Twitter masterclass: Learning the basics

The simplicity of the Twitter core concept is its greatest virtue. But as you get deeper into the Twitter community, it quickly becomes clear that the simplicity of the site itself is rather limiting. We've already seen how Tweetdeck helps you organise large numbers of tweeters. There are countless apps that you can download to your computer to give you a souped-up interface for tweeting, such as Twhirl, pictured left, or Tweet3 for tying together multiple accounts.

But the thing that made Twitter really take off is the fact that you can tweet wherever you are, which is way more interesting than if all of your tweets came from your desk. You can send tweets by text by adding your phone -- look under 'devices' in the 'settings', or you can download a mobile app such as Snaptu.

iPhone users are particularly well served, with apps including TwitterFon and Twitterific, or Twinkle, which allows you to see who is tweeting from close to your location thanks to GPS.

You can do something similar online with Twittervision, a mash-up that combines Twitter with Google Maps. There are countless other mash-ups and services that do all sorts of things with your tweets, such as Twitterfeed, which automatically zaps your blog posts, Flickr photos or Facebook status updates into your Twitter feed.

Right, that's enough from us. Don't forget to follow our CNET UK feed, and come back tomorrow when we'll be helping you take your tweets to the next level. Time to get tweeting!