional” – everyone can use a good laugh now and again.

I’ve released a free book that you can download called “Twitter – What it Is, How to Use It and How Not to Be a TwitterTwit” which you can get for free at BoneheadSEO.com. I’ll have a link for you on the Bonehead Blog at boneheadseo.com/blog.

While on the topic of YouTube, you might be interested to know that they’ve also rolled out a few new improvements last week. They’ve added an upload progress bar. This has been a much-requested feature at YouTube and what this will do for you is allow you to see how far along your video upload is.

They’ve also rolled out YouTube EDU which is an “educational hub”. Essentially the way YouTube phrases it is that it was sparked by a group of employees who wanted to find a better way to collect and highlight all of the great educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities. You can check out more about YouTube EDU at www.youtube.com/edu.

personally I’d love to see more dedicated channels to topics. Maybe we’ll see this in the future.

And just one more thing before I get off of the topic of YouTube. The other day I was watching a video and noticed a little lightbulb just at the top of the page just above the video. Now I don’t know if this was part of a Google test, if this was something new that I just completely missed all together (although I don’t believe so because I don’t see it there any longer). But if it was a part of a test, just know that it allows you to “turn out the lights” while viewing a YouTube video. If you click on this lightbulb, it turns the entire page black except for the video itself.

Now, as an online marketer, I hate this. Not only can you not see the additional videos that you might be interested in if it’s in “lights out” mode but the viewer can’t see your URL (or web address) in your description box (which by the way you should be adding), but they literally can’t see anything on that page but the video itself.

Oh, and of course there’s the ads at the bottom of the video that Google has now been including. Which obviously are still visible in “lights out” mode because they’re embedded within the video itself.

On that topic, here’s another juicy tip for you. In the past you might have been told (maybe even by me) to be sure you brand those videos with a logo, URL or watermark at the bottom of the video screen. Ideally a URL so that the viewer knew exactly where to go. But now those URLs are obstructed by ads (this is especially irritating if you’re watching a video that is translated at the bottom of the page). Sure, you can click them off but sometimes they come back! I’ve had it happen. So when you create your video for YouTube, place your URL at the top of the page (or your logo, your watermark, whatever it is that you use).

Now, all that said, it was just announced last week that Google is doing away with their AdSense video units feature. This allowed you to show YouTube content on your web pages that contained AdSense ads. This evidently has not been working out as well as Google had hoped and is being retired at the end of April. I couldn’t quite gather from their blog post at http://adsense.blogspot.com whether or not this also meant the ads in the YouTube videos themselves at YouTube (my guess is no, they’ll still stay there) but it is being nixed for AdSense publishers.

On the bright side of things, since you now know that the largest search engine available today is getting rid of ads within videos, it might be a good time to rethink any other third-party ads you may be running within your own videos because this is one very large case-study that is flat-out telling you it doesn’t make much money.

So there you have it, some news (and two tips on YouTube.) Time to move on…

Wordtracker, a keyword research tool (one of the best in my opinion) is coming out with a brand new version very soon. You’ll now be able to take a look at a keywords metrics such as the frequency with which the keyword was searched on, how competitive it is and what the commercial viability of that keyword is (which is VERY exciting in my opinion.)

All three of these metrics will allow you to find those keywords that are profitable, not just simply easier to rank well for.

Additionally, they’ll also be using “allinanchor” as their website count instead of the default Google exact match which the tool uses now. Why this is important is because before, (well, currently at least until the new tool is put into production), whenever you researched competitors within Wordtracker, Wordtracker based this information on an exact match of the phrase. This means that they’d only search for the keyword in quotes which gives you an indication as to how competitive a keyword really is. However, it appears as though now, Wordtracker will be providing you with information that tells you how many incoming links appear per keyword for the internet as a whole. Allinanchor means all of the keyword phrase within anchor text, or in other words the clickable link.

To clarify that even further, let’s say that one of the keyword phrases you were considering using was “dog hair dye”. Instead of simply searching for that phrase within Google and using that phrase in quotes to help determine the number of competitors there are, you now will be able to see how often that phrase of “dog hair dye” is used in a clickable link over the entire Internet.

Personally I can’t wait to update the Bonehead SEO course members about this information when it comes available.

And finally, the commercial intent portion is truly exciting. Microsoft has provided this information for a while now for free but since it will now be incorporated into Wordtracker’s tool, you can essentially get all of the best information for keywords in one spot. This tool allows you to see at a glance if the use of a keyword has commercial viability – that is, if someone who uses this keyword is likely to purchase a product or not.

