Though Twitter seem to be having some stability issues, at the time of writing, almost every active Twitter user should now have access to the new Lists functionality.

We covered it briefly back when the beta started, but here's a quick guide on how to make them -- and how to get the most out of them, because really... this might be exactly the change we social media addicts have all been waiting for.

It's really quite easy. In three steps:

1. Visit the Twitter homepage. If you see the Lists box (as seen at the top of this entry), then you're good to go -- if it's not there, you'll have to wait until you're included in the testing, which should be really soon now.

• The Twitter Team -- good for up-to-the-minute news from the developer team itself. They can be quite funny too, from time to time...
• Baseball Writers -- The Huffington Post have compiled this great list of sports-tweeters. Worth following if you're into baseball!
• The Huffington Post also have an Iran list, a Democratic Rep. list, a Republican Rep. list... (you can view all their lists here.)
• Musicians and Labels -- This one has a comprehensive collection of every record company and music magazine, and some bands/artists too.
• And of course, we have a list of Download Squad's writers too!

If you have some great, comprehensive lists, please let me know, and I'll get them added -- there doesn't seem to be a List directory or search yet!

Update -- masterful fellow DownloadSquad blogger Lee has just discovered a Twitter Lists site called Listorious. It's really rather good.

You've met microblogging before. Twitter's the most famous example, with its 140-character maximum. Well, get ready to meet macroblogging. A new service called Woofer boasts a massive 1400-character minimum. Yeah, you read that right: Woofer won't take your posts unless they're more than 10 times as long as a tweet.

This definitely raises some questions. For example: is this a joke? How is macroblogging different from, you know, blogging? Yes, it's very possibly a joke: popular "woofs" include the entire Gettysburg Address and selections from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. And it's different from blogging because standards are lower. In fact, a woof has the same low standards as a tweet, but without the severe character limitation that makes tweets pithy and interesting. Fortunately, Woofer isn't looking to be taken seriously: the about page describes it as a humorous homage to Twitter.

When Yammer first launched, I thought it wasn't going to last long. A Twitter for business? It sounded like an opportunistic idea to latch onto Twitter when it was clearly about to take off. Yammer has taken on a life of its own, though, and it's got the new iPhone app and threaded conversations to prove it.

The Yammer app has something that Twitter apps to date have been struggling to achieve: push notifications. These are especially important for a service like Yammer, because they alert you to new messages without using up texts on your iPhone. Yammer has also taken a page from the Facebook/Friendfeed playbook and created thread conversations that look similar to the ones you see in your Facebook activity stream. The threaded view is only available on the web, but it will come to Yammer's desktop app soon.

These are just the biggest new features. There are also countless small improvements - landscape mode and camera support for the iPhone app, for example - that you can check out on Yammer's blog.

[via TechCrunch]

Yammer is a Twitter-for-business style application that basically lets users communicate only with other users that share the same private email domain. For example, I could setup a Yammer network where I could keep up to date with other @downloadsquad.com users.

The company recently launched an updated version of its desktop client. Like the previous client, the new application is still built on Adobe AIR, which means it can run on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. But the new version includes a new, brighter look plus the ability to search colleagues, tags, and groups, the ability to open new threads in new windows, and the option of switching between multiple Yammer accounts.

There's also a built-in spellchecker.

Yammer is available for free, although companies that want more control over their networks can sign up for paid accounts.

[via TechCrunch]

The real-time search arena, fueled by the popularity of Twitter, continues to heat up. Collecta is the latest and most visually appealing stab at getting real-time search right. It draws on images, articles, blog comments and microblogs for data, and refreshes automatically. The layout is a cool three-column affair, with filters on the right, live results in the middle, and a preview of your selected result on the right.

The ability to filter out different kinds of results is useful. Sometimes you just want to see photos or articles, and ignore all the Twitter, Identica and Jaiku chatter, or vice versa. Twitter is really the core of these real-time search sites, though, and Collecta is no different. It's got Twitter's trending topics on the front page. In terms of speed, Collecta is faster than the competitors I've tried out. If you've got a hankering for real-time search, this looks like the site to check out at the moment.

There's some speculation over at the Google Operating System that Google is planning a microblogging search engine that will work a lot like Google Blog Search does now. gOS found some text on one of Google's help pages describing the format for a microblog search: entering "recent updates about" in front of a search term will search miroblogging services -- Twitter being the most important of the bunch -- for that term.

