Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Estimates of the number of daily users vary as the company does not release the number of active accounts. In November 2008, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research estimated that Twitter had 4-5 million users. A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranks Twitter as the third largest social network (behind Facebook and MySpace), and puts the number of users at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visitors at 55 million.

Find below a collection of the best tools to analyze, aggregate, and visualize twitter data. Please add a comment if you’d like us to look at additional tools.

Twitterholic.com

Twitterholic not only shows top 100 lists by number of friends , followers and updates , but it also shows detailed information for a Twitter user account. The page http://twitterholic.com/twitter/USERACCOUNT contains a graph showing the trend for the number of followers for the previous 30 days and a table showing for the last 30 days the number of followers, friends, updates and favorites.

Twist

Twist is a tool that allows you to track trends on Twitter, similarly to what Google Trends does for Google searches. It gathers tweets as they are posted, filters redundant ones and compiles the rest into two-hour intervals. I love how my screen shot above shows American Idol gaining as much buzz as Obama today.

Twitter Spectrum

Plot any two opposing terms and see related things people are talking about on Twitter spread across the spectrum between. Again, apparently Microsoft today is tightly coupled with Google, whereas Apple didn’t surprise with been related to the iPhone and App Store…

TweetVolume

TweetVolume is a nifty website that helps you find specific words or phrases and see how many people on Twitter are talking about them. Just type in a word or phrase you want to search for, and TweetVolume will present you with a bar graph depicting the search term and an estimation of the number of times the term was used. Notice how iPhone seems to be more popular than Apple, MacBook, iPod, and iTouch combined…

Twitt(url)y

Twitt(url)y ** -** aggregates URLs linked in Twitter messages and puts them on the home page based on overall popularity, calculated simply by determining the number of times the URL was in a Twitter message.  Twitturly also tracks the number of Tweets with links that a particular Twitter user has posted. This is a nifty feature that can help you see what a particular Twitter user likes and how ofter their Tweets with links get Retweeted by others.  Twitturly also gives you the full Tweet History of a URL including how many and who Tweeted it, plus the total estimated reach, regardless of how many URL shortening services were used to point to it. 

**Retweetist**

Retweetist distills links, content and users that are being retweeted the most and ranks them according to freshness and frequency. The app also serves as a good guide to see who is creating the most retweeted messages, making it easier to find out which Twitter users are actually worth following

**Tweetmeme**

Tweetmeme - Tweetmeme looks for new content and tracks who else is talking about it. It ranks the content based upon who and how much a particular item is being discussed. As anyone knows, the number of URLs which spread virally through Twitter each day must run into the millions, so tracking where that viral trail starts and gains momentum is going to be fascinating. It also categorizes the content into blogs / videos / images and audio.

TweetLists

TweetLists - This service simply shows the most popular links over the last 24 hours found on the public timeline at Twitter.com. There are tabs for most popular Tweets of the day and week. There are also lists of the top Twitterati and domains being Tweeted.  A search feature makes it easy to locate specifics.

Additional Twitter Tools and filtering services include (based on Lee Odden’s list ):

• Twistori - A sort of emotional Tweet agregator: Love, Hate, Think, Believe, Wish. By Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs

• retweetradar - A tag cloud of Tweeted topics is what stands out with this service, showing current tags, today and yesterday for time intervals. Clicking on the tagged keywords initiates a search on Twitter itself.  The “What’s Happening Right Now” section updates in real time.  The top Retweeted links and Twitter users are also displayed along with a trend archive. By Minnesota’s own Ben Hedrington

• Twitturls - Shows popular articles, pictures and videos linked to via Twitter in the past 2 hours, today and also filters out any Tweets that don’t use Twitter vernacular. By Justin Palmer

• Twitlinks - Aggregates the latest links from the worlds top tech twitter users in a news story format.

• Retailer Twitter Aggregator - As the name implies, this is a retailer Twitter aggregator showing an ”at a glance” view of  how brick and mortar retailers are using Twitter to connect with their customers including sales information advice. By Tom Sullivan

• TwitterSphere - a current melange of the most talked about stories from social messaging utility twitter.com