Twitter has made its users better informed and better connected with their colleagues and peers in their personal / professional lives. For those who are using Twitter or plan to start here are some tools that can help you get the most out of Twitter, for professional networking.

1. Summize (http://summize.com)

Twitter is a great way to do a quick scan of what people are talking about. This is a nice little search tool to do that.

2. Tweetburner (http://tweetburner.com)You can share URLs to like minded people through Twitter. Best one to use is Tweetburner.

3. Twitter Mobile (http://m.twitter.com)While there are lots of mobile clients like TinyTwitter, Twitterific, TwitterBerry, and TreoTwit, the mobile version of the Twitter site: (m.twitter.com) stands out from the rest...

4. Ping.fm (http://ping.fm)It allows you to write a message and then it can post it to your account on Twitter plus simultaneously post it to Linkedin, Facebook, Plaxo and several other networks.

5. TwitPic (http://twitpic.com)Another popular thing to do on Twitter is post photos. You can even use TwitPic from many smartphones.

6. TweetAhead (http://tweetahead.grotonma.net)If you want to use Twitter to announce something at a specific time (or automatically post an update), then you can use TweetAhead to schedule a post at a specific time.

7. TweetStats (http://tweetstats.com)If you want to get serious about your Twitter use, then TweetStats will give you lots of data to see...

8. Twist (http://twist.flaptor.com)It lets you see the number of posts for big topics over the past week or month, and you can even compare topics by simply entering multiple terms separated by commas.

9. TwitterLocal (http://www.twitterlocal.net) Want to see if any of your local connections are on Twitter or find Twitterers in your local metro area? TwitterLocal allows you to search by area code for posts from Twitterers within 1 mile or as far away as 20 miles.

10. Twitterholic (http://www.twitterholic.com) Who has the largest following on Twitter? You can find the top 100 on Twitterholic.

(Source: TechTarget report - CLICK HERE to read complete report)