There are two camps in the web world regarding microblogging tools like Twitter. Half of us think they're great the other half are still scratching their heads wondering what possible purpose these tools can serve.

Plenty of arguments have been presented to show how Twitter can serve as a viral marketing platform and networking tool. Recently, as most people will know, Twitter acquired Summize, a search engine that accessed Twitter posts by keyword searches. While Summize had been around for a while, its purchase by Twitter has served to bring it (and it's concept) into the mainstream.

What has this done for Twitter?

It has brought Twitter out of the social networking domain and made it into an extremely efficient research tool.

However, even with search.twitter.com live, it isn't quite efficient enough a tool for us to monitor the Twitter world effectively. So how do we solve this problem? Luckily, like Twitter itself, the search.twitter.com service provides a very simplistic API - and we are starting to see a few mashup technologies emerging to utilise the APIs to monitor and track particular topics in real-time.

So where are these tools and how should I use them?

This is by no means an exhaustive list of tools for helping you maximise your results from Twitter (in fact it's deliberately a very short list).

Third Party Tools

monitter.com - Real-Time, Live Twitter Monitoring

Monitter is a new player in the Twitter mashup world and it basically allows you to "monitter" tweets off the public timeline. You input 3 search terms into the monitter site, and it will monitor Twitter and match those particular terms and display them to you in a nice clean, live streaming interface online - the interface is offered in dark and light mode - nice touch!

The beauty of this is: you don't NEED a Twitter account, you can just hit the monitter.com site and passively monitor what is going on on Twitter. If you are a Twitter user, monitter can help you find more people to follow - people who are tweeting about topics you are interested in..

tweetdeck.com - Revolutionising Twitter Desktop Clients

Tweetdeck is an Adobe AIR client for Twitter that also includes search integration. You'll need a Twitter account, but if you have one, Tweetdeck is a great client because it will follow your normal Twitter friends, but also allow you to monitor for relevant keywords.

Currently in BETA, Tweetdeck is as stable as any AIR application I have used, and has recently replaced Twhirl as my desktop Twitter client.

Twitter Tools

Twitter Track - Allows you to track Twitter concepts

Twitter track works from you IM or phone and allows you to track keyword searches from Twitter and have them sent to your mobile device. Personally I don't use Twitter passively while I'm on the move, so this one is of less interest to me.. but check it out nonetheless.

search.twitter.com - The Twitter Search API Itself

Formerly known as Summize (until Twitter acquired them), the Twitter search API also offers a web interface that allows you to search the Twitter timeline for keywords (this is the driving force behind the tools above). This is a little less sophisticated than Tweetdeck or Monitter, however it does allow you to find relevant tweets.

So what does it all mean?

If you market a product, fire up a Twitter monitor and enter your product name into the search box.. is anyone tweeting about it? No? Start marketing socially.

Imagine that you're writing an article about a particular topic.. type in relevant keywords and see if anyone is talking about it. I use monitter.com as a tool for my research on a fairly regular basis - in fact, this week it has been sitting perpetually in it's own Space on my desktop.