Trendistic. (http://trendistic.com/)

Trendistic 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 one-hour intervals.

This way, it shows how the frequency of one, two, three and four-word phrases fluctuate over time. The result is a visualization of what is popular and what is not among Twitter users, and how certain events are reflected or even predicted by the microblogosphere.

You can enter a phrase (topic) in the Trendistic search box to see how its frequency varies over time, or several different topics separated by commas to see how they relate (each topic will show in the chart with a specific color): try comparing ‘dinner’ and ‘breakfast’ or ‘morning’ and ‘night’ for instance, to see how powerful it can be.

How K. A. Is It?

I first found out about this site from reading Joel Comm’s book, “Twitter Power.” (It’s our only K.A. Book right now). Like Joel, some of the things that I really like about it are the graphs that it shows. Being able to see what days the different trends peaked on, is great especially if you have had a part in it.

Some of the other things are:
– It’s accurate and very detailed.
– You can easily compare different terms with a click of a button.
– It shows you the most recent tweets who have used the term.

Why this is important? This allows you to see what trends are the most current and on Twitter have some great conversations to join. Which will ultimately get you some new followers hopefully, and if you’re like me who is not great with keeping up with current events, it gives you an idea of the latest news stories happening around the world.

The only downfall so far is that for some of the lower used trends, it really doesn’t do that great of a job with giving statistics. For instance, my good friend Jeremy Cowart, had an amazing event this past weekend called help-portrait. (http://www.help-portrait.com/) and it was covered on CNN, and Fox News and I know it was a pretty good trending topic, but when I checked on Trendistic, it said the trend was too low.

Either way, this is still a very cool site that has helped a lot. Thanks Joel Comm. (http://www.joelcomm.com/)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Tweet For A Track. (http://tweetforatrack.com/)

Step 1: Upload a song & post a tweet with a link to download the free mp3.
Step 2: Your fan “Joe” sees your tweet and clicks the link.
Step 3: To get the free mp3, Joe reposts your tweet and is emailed a download link.
Step 4: Joe’s friends see his tweet, click the link, post their own tweets, and spread the promotion…

How K. A. Is It?

Being that I’m currently in a band that is “up and coming” called UnionVox, this service is amazing!

We’ve been looking for a place to get our music out there to all of our friends and have been wanting to give it away for free, but at the same time be able to build our Twitter following.

Signing up is simple and after you upload your song, you have a chance to pick a unique URL that you would like them to be able to use. Also, you can update the message that is attached with the tweet as well.

Example: RT @UnionVox Get the new song “Fly” by UnionVox for free in exchange for just one tweet: #UnionVoxFreeSongs http://trkurl.com/Mj2SZp #TFAT

The only downfall so far is that you can only have one song per account…hopefully that will change soon.

Rating: 4 out of 5

TidyTweet. (http://twitter.grader.com/)

Twitter Grader is a free tool that allows you to check the power of your twitter profile. It looks at a variety of factors including the number of followers, power of those followers and the level to which you are engaging the community. It takes just a few seconds to generate your free report.

How K. A. Is It?

I’m a big fan of this site. It helps a lot with understanding how good your Twitter is. It checks things like, analyzes the people you are following and the people who are following you, based on how “powerful” they are. Meaning that it goes and grades those people’s Twitter pages and gives them their own score.

(Click Here to find out exactly how their scoring works.)

I’m going to be using this site to grade how well my clients Twitter pages are doing, and hopefully will be able stop following some of the people who aren’t worth following.

Some other cool sites they have for you to check out are:

http://websitegrader.com/
http://facebook.grader.com/
http://pressrelease.grader.com/

Rating: 4 out of 5

TidyTweet. (http://tidytweet.com/)

What is TidyTweet, anyway?

Think of TidyTweet as your very own Twitter feed housekeeper. Based on your preferences, it keeps conversations clean, orderly, and free of unwanted comment clutter. TidyTweet works behind the scenes to prevent unwanted surprises from showing up on your website. After creating an account and setting up a feed, you can blacklist or whitelist specific handles, approve Tweets manually or automatically, and create a customized word filter to avoid annoying – or embarrassing – situations. TidyTweet lets you keep the conversation going – without worrying about what’s being said.

How K. A. Is It?

Coming from a person who works with a lot of “faith-based” clients, this product is amazing!

I’ve seen a lot of “spam” and such on Twitter lately. It’s almost everyday that I see another person who is following me that is following close to 900 people, with only 30 people who follow them. Then when you look at their tweet, you see a random link in there that send people to a “spam” site.

The great advantage of TidyTweet, is that with it, you can make sure that none of this activity is going onto your Twitter site, and that your clients aren’t getting upset by some of the people they are following or the things being posted to it.

TidyTweet has 5 great features:

1. Automatic or Manual Approval of Tweets.
2. Custom Bad Word Filtering.
3. Whitelist or Blacklist Twitter Users.
4. Auto-rejection of spam based on a number of settings.
5. Integration with WordPress and VisibleTweets.com

I think most of these are self-explanatory, so I really don’t see the need to go into detail, but all of them will help out alot. (Especially the WordPress Integration)

Anyways, if you are someone who is handling some Twitter accounts for other people, this is definitely a program that you will want to use.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Listorious. (http://listorious.com/)

Twitter’s new Lists feature allows anyone to curate the real time web. Listorious makes it easy to find the best lists of Twitter users on any given topic, and for list creator to publicize their lists.

This site was created using new Twitter List API. Thanks to the Twitter team for their support.

Listorious was created by Sawhorse Media in New York City. If you have comments or questions, please email hello at sawhorsemedia.com or contact us on Twitter at @sawhorse.

Follow @listorious for site news and updates about interesting lists.

How K. A. is it?

First off, I was really surprised this site was up and running as quick as it was. I feel like just a couple days ago, I heard about these new “Twitter” lists and then I heard about this site that was created to keep them all together and in one centralized area that people can search through the lists and also include their own lists, which they have created.

I’m also quite surprised that they have everything working as well as it does as well. Just from what I know about websites and website development, there’s about a 75% chance that a new website that I’m guessing was built rather quickly, would work as well as it does. I haven’t found anything yet that is messing it up and that is not working properly on there.

Overall, I think this is a great site, and I’m interested in seeing more sites like it pop up in the upcoming months. Although, Listorious is definitely a front-runner.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Dropjack. (http://www.dropjack.com)

DropJack.com is a social content website powered by users like you.

How K. A. is it?

To be honest I can’t really tell that much of a difference between this and StumbleUpon, but makes me think that there’s got to be more new creative things out there, then to just copy something else that someone has already been doing. (Point in case..have you heard about Christian Chirp? http://christianchirp.com/

The only difference I really see about this site, are that you can create groups of people with like interests. “Groups allow users to share articles with other members who share a common interest in a topic. Join a group to submit topical articles that other members would be interested in. Some groups may require membership approval before you become part of the group.” – dropjack.com

Overall, I probably won’t use this site much, as I’m just starting to get into StumbleUpon, but maybe once this things gets going a little, I may give it a try.

Rating: 1 out of 5