Updated:  4 6  Newer (and not so new) Twitter Tools! 1.  Yesterday I added a Christmas hat to my old boring Twitter avatar.  You can also add snowflakes to your avatar at Twixenate.com (animated resource mentioned after #6.)  Update:  Twixenate.com is under maintenance as of Jan 2009.

2.  Twitterhat.com rewards with shopping vouchers.  For example, 3000 Points – You can choose a $25 shopping gift card.  I have a feeling it’s one that means shopping is the USA and Canada.  Although the rewards are not very enticing, at least it shortens long URLs.  (Other URL Shorteners that Twitters can use include TwitPWR.com, FireURL.com and TweetBurner.com)

3.  TwiTip.com offers many Twitter Tricks and Tips like Physicians on Twitter, Horse people on Twitter, a quick glance at the current Twittersphere, and many more! Perhaps the best thing on there is a video showing how Twitter works and benefits for individuals, bloggers and non-bloggers, small businesses, large corporations and non-profit organisations.

4.  As of this time, perhaps the newest addition to Twitter tools is TwitTangle.com TwitTangle allows you to untangle the messy list of friends and followers you have. You can rate and tag your friends so at one glance you know which person is about music or which person is about dogs, or which person is from your location, etc allowing you to create custom groups of people. Best of all, you can filter your timeline to help you easily find the tweets that are most important to you.

5.  Mr. Tweet looks through your extended network to help you build effective relationships on Twitter.  It tells you people you’re following but who aint’ following you, and who you should follow.

6.  TwitPic allows you to share your photos.  It’s like a Twitter directory but with maps and photo. Your pics in TwitPic can be shown in a Twitter twit!  Here’s a pic I used with Twitpic.com:

Related:

Louis Gray’s Spreading Christmas Cheer with Animation (a ‘How-to’)
CEOs on Twitter (an estimated 16% of CEOs from Fortune 500 companies own blogs and use Twitter, and the number is expected to grow)

Follow me on Twitter!

(Afterthoughts: Once there was a fear of using say your Yahoo email login to log into another web service, now there’s no more such fear. People are already using OpenId to log into various web services. Twitterers now use their Twitter login to use free web-based Twitter tools. It’s amazing to see how technology can help to mould people’s online user-behaviour but online services need to be tight against hackers.)