Twitter backgrounds capture and tell a lot about a twitter profile. Whether it’s about you, your company, your band, your course, or your cause. Backgrounds can set tones, change minds, intrigue and put off.

We’ve been instructed to pick a compelling and interesting background for our twitter profiles.  Whether stock or custom designed, here are 14 twitter background sites for you to shop for a twitter background.

Yes, I know, I still have to work on mine.  

1. TwitterBackgrounds.com

At TwitterBackgrounds.com you’ll find a bunch of backgrounds from free to not-free to custom backgrounds to brand your twitter profile.

TwitterBackgrounds.com provides backgrounds categorized by artistic, nature, photo, professional, simple, sports and more.

2. Twitter Backgrounds Gallery

You’ll find more twitter backgrounds at the Twitter Backgrounds Gallery.  A site that allows you to submit a twitter background and have it voted on.

They have a list of highest-rated backgrounds as well as categorized backgrounds that include 3D, Abstracts, Collages, Minimilism and a bunch more.  Twitter Backgrounds Gallery also holds contest, has pro twitter tips articles as well as other twitter resources.  Check it out.

3. TwitterImage

TwitterImage is a site where you can browse through some very nice free twitter backgrounds as well as their library of customized backgrounds they’ve done for some of the Internet Stars we all know and love.

Starting at $100.00, TwitterImage will create a custom twitter background for you.  They also do backgrounds for YouTube, MySpace, Blog Skins and Logos.

4. twitbacks

At TwitBacks, in less than two minutes you can create your own background and brand yourself on twitter.  Then, for a one-time fee of $10.00, for 30 days, twitbacks will promote your twitter profile on various social networking sites including GoogleBase, FeedBurner and more.

5. TwitterBacks

TwitterBacks is a sight that helps you have a more professional presence on twitter by providng free backgrounds.  If you don’t like any of the backgrounds at twitterBacks, you can use the specs or template to create your own.  Which is nice because the template are PhotoShop files and if you use or are familiar iwth PhotoShop you can open them up right in PhotoShop and provide the necessary information for your twitter profile and viola – you’ve got a nice, professional and free twitter background.

6. Custom Twitter Backgrounds

At Custom Twitter Backgrounds you can generate a custom Twitter Background for free. Choose from various themes available in custom Twitter backgrounds. You have options to add your photo, name, twitter id, some text, etc. in your custom Twitter background image.

7. cheth Studios

cheth Studios hand-picked some great twitter backgrounds from DeviantArt.  Most of them are PSD files you can edit in Adobe PhotoShop as well as image files you can insert your images.

8. MyTweetSpace

MyTweetSpace allows you to create your twitter backgrounds for free as well as pay $59.00 to have a custom background created for you.

9. TweetStyle

Here are some more free backgrounds for your twitter profile.  TweetStyle also does customized backgrounds as well as offer background tips on their blog.

10.Peekr

Peekr is not so much a background but a cool toolbar button that will display just the twitter background of any twitter user.  Drag the Peekr toolbar button to your browser’s toolbar and you’ll be able to view any twitter background with a click and then restore things back to normal by clicking on the button unpeekr that sits in the top-center of the twitter background.  Very cool.

11. Free Twitter Design

At freetwitterdesign.com you can step through creating your own twitter background that have the same look and feel as those done by professional graphic designers.  Using the on page editor below, freetwitterdesign allows you to customize the various attributes of your twitter background.  Cool!!

12. Twitter Background Checker

This tools checks to see if your twitter background looks like “poo-poo” in smaller or higher resolutions.  Twitter Background Checker is a fun and simple way to see what your background looks like in different resolutions.  You can tweet about it as well as download a PSD (PhotoShop again) template to create your own background.  Fun.

13. Twitter-Images

At twitter-images.com you can browse a bunch of free twitter backgrounds to use for your twitter profile.  For $49.00 you can get a customized background.  Categories that include Abstract, Cars, Girly and Grunge, twitter-images.com has over 100 free backgrounds.  Check it out.

14. Twitter Customizer

At the time of this article, twitter customizer creates backgrounds for $47.00.  Fill out some information and within 72 hours you receive a proof of the work.  Also, if you have at least 10,000 followers, you qualify for a free custom background.  Nice.