This tool is also available for free at Microsoft’s AdCenter labs. And I’ll have a link to this tool as well as other information I talk about throughout this broadcast at the Bonehead SEO Blog.

http://adlab.microsoft.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/

Hmmmm…what else, what else?

Oh yeah! Here’s a great tool for many of you who already have a website up and running and are on the lookout for a new way to make the content of your site more interesting. I actually heard about this from Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com. It’s called WebReader and it speech enables your website or blog. What this means is that you add a button to your webpage and when a site visitor clicks on that button, it will read the entire page of content or only the content you specify. This is a great alternative to recording your own audio which you then upload to your site which can get very time-consuming and have a bit of a learning curve especially if you’ve never done anything like that before.

the only downside is that it’s a computer-style voice however, it does have a bit of a personality to it. It’s much better than the reader you would find in say Adobe Reader for example. If you’ve never used the Adobe reader function you should try it out sometime. It’s meant to be useful but sometimes is downright funny to listen to.

WebREader is not free but is very cost-effective. So if you’re interested, visit http://webreader.readspeaker.com and again I’ll have a link for you on the Bonehead Blog.

But, I won’t leave you hanging about the Adobe reader function either. Simply open up any PDF you have on your computer, click “View” and then click “Read Out Loud”. You’ll see (or rather hear) what I mean.

And finally in the “Google news you might not care about unless you live in China”, the Chinese government has lifted its block it imposed on YouTube. In case you missed the story, there was a YouTube video released that purportedly showed Chinese security officers beating handcuffed Tibetans. China said that the video was a fake but instead of taking proactive measures, it just flat out decided to ban all of China from even visiting YouTube all together. They have since lifted the ban.

And that’s a brief recap of things going on in the Internet world this past week.

So let’s get down to our main topic of interest and that’s Universal Search.

Back in early to mid 2007 Google introduced Universal Search. It’s a barely-noticeable set of links that sit at the very top left of a Google search results page. Essentially what it allows you to do is view other kinds of related information based on the search you just did within Google.

For example, if you search on the phrase “espresso” in Google you’ll get your search results page that contains links to various websites, videos, shopping spots for espresso, etc. But at the top of the page are a set of links labeled “Images, Maps, News, Video, Gmail, and “more”. “More” containing shopping, groups, books, scholar, finance, blogs, YouTube, calendar, photos, documents, reader, sites, and “even more”.

What these links are allowing you to do is a “vertical search”. Let me explain.

When you search in simply Google.com for a term you are searching “horizontally” that is, across a wide array and spectrum of various kinds of content. If you remember from the example we just gave the initial search results page returned links to websites, videos and places where you could shop for espresso.

However, when you do a “vertical” search by clicking one of the links within Google’s universal search at the top of the page, you are narrowing down your search to only find “videos” for example on espresso. You can also choose to only find “news” for espresso or “images’ of espresso. In other words, vertical searches allow you to focus on only one kind of content, video, news, blogs or books instead of getting the whole gamut of results.

Now you might be wondering why this is important to you the website owner. Well, it’s because of an interview of Google Engineer Matt Cutts done by WebProNews in December of 2008. And again, I’ll have this information up for you at the Bonehead Blog.

Essentially Matt tells us that Universal search will become more important as we move through 2009 and beyond. He also hints at Universal search being incorporated into the regular search results at Google.

Which brings me back to the initial search results we saw initially when we did a search for espresso in Google. Google didn’t just return links to web pages for us, no, it gave us not only links to websites but videos as well as places to shop for espresso. Both of which used to be tightly contained within the Universal search links at the top of the page.

So not only are these new additions to search taking up spots where typical websites would normally reside, they’re also a heck of a lot more eye-catching than just a single link.

The good news is that the actual number of web pages links on the initial search results page remain at 10, they are now pushed down a bit “below the fold” or in other words in a spot where you have to scroll down in order to view them.

And this is just one example. There are multiple different examples of Universal Search being incorporated into typical search results pages (just like Matt said they would be). When we view the espresso search results we’re only seeing video and shopping resources added to the listings. In some cases in addition to videos and shopping resources you’ll also have blogs that are related, news that is related and even images that are related to your search. The images are typically placed prominently at the top of the page.

So what does this mean for you? Well, it’s a great opportunity for you. Most of your competitors will still be focusing on getting that first page listing for their website. Not their video, not their images, not their blog but simply for their website. And if you take a quick look at any search results page that shows images or videos, you’ll immediately notice that these are what draws the eye. Not the links.

