Here’s one of the curious things about Twitter: After investing the time to build a solid group of people to follow (that is, unless you’re one of those auto-followers), it’s not that easy to leverage your flock. For example, it should be a snap to do searches limited to the people you follow as opposed to the entire Twitter population. It would also be nice to see where everyone is located.

Stepping into the breach is Flocking Me, which provides a way to read and search for tweets, as well as see some of the trending keywords. Flocking Me offers three different ways to read tweets – a regular stream, a grid and a map view.

You can also do searches for specific keywords using the same views. For example, the screen capture at the bottom is a search for “Twitter” using the grid view.

The Bottom Line: Flocking Me is interesting, particularly the ability to do searches among your followers, but it would be a lot more useful if you could post tweets as well.

Here’s an intriguing take on Twitter from Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff, who believes Twitter will become profitable or get acquired in 2010. (Source: AdAge)

“Twitter has been fiddling around and growing like mad but without a business model for years now. In 2010, growth is not sufficient. One of two things will happen. Either Twitter will have a business generating $100 million at an annualized rate by the end of 2010, or it’s going to get bought by the likes of Google, Facebook or Microsoft. I don’t believe it can continue as a huge force that has no visible means of support. Do you?”

It’s not like Bernoff is putting himself out of a limb by making such a broad prediction but I think the reality is Twitter’s future – at least as far as 2010 goes – is not a simple black and white proposition.

With oodles of venture capital in the bank (and more if needed), there’s no reason why Twitter has to become profitable in 2010. In fact, Twitter will be just fine if it continues to add more users, rolls out services that make the service more sticky/interesting, and starts to generate revenue from premium services.

A year from now, Twitter could have 75 million to 100 million users and, for the sake of argument, be making $20-million in revenue. Even if Twitter aggressively staffed up to 100 people, it would be probably be profitable and, at the same time, make itself even more of a takeover candidate.

This would fulfill Bernoff’s either/and predictions, which just goes to show how safe he’s playing it.

Earlier this week, there was a lot of excitement when Dell provided an update about its sales through Twitter. Over the past two years or so, Dell has now sold $6.5-million by providing links to purchase computers and other products.

While $6.5-million is a big number, it’s a tiny number in the schemes of things when you consider Dell has annual sales of $61-billion in its last fiscal year. We’re talking about a very, very small number overall. Nevertheless, many people within the blogosphere reacted as if Dell had discovered a lucrative new sales channel. Truth be told, Dell should probably be doing even more business through Twitter given how many accounts it operates, and how it’s been active in social media since 2006.

My take is many people desperately want Twitter to become more than just a place to post and read tweets. Given there are more 50 million users around the world, including thousands of businesses, people want Twitter to become a communications, marketing AND sales channel. This explains why Dell’s “success” has captured so much attention.

Time Magazine is the latest mainstream media publication to how a story on the phenomenon called Twitter. While there’s nothing particularly eye-opening about the article, something that caught my idea was some thoughts about the “open discussion” using Twitter – the idea that thoughts at a conference, for example, could be easily shared in real-time rather than waiting to blog or talk about it later.

This concept struck me earlier this week during a small event hosted by Microsoft to introduce its new search engine, Bing. While one of the Microsoft’s employees went through a PowerPoint presentation, there was a silent background discussion happening on Twitter between some of the attendees, including myself.

In an intimate setting, it was interesting to see how we were having a back and forth discussion even before the presentation had ended. People weighed in with their thoughts, asked questions and provided answers. It was a pretty interesting exchange that would have never happened before Twitter (aka BT).

If not already aware of FollowFriday, it a day – Friday – in which you put the spotlight on some of the people you follow to thank them. It was apparently invited by Micah Baldwin (aka @micah).

It has become a major event with a growing number of people jumping on the bandwagon. It’s not unusual to see people recommend five or six people. The dirty little secret of FollowFriday is it is also, not surprisingly, being used for purposes other than to show the love.

So as I was going through Twitter this morning, a #followfriday update that caught my eye was @kenseto, who suggested that:

#followfridays should be limited to ONE name per tweet with a written intro and recommendation of why that person deserves following

It immediately struck me as a great idea to make FollowFriday a different, less promotional beast. At the same time, it would really, really put the spotlight on the people that you enjoy following.

So, what do you think about Ken’s idea? Like it? Hate it?

