There seems to be a debate raging about whether scheduling tweets is a bad thing. After all, Twitter is a real-time service so the idea of scheduling tweets may strike some people as going against the grain.

My take is scheduling tweets is perfectly fine as long as the tweets provide some kind of value, which can be defined as things that engage, entertain or educate. In a perfect world, tweets should happen in real-time but who has the time to be on Twitter all day so you can participate in real-time conversations.

The reality is Twitter is a parade that never stops. If you want to stay productive, Twitter should be a tool that is used from time to time as opposed to all the time.

This means checking for interesting tweets when it’s convenient. It also means posting tweets when it’s convenient, which includes scheduling tweets to appear when it works for you and your followers.

What’s your take? Is scheduling tweets good or bad, or is this much ado about nothing?

According to Twitter, Twitter.com is the most popular application within the TwitterSphere with 78% of all Twitter users visiting it in the past month.

My initial take was this is a major surprise given a lot of other surveys, including one by Sysomos (a client) suggest that Twitter.com’s market share among places to read and write tweets is well below 50%.

So, where’s the disconnect between what Twitter says and what the market is doing?

Here’s the explanation: While I don’t doubt the fact many people visit Twitter.com at least once per months, I would argue until shown otherwise that people are not actively engaged with Twitter.com.

In thinking about my own approach to Twitter.com, I swing by my account and those of clients at last once a month to update profiles and account settings, change avatars and check out the Find People service. I rarely posts updates from Twitter or read many tweets because it has nowhere near the functionality of Tweetdeck, HootSuite or Seesmic.

According to Twitter, I count among the 78% of Twitter users who have used Twitter.com in the past 30 days. It is, in fact, true but it’s not like I’m really using Twitter.com as anything more than an administrative tool.

So while Twitter can claim Twitter.com is widely used, it’s really a quasi-truth unless Twitter can provide more details about how much time people are actually spending on Twitter.com.

For more, check out Jared Newman’s story in PC World about on Twitter.com still “stinks”.

According to Twitter.com, the most popular Twitter app is Twitter.com with m.twitter.com a distant second. In a blog post, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams talks about how Twitter has been striving to improve its user-friendliness in the mobile market.

The post includes a chart of the top-10 Twitter apps. To be honest, it’s surprisingly Twitter.com is used by 70% of Twitter users given the popularity of third-party applications such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite.

According to Twitter, only 3% of the Twitter ecosystem uses Tweetdeck, which is, by far, the most popular third-party service to read and write tweets.

So far, I have resisted getting an Apple iPad, mostly because it has been difficult to justify when you already own a MacBook and MacBook Pro.

But in the search for excuses to buy an iPad, Twitter may have come up something that makes an iPad purchase irresistible. Twitter has just rolled out a new application for the iPad, which lets Twitter users do things that they wouldn’t be able to do using a PC or a mobile device.

In particular, the ability to check out the links that people embed in their tweets is what make the iPad application so great. All you do is touch the link and the Web page, blog, photo or video appears. It makes Twitter more user-friendly and, of course, the iPad even more attractive.

All in all, it is probably the most innovative thing Twitter has done since the service launched.

Like anything that gets used a lot, Twitter can start to lose its appeal or freshness. Even the most ardent user can experience times when Twitter isn’t as interesting. So, how do you continue to keep Twitter appealing? Here are some tips:

1. Don’t overuse it. There is too much of a good thing, including Twitter. Spending hours pouring over your Twitter stream and making tweets, retweets and replies can lead to a bad case of burn out. Rather than spend too much time on Twitter, a better approach is using it in moderation. There will be times when your Twitter usage could get more active but Twitter doesn’t have to be an always-on tool. In fact, there may be days when you don’t really need to use Twitter.

2. Variety is the spice of life, and the same rule works for Twitter. It means making different kinds of tweets. Sometimes, it’s updates on what you think or what you’re doing; sometimes, it’s links to interesting blogs or newspaper articles; sometimes, it can be photographs, and sometimes it can be retweets.

3. Be willing to receive but not give. As much as Twitter can be a conversation tool, it can be a nice change of pace to just read other people’s tweets, and not make any tweets yourself. This can be a difficult exercise but will provide a much-needed break.