This hasn't been implemented yet, but the text that gOS found seems to suggest that it will be. Under the heading "recent updates about QUERY," they found this description: "This is the MicroBlogsearch Universal result group header text. A Microblog is a blog with very short entries. Twitter is the popular service associated with this format." This is all the evidence we have to go on so far, and it indicates nothing about which non-Twitter services will be included and what a possible Google MicroBlogsearch results page would look like.

Pixelpipe defies definition a bit, but basically it's a mo-blogging / mobile micro-blogging tool that satisfies nearly every sharing feature I've ever wanted from my mobile since the first time I picked up a smartphone.

When I mention Pixelpipe to people they usually say, "Oh, like Ping.fm." Yes, yes, Ping.fm lets you update a ton of services but, Ping doesn't do video or audio -- although they've been threatening to do video for a while. On the other hand, while Pixelpipe does text, audio, photo and video, until recently there wasn't a convenient way to get your video to Pixelpipe while on the move.

Friday Pixelpipe launched a new version for Android phones, taking advantage of the newly released video recording features in Android 1.5. When I read the anouncement, I realized -- as much as I've pimped out Pixelpipe on my own Twitter feed -- I've never actually posted about it on Download Squad. For shame!

With clients for Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone and Android, you can send quick updates, longer blog posts, just-snapped photos, just-taken video, and audio snippets to over 75 different social services. All your favorites are there (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, 12seconds, etc.. ) along with some services you might not have used -- If you can name all the logos on the PixelPipe list, you're doing better than I am.

Added to that, Pixelpipe will do traditional, non-social sharing like uploading to any ftp server, email any address or post to just about any blog.

Pixelpipe clients for all platforms are available for free at PixelPipe's site, and the updated Android client is available via the Android Marketplace from your phone.

Sometimes you're on a roll and the words flow forth effortlessly on the page, while at other times you're struck with the agony of having zero to say. Writer's block occurs sometimes and Plinky is here to help revive the brain dead or as they claim to help you create "inspired content."

Plinky prompts you daily with a question or challenge which hopefully will inspire you to think of something interesting to say. You can add photos, maps or other media to enhance your post depending on the prompt. If you use services like WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, etc., you can link them to your Plinky account and share your answers through them, too.

Plinky is a social network and as a member you are united with others who also respond to questions like yesterday's gem, "Are you a handywoman or handyman? Describe the most impressive thing you've built/repaired/duct-taped. You can follow people and likewise they can follow you.

At first I was put off by the questions, such as Share your scar(s), as well as the gem noted above, but actually the answers from some of the members were interesting to read if you like diary type entries. I don't know if Plinky will cure writers block or inspire you to create compelling content, but it could be a low barrier way to get beginners started.

Plinky, which we heard about from blogger Louis Gray, was founded by Jason Shellen, a former Google exec who was part of the original team launching Blogger and a founding product manager of Google Reader.

Blog search engine Twingly has launched a new service: a Microblog search engine. Twitter recently acquired search service Summize and has integrated the search engine somewhat sloppily into its page. But Twingly Microblog Search lets you get up to results from a number of of services all at once.

The new tool lets you search for keywords on Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, and other services, including the now-defunct Pownce. Of course, Twitter is the most highly trafficked microbloging service that Twingly indexes, so the vast majority of search results still come from Twitter unless you uncheck the Twitter box.

You can also grab an embeddable Twingly widget that will show the latest search results on your blog or web site, or you can subscribe to an RSS feed or sign up for email alerts for topics.

Unlike Summize, Twingly Microblog Search doesn't provide real-time results. There's a delay of about five minutes, but the Twingly team promises to fix this in a future release.

Thanks to the popularity of microblogging and status sites like Twitter, Identi.ca, Pownce, and Plurk, we're being given to more information faster than ever before. The Pope's recent visit to New York prompted an incredible number of updates - as many as 800 tweets a minute. So how do you find important, relevant content amongst the constant flow of updates?

You find a great tool to do it for you, that's how.

NowPublic's Scan offers an incredible new way to look at what's happening right now by tapping in to data from the aforementioned sites, geocoding it, and analyzing it - all within mere moments of an event taking place.

Useful? Without a doubt. Cool? Absolutely. Revolutionary? The potential is certainly there for Scan to change the way people find and follow up-to-the-minute stories.