More: Here’s more on the history of how Follow Friday started.

In the latest episode of “As the Twitter Revenue Model Turns”, CEO Biz Stone suggests Twitter will make revenue from selling tools to business users, while continuing to reject the idea of selling advertising.

In an interview with Reuters, Stone said Twitter has no ability to sell ads because: “There are no people at Twitter who know anything about advertising or work in advertising. So we don’t have anyone there to make or take those calls.”

Instead, Twitter will generate revenue by selling features such as “lightweight analytics” and a directory of commercial accounts that would verify that businesses on Twitter are legitimate.

The question is whether Twitter can make enough revenue to justify the venture capital that it has raised. As well, there are many companies already in the “lightweight analytics” market such as Tweetstats.com – as well as many social media analytics services – so the competition for customers will be fierce.

BusinessWeek, which seems to be all over social media recently, had an interesting story looking at CEOs who use Twitter.

They found that the number of CEOs using Twitter had jumped over the past year as Twitter became more of a mainstream communications tools. While user-interface expert Jakob Nielsen doesn’t believe CEOs should Twitter because it’s difficult, if not impossible, to effectively communicate in 140-character (or less) bursts, there are plenty of reasons why Twitter is resonating with CEOs:

1. It’s quick and easy to post an update. I mean, how long does it really take to write 140-characters, especially when you’re sitting in the back of a limousine with nothing else to do?

2. Twittering involves less work than writing a blog post, and it takes less time. For time-strapped CEOS, both of these points make Twitter much more user-friendly.

3. You can engage with a variety of constituents – employees, customers, suppliers, investors – or, at least, look like you’re engaging simply by posting a few Tweets a day.

4. It’s difficult to get in trouble with securities regulators if you’ve only got 140 characters to make statements.

5. You can Twitter on a mobile device. Given how much time CEOs spend on the road, Twitter is an easy service to adopt and embrace.

As Twitter becomes more popular, an increasing number of celebrities are climbing on the bandwagon. Or, at least, they appear to be climbing on the bandwagon until it’s revealed that some celebs are getting some help to produce updates, which is pretty sad considering we’re talking about 140 characters or less.

Perhaps the most notorious, now you see me using Twitter, now you don’t was/is Britney Spears, who emerged with a splash on Twitter only to have her microblogging enthusiasm disclosed to be less than authentic.

So, how do you know which celebrities are legitimately using Twitter, and those are who faking it and/or using ghost writers?

Tweetexorcist hopes to become the place where all is revealed. With a mission to keep it real, Tweetexorcist has a mandate to monitor Twitter for “unauthentic accounts”.

“Our mission is to help users make informed decisions when building their follow lists”, the Web site proclaims.

Started by Roger Hjulstrom and Amy Dean, Tweetexorcist features a series of polls asking whether celebrities are using a ghost writer, using Twitter themselves, or whether it’s an impostor using Twitter.

“Honesty is Twitter’s currency,” Hjulstrom said in a press release. “Some celebrities don’t realize how much better it sounds if they tweet themselves, even if it’s not that often. Twitter is a medium for personal connections, whether they are social, business, or publicity related. Anyone can afford to spend the time on 140 characters. Let’s not debase it like many of the world’s mediums.”

So, what do you think?

Update: Biz Stone posted a mea culpa after Twitter backed away from its @reply decision.

Twitter has introduced what it thought was a minor tweak in the kind of @replies that you saw. Unfortunately, it has ignited a hailstorm of criticism from users who believe it’s a huge step backwards.

Essentially, you can no longer see the @replies of people you don’t follow. Confused?

Here’s a simple explanation: let’s say you follow @BBB, who goes back and forth with @CCC, who you don’t follow. Before the change, you would have seen the conversation.

If you’re still confused, The Guardian’s technology blog explains all the angles.

You have to wonder what Twitter was thinking, and whether it was something they did after getting feedback from enough people. From the outside looking it, it looks like a strategic stumble

Most of us like to take a break during the work day – be it checking out blogs, shopping on eBay and Amazon, reading the latest sports scores, and, increasingly, using Twitter.

For those of you worried about being caught on Twitter, it’s worth checking out Spreadtweet, an AIR-powered Twitter client that looks like an Excel spreadsheet. Of course, if you don’t use Excel as part of your job, you’re out of luck!