Given the growing influence and popularity of Twitter, I thought it would be good to follow up my previous two posts on Using Twitter Effectively and Twitter Tools Overview Part 2 with another “tools” update. As you may gather, there are a LOT of tools and applications out there directed toward enhancing your Twitter experience.

The variety of tools can be quite overwhelming and it really depends on your particular needs and purpose in using Twitter. That being said, I hope this post helps you sort through the options.

Top 100 Twitter Tools

Looking for a comprehensive list of Twitter tools to explore? ComMetrics has recently compiled this list of the Top 100 Twitter Tools organized by categories ranging from “conversation management” tools to “brand monitoring” and “multimedia applications.”

A few other key tools to check out:

Twellowhood

Want to drill down and find exactly how many Twitter users and which users are in a particular city? Twellowhood is your answer. Users in an area are also conveniently ranked according to the number of followers they have, helping quickly sort out influential users.

Tweetwasters

Curious to do a competitive analysis or find out how much time you’ve wasted tweet’n away? Tweetwasters multiplies your updates by 30 seconds (the assumed avg. time taken to tweet) to let you know how much time you’ve wasted on the site.

Tweetchat

Hashtags are great, but you still need to be at hashtags.org or twemes.com to track the ongoing conversation flow, right? Wrong. Check out Tweetchat! Basically, a chat room adapted for Twitter users. It’s a wonderful resource for engaging around a specific hashtag topic. Perfect for conferences, events, teleseminars/webinars or other scheduled tweet sessions.

TweetGrid

My new favorite Twitter monitoring tool! You have to check out TweetGrid. Came across this from Steve Rubel’s post. Simple, real-time tool that allows you to monitor up to 9 search topics of your choice at one time. Gone are the days of news directors monitoring the big 3 broadcast stations. I can now envision media outlets utilizing TweetGrid to stay on top of hot news topics throughout the day.

Twitter Name Search

Now you can search Twitter users by first name, last name or username! Launched last week, Twitter Name Search will make it a bit easier for us all to track down key contacts.

Connection Resources

TwitTip is a stellar blog devoted to…? You got it – tips on how to build connections and maximize your tweet’n strategy. Brent Nau also keeps a comprehensive blog on Twitter tools and resources (I would love to see how TrackThis is handling this holiday season!).

Sarah Evans has started an excellent MediaOnTwitter wiki to keep people worldwide apprised of different outlets and journalists. Sarah also runs a weekly Tweet-Up called #journchat that enables PR/Marketing people to connect with media contacts.

Twitter.com/themediaisdying keeps tabs on the state of various media contacts and outlets.

The Tweeple group on LinkedIn is a fantastic resource to discover new people to follow and to help bridge Twitter contacts  into professional connections.

Mr. Tweet is another interesting resource. Just follow Mr. Tweet and they’ll analyze your profile and Twitter engagement before providing recommendations on who you should follow.

What Twitter tools are you planning to use regularly in 2009?

-Scott