140Char

Want to find Twitter users to follow? There are already a fair number of directories out there, but Followformation offers a slightly different approach.

Whereas Twellow, WeFollow or Just Tweet It display lists for users to explore and manually add followers, you can now select your area of interest, and automatically follow the Top 10 to Top 50 people listed on followformation.

The rankings within each area of interest, e.g. Sports, or Social Media, are all defined by follower counts, so essentially you’re just grabbing the most-followed people who have an interest in their profile.

The only people I can see getting much value from the service are new users, as it’s at least slightly more relevant than the Suggested User List.

I’m sure there’s a linguiphile somewhere who will complain about my use of serendipity, but I’m willing to risk it to illustrate how microblogging not only gives a valuable return on the time invested – but sometimes incredibly quickly.

Like many other social media/technology writers and addicts, I’m also a bit of a stereotypical geek, with a passion for pop culture, comics and videogames. Unlike some though, I’m lucky that one of our London offices is right next door to Forbidden Planet, although it’s not good for my bank balance.

Commuting to work in London last week, I happened to tweet that I was going to try and get through a day of working next door to a comics mecca without spending any money – and within about 2 minutes I was advised to follow @Danacea – marketeer at Forbidden Planet! (The recommendation was via @DigitalMaverick).

Not only has it been great to chat around general geekiness and marketing, but I’ve already had some help tracking down a couple of books I’ve struggled to find – and the store now has a public face I identify with it!

And it’s only one example of getting put in touch with the right person, in a matter of minutes after I posed a question. And although I had an advantage by mainly looking for tech/marketing people, if you look at the sheer number of new people to Twitter every day, it’s becoming easier and easier to find someone for whatever niche you need. I wouldn’t be surprised to find local plumbers etc on there in a matter of weeks and months!

Plus I’m still proudly showing off the brilliantly trashy Karate Kid ‘Sweep the Leg‘ T-shirt I ended up buying when my willpower gave in -

Sadly it’s out of stock online for you mere mortals…

I’ve just spotted a great new Twitter search tool to find Twitter people by categories (Found via Mashable).

Twellow has already indexed 300,000 Twitter users into various categories (Including me!), with users replicated across all appropriate categories. For example, I’m the 96th most followed person in Marketing, but I also appear in Management, Advertising (hmmmmm?), News, Geeks and Blogging. All the main categories have appropriate sub-categories to find people more easily (Although there does seem to be Marketing as a category, and also a sub-category of Advertising).

And beyond browsing, you can also use specific search terms, including within specified categories.

Until now, your options were to find people within Twitter, hope to find people via keywords, or use Twitterpacks to find anyone that had manually listed themselves. Suddenly finding other people got a whole lot simpler.

Find other useful tools for microblogging in our list. And subscribe by RSS to never miss a post.