4. Look to follow people beyond your area of interests. Far too often, the people you follow on Twitter have the same interests as you do. They’re involved in the same industry, sector or group. To spice things up, follow interesting people who operate in other spheres, and who have expertise about topics that are interesting but maybe not something focus on very often.

5. Use something other than Twitter.com. A multi-column tool such as Tweetdeck, HootSuite or Seesmic will provide a broader and quicker view of your Twitter landscape. It will let you consume more information in a shorter period of time, thereby improving your productivity and efficiency.

Who are your BFFs (aka best friends forever) on Twitter? Who are the people who you interact with the most? One way to find out is Twitter BFFs, a service that calculates your BFFs based on the number of times you @/reply them in your tweets.

To use Twitter BFFs, you provide it with authorization to access your Twitter account, and it then generates a Twitter cloud that shows your BFFs in larger text.

One thing to keep in mind is deciding whether you want to tweet your BFFs, and whether you want to follow Twitter BFFs. If not, unclick the boxes for each option.

Bottom Line: An entertaining service, sort of like eating candy – sweet but doesn’t last long.
Rating: 5/10

John Antonios created a cool flow chart about the process by which he determines who to follow on Twitter.

I’ve never really thought about the process of following people; it’s always been more of an intuitive kind of thing but looking at John’s chart does a great job of showing the different hurdles that someone needs to get through to become a follower.

You can see a larger version of the chart here.

It never ceases to amaze me how much personal information people voluntarily disclose on Twitter. They talk about their jobs, health, children, spouses, interests, hobbies, when and where they’re going out or on vacation, and where they live.

The thing that most people don’t realize or blissfully ignore is all of this information is public. Anyone who has a Twitter account can see this information, and it wouldn’t take long to create a personal profile that would provide many details of who you are, what you’re doing and where you live.

For anyone who has any concern about their privacy, taking a hard look at what you tweet update would be a good and eye-opening exercise.

If you want to see how much information can be disclosed, check out I Can Stalk You, which determines the location of Twitter users who do tweets that include links to photographs. For example, let’s look at our friend @rocar86. He does this tweet:

I Can Stalk You determines the location of @rocar86:

And then provides a map:

So how did I Can Stalk You determine @rocar86’s location? It uses metadata from smartphones that encode the location of where photographs are taken. @rocar86 uploaded a photo using TwitPic, which provided I Can Stalk You with his location.

Twitter and Google do an amazing job of telling people what’s happening so you might be interested in Tweet Peck, which combines Twitter and Google to provide a snapshot of what’s going on in a particular city.

To use TweetPeck, you provide the name of a city – in this case Toronto. TweetPeck shows the weather (a good feature for all those Twitter users who rarely venture outside), as well as the key trends and the live tweet stream.

By hovering over a trending topic, you can see two recent tweets. Clicking on a trending topic shows the live stream.

Tweet Peck provides “bonus” coverage by using Google to provide additional content (search, video, images and news) for a city or a trending topic. In this case, we’re looking at what Google has for “VoteTO”. There’s also a map but I’m not it’s particularly useful or relevant.

Bottom line: For anyone looking to get a quick sense of what’s happening on Twitter, as well as access to Google at the same time, Tweet Peck offers a good and interesting snapshot.

Rating: 7/10

There’s been some healthy buzz this week about Twifficiency with many Twitter users checking to measure their presence and activity – something that goes hand in hand with their obsession with the number of followers.

According to Twifficiency “calculates your twitter efficiency based upon your twitter activity. This includes how many people you follow, how many people follow you, how often you tweet and how many tweets you read.”

It’s interesting as a way to apply a measurement to what you do on Twitter but the methodology is badly flaw because it penalizes Twitter users who might not be active in one of the key metrics being assessed.

If, for example, you don’t follow a lot of people, that impacts your Twifficiency even if you have a lot of followers. As well, it is difficult to tell how Twifficiency can ascertain how many tweets you read.

Perhaps my criticism has something to do with the fact I scored a meagre 7% but the buzz about Twifficiency seems misguided.

Bottom Line: The buzz does not appear to be warranted.

Rating: 3/10