Len Brody, NowPublic's CEO, led me through a couple of topics to illustrate how Scan works. Take Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, for example. Scan provides the "engine velocity," which averages the number of pertinent posts per hour (Palin rates 109/hr). The five most posted links are displayed and - not too surprisingly - Exploration's listing of Palin rumors tops the rankings.

Brad first reviewed Ping.FM back in march, and the service has come a long way since then. Today, they announced that they're ready to do away with invites and open up the service to the public.

Before getting my beta code, I really wasn't all that interested in any of the microblog/status sites that exist. There are just too damn many of them, and I don't have time to update a dozen sites every time I read or post something interesting. Ping has made that chore so unbelievably easy that I'm now getting some use out of my Twitter, Pownce, Plurk, Friendfeed, Rejaw, Facebook, and myriad other accounts.

Apart from using the dashboard on the Ping.FM website, you can also update via email or IM. All you have to do is add Ping as a buddy in your favorite app, enter a verification code, and any messages you send will be sent to your default list. If you're an iGoogle user, Ping's got a gadget for that, too. I've talked about their mobile version as well, which I love since it'll run on any old handheld with wifi access.

Ping is a great service, and I can't imagine trying to do manually what their service does for me. It's a winner.

Microblogging options abound, most with drippy sounding names and many with half-baked functionality, having only been thrown together because Twitter was down again due to some kind of malfunction with the staffroom espresso machine. Rejaw, on the other hand, offers users a solid alternative with a number of excellent features. Without whales.

The basic idea's pretty much the same: shout and post something on your main profile page, whisper to send a private message to someone. nothing really special here yet, but bear with me.

Shouts, whispers, and replies are posted to the Rejaw servers almost instantly, so what you actually get is a more like an IRC/microblogging mashup than just another Twitter wannabe. The interface is nicely Ajaxed, and extremely responsive. Keep an eye on the status overlay at the bottom of your browser window, it'll let you know when new shouts and whispers are posted.

Adobe AIR-based microblogging client Twhirl already supported Twitter, Friendfeed and Seesmic, and now its coverage of the world of mini-updates gets even broader with the addition of Identi.ca. Identi.ca is something like a less-popular open-source version of Twitter. This is a big deal for the Identi.ca folks, because Twhirl may actually be better-known than their service.

Along with potentially pumping up the userbase of a fledgling microblogging site, Twhirl has also position itself to be to these micropost what Trillian and Adium are to IM. Keeping several services readily accessible from the same app is a proven winner when it's done right, and Twhirl delivers on the usability and appearance side of things. It was already one of the most popular clients back when it could only handle Twitter, and its main competition is going to come from some of the better Twitter-specific clients that attract people who don't use the other sites Twhirl handles.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Twitter is a vast network of individuals posting about all sorts of different things. Take for instance this very second, members are posting about cupcakes, the military, Ferrari, mobileme, the Olympics and much more. But these topics change so quickly you would be mad if you tried to keep up with them yourself. Thankfully, Twitscoop has automated this process so that you can continue to sit in front of your computer staring endlessly at other people conversation.

Twitscoop works by monitoring all the publicly available tweets out there and measures the frequency of the words used. The more mentions of a subject the more popular it must be.

Twitscoop then places them in alphabetical order in a Tag Cloud, the more popular the word the larger it is compared to the rest in the cloud. Mouse over the tag to find out who is talking about what, click on the tag and it will take you to a graph that will display the frequency of the topic along with the users. With all of this information available, you'll be one well informed Twitter!

In our time with using the site we only had one gripe with it, the lack to sort the cloud via the size of the tag. This is only a minor complaint really but something that should be added for those of us out there that like a little order in our lives.

There are already more desktop apps for Twitter than we could ever possibly cover without losing our minds. But what about that OTHER microblogging service, Plurk? A couple of people have hacked the mobile version into Adobe Air to create two similar apps: PlurkAir and PlurkIt. This is ok for now, but it's nowhere near the level that Twitter clients have achieved.

That's where Plurker comes in. It's scheduled to be the first dedicated Windows desktop version of Plurk, and the feature list looks pretty impressive. Sort Plurks using custom searches, set alerts for private Plurks you receive, enjoy autocompleting @message functionality, and way too much more for us to list here. If Plurker is as good as promised, it could give Plurk a big user boost by taking away one major excuse not to use the service.