This should say to you that you should be using images on all of your web pages and using the same keywords that you’re using on your web page that you want to rank well for in the image. While always using images within any web page or blog post is important for visual appeal, it’s especially important for those searches that instantly return images at the top of the page in Google.

For example, if you do a search for your keyword in Google, say “prom hairstyles”, you’ll instantly see that images show at the top of the search results page.

The same is true of video.

In the espresso example, there are at least two videos that initially show up when you do a Google search. If you’re able to and you have the know-how to create a video around the keyword you’re using, I highly suggest that you do so. It’s always a good idea to have multiple different kinds of videos available for your topic that your website visitors as well as visitors within large video sharing sites can watch.

Plus, if you’ll notice, both of these videos on our espresso page are around 3 minutes or less in length. This seems to be a typical standard within Google so when you create your videos, keep them short and use the keywords you’re gunning for within the title of the video itself.

I’ll have more information about video marketing in upcoming episodes.

So that’s it for today’s installment of the Bonehead SEO BlogTalkRadio webcast.

If you’re interested in the entire BoneheadSEO course and wish to purchase it yourself, visit http://www.BoneheadSEO.com/cb/ and you’ll see some proof of results there as well.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our webcast by clicking the orange RSS feed icon to the right and feel free to share this via Twitter with your friends by clicking the “Tweet This” button.

It’s the Wordtracker Keyword Questions lab and it just might be one of the best tools you can use for your industry.

What the Wordtracker Keyword Questions lab does is let you enter in a very generic search term and once you submit that term, Wordtracker will return to you a list of questions that people are asking right now within your industry.

Take for example the keyword “Twitter”.  If we head on over to this tool (which is free by the way), and enter in this generic phrase, we’ll see that people are asking all kinds of questions about “Twitter”.

Or, let’s take a look at the generic term of “jewelry”:

Whatever term you enter in, Wordtracker will give you back a list of questions that your market is currently asking about.

By taking a look at the questions above regarding “jewelry”, if we had a website about jewelry, these would be questions that I could answer regarding jewelry.

I could dedicate a page to “how to make jewelry” and create yet another page on my jewelry site about “how to make beaded jewelry”.

Since I already know that people are asking these questions, I can then answer these questions and use website optimization on a web page to do so.

This resource is just another way to make use of phrases that people are searching on right now.  By incorporating these questions (and answering them on my site), I can then add this to my ever-growing arsenal of keyword phrases surrounding the main topic of my site.

Today I was introduced to a much-needed and very useful resource for Twitter, a Twitter applications database.

What this new site does (it’s currently in beta) is house over 440 and counting Twitter applications for you to make use of.

If you need Twitter browser plugins, they’re listed.

If you need Twitter applications for your desktop, they’re listed.

Even Twitter web-based applications.

It’s a great resource for anyone using Twitter (which I recommend doing) and is a one-stop resource for everthing Twitter related.

Visit http://twitdom.com/ ; it’s free.

But, I’ve done something very unique with this – I’m either incredibly stupid or incredibly brilliant – (they’re kind of the same in some ways don’t you think?)…none the less, I’ve made it available for free (not unique by any means) but I’ve given you the source and am giving those who download it authority to update it as they see fit to give it away to THEIR interested parties.

You’ll see what I mean when you get to the page.

To deter some folks from simply taking it for all its worth I do require an opt-in for the book – you’ll see why when you get to the page.

Visit http://boneheadseo.com/The-Twitter-Book.html

- Kristine

Look for this to be available within the next couple of weeks.

- Kristine

Just a quick post today before I head out to help with my son’s preschool Thanksgiving day party.

Lately I’ve been running across lots of neat Twitter applications that you might enjoy.  Here are 4 of them.

1. Mr. Tweet – Ed Dale – http://twitter.com/Ed_Dale brought this one to my attention.  What Mr. Tweet will do is give you a list of people that are outside your Twitter network that you should be following.  It’s billed as a “personal assistant” for Twitter but acts like Facebook’s friend finder.  You can read more about what Mr. Tweet does at http://mashable.com/2008/11/26/mr-tweet/
2. Quitter – Quitter will email you when someone stops following you and to top it off, will also tell you the Tweet you posted that may have caused them to stop following.  You can read more about Quitter at http://mashable.com/2008/10/17/qwitter/
3. Magpie – Be-a-Magpie allows you to either purchase advertising on Twitter or earn money from advertising on Twitter.
4. TwitWall – Twitwall allows you to make those longer posts that you wish you could make in Twitter.  Completely free for all Twitter users.

Enjoy!