As Twitter defines itself as the marketing platform du jour, I thought it would be a good idea to bring together a "top 3" selection of the best. These "apps" all aim to help companies understand what's going on with their "customers conversations" and how they can best utilise this new 140 character beast.

  • Shoreditch locals, Tweetdeck isn't new, but certainly remaining fresh with regular feature updates and a super loyal community. As a standalone app developed in Adobe Flex, it allows for greater functionality and the recent iPhone version allows you to take it with you.

  • CoTweet started making some noise mid-last year. It is now out of beta and running supreme in the "enterprise" market, aimed squaring at larger organisations with multiple Twitter teams. Tweet assigning, redirecting and commenting is incredibly useful and the Outlook-style UI makes for very easy use.

  • Finally, Peashoot is the latest release from the sickening talented Yongfook. Initial trails look highly promising, especially with the Google Analytics conversation tracking that allows you to calculate revenues generated from a specific tweet.

I know there's more Twitter marketing apps out there, so expect updates to follow ...