Since Twitter changed to 100% OAuth support you are now required to have a Twitter Application to post to Twitter. This can be seen with how a lot of the WordPress plugins work, which now require you to setup an application and save your OAuth keys so that they can post to Twitter.

You can do the same thing in a stand alone application and add functionality specific to your needs.

There are several benefits including but not limited to, having your link and name appear at the bottom of each Tweet as seen below.

You can also write custom routines to help you issue better Tweets.

I did this on my own Twitter App page with my Follow Friday Tweets.

I always hated the FollowFriday Tweets that are just several links to other people with no explanation of why I would want to follow them. So I built a routine where I can input the persons Twitter name, a reason to follow them and the result will always be the same formatted Tweet.

Each Tweet has the #FollowFriday hashtag followed by the referenced account and an explanation as to why I recommend them, and finally the #ff hastag to end the Tweet.

I also included several other features to make Twitter easier. I have a regular post box where I can write a Tweet and I created a Javascript bookmark for auto posting.

When I am on any web page I click Auto Post, and a Tweet is created and sent that has the Title of the page as the body of the Tweet, and a shortened link is included to the page. And of course they are branded with my link for each Tweet.

If you have a little time and programming help, I would highly recommend using a custom branded Twitter strategy.

Think outside the box!

Every little bit of exposure and linking helps !

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So far Twhirl has met my expectations of what I wanted in a 3rd party Twitter client. It is customizable and loads quickly. I will continue to try other Twitter clients but so far I am satisfied with Twhirl.

Twhirl has been aquired by the video chat service Seesmic, here is a good post at Seesmic to explain why.

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Nothing real earth shattering there, but what I did find interesting is that when I followed that search, the very first result is a status page from Twitter.

More and more we ares seeing Social Networking and now Micro Blogging pages get good results in the SERPS. So if you think that what you type in Twitter will only be seen in Twitter, think again. This should be another reason to consider using Twitter as a Social additive to your blogging. Not only can you help drive traffic to your blog with your Tweats, you can gain even more exposure with your status pages.

Follow me on Twitter 

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Twitter has been like this for me. I tried Twitter a long time ago, and just could not get into it. However, recently I posted about a great new IM system called Digsby, and Digsby has brought Twitter back into my daily routine with ease. As usual I have to search out a system and see what types of tools, updates, APIs & plugins are available. It’s just my tweaking nature.

I found 2 excellent resources for additional Twitter Tools, everything from standard API calls to WordPress Twitter Plugins. If you want to extend your Twitter, check out these pages for some great additions.

TWITTER TOOLBOX: 60+ Twitter Tools

Twitter Tools

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