I like the new social networking tools. I think they can be helpful to learn, share information with others and keep in touch.

However way too much traffic out there, like on Twitter.com, is just shouting into the dark.

I ran across this video that made me laugh.

Are you shouting into the dark to no one?

OK, I'm hooked. Twitter is fun. Twitter is informative. However it takes a lot of time to manage a reasonable Twitter presence.

First, you have to get TweetDeck . TweetDeck helps you keep on top of what is going on in your Twitterverse. For my Mac freinds, and possibly others, they are having some memory leak issues, but I understand this is getting better. Even so, don't Tweet without TweetDeck.

Next you need TweetLater . The TweetLater site says "Learn How To Stand Out By Adding Sizzle To Your Online Persona". This is a powerful set of tools. Schedule tweets, track keywords, save and reuse drafts, send automatic direct-message thank-yous to new followers, a personal status feed and much more.

Somehow you need to be found. I just stubled on Twellow. This site is like a yellow-pages for Twitter. Register and select your categories.

Are you in this for business? Many people are. Google Twitter for Business and you will find a lot of articles. One of the best ones is 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business .

As you get more into it you will want to know how you are doing. Take a look at Twitalizer. From the site - "Twitalyzer is a unique tool to evaluate the activity of any Twitter user and report on relative influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity, clout, and other useful measures of success in social media." I'm just getting started, but here is a recent report for agile_coach. How do I get that Clout up? ;>)

Oh, Twitter, Oh Twitter are you here to stay or the hot thing today? I think it is here to stay.

You can follow the SilverBackGeek at agile_coach .