For more twitter backgrounds try searching twitter “twitter backgrounds” as well as TwittChew.

So how come you can only send messages that are no longer than 140 characters?  The 140 character limitation for twitter messages comes from the length of text messages cell phones send and receive.

In twitter, the 140 character message limitation was set because there is a 160 character, SMS message limitation that exists for cell phones.  SMS stands for Short Message Service.  Twitter reserves 20 characters for your username.  That’s why there’s 140 character limitation for a twitter message.

However, if you’re in need of sending a longer message, here are a few tools to help you do that.

1. 140it

140it is a service that will take your tweet and shrink it for you.  You can browse to their web page at 140it.com and enter your tweet, then click the 140 It! button and your tweet will be shrunk by replacing words such as “because” to “bc” and “2″ for “to”.

140it also has a toolbar button you drag to your toolbar.  When finished writing a tweet on twitter.com you can click the “140 it” button and it will shrink your tweet.  Pretty cool.

2. TweetShrink

TweetShrink also offers a tweet shortening service that’s extremely fast.  You can enter your tweet at their site but I did not see a character counter like 140it has.  So as you type your tweet, you don’t know how many characters you’ve typed.  Now, just like 140it, tweetshrink offers a bookmarklet that goes on your browser’s toolbar so you can shrink the tweet you enter at twitter.com.

3. TwitterEyes

TwitterEyes is an experimental Firefox add-on that places a button under the tweet box at twitter.com that says TwitterEyes.  After you type in your tweet, click on the TwitterEyes button and presto, your tweet has been shrunken.    Remember this is in experimental mode so you might find different results.

4. TwitterContd

TwitterContd allows you to write a 1250 character message as well as upload 100MB of  audio, video, images, and documents.  Using OAuth authorization service, you can connect to twitter and TwitterContd will display your tweets that you’ve sent.  Create your tweet and TwitterContd will submit it automatically for you.

5. Twitblogs

Twitblogs also allows you to upload images as well as video.  There home page says, “Twitter + Blogging = Twitblogs”.  With microblogging using twitter and the rich environment that blogs provide via text, images and video Twitblogs allows you to combine both worlds.

You’ll also be able to shrink URLs, create Hashtags, create short blog posts and save them as drafts, and much more.  Check it out.  Twitblogs is pretty nice.

6. shortText.com

shortText.com allows you to write up to 30,000 characters, link images and videos, use rich text, allow comments, make a message private, buy custom-named URLs and more.  It’s a complete solution for someone who wants to share media online without owning a website or a blog.

7. Bigtweet

BigTweet allows you to place a bookmarklet on your browser’s toolbar.  When you’re on a web page you click on the BigTweet bookmarklet and a pop-up window will display over the current web page with the link to it already in a message box with the title of the web page.

You can post to twitter and friendfeed as well as delicious links and on and on and on.  BigTweet also uses bit.ly to shorten URLs and track stats on the links in your tweets.  PCT – Pretty Cool Tool.

8. TwitterMail

Twittermail.com allows you to send tweets by email.  Just email to twittermail.com and twittermail will do the rest.  Twittermail will create a special email address for you that you use to send tweets via email to.

When you send more than 140 hcaracters, Twittermail will tweet a short message for you and provide a link in the complete tweet.  They use twitpic so you can send images as well.  You can also send your tweets with syntax that will delay your tweets for delivery at a future time.

9. Twitlonger

Twitlonger allows you to, well, provide longer tweets.  Using a text box that has more room for your tweet, Twitlonger makes sure you provide a tweet longer than 140 characters before you can post it to twitter.  When you click on the Post It button, twitlonger will automatically post your tweet to twitter.

10. Twerbose

Twerbose has a simple editor as well as a rich text editor that allows you to provide text, images (2 max) as well as video in your tweets and the ability to add tags and make your tweet private or public.

Using OAuth authorization, the secure way to link your twitter account with third-party tools, Twerbose pulls in your twitter profile and displays your twitter image (avatar).  While you type in the simple editor, your tweet displays below the edit box as it would display on twitter with the link that people would click to read your full tweet.

11. txtB.in

txtB.in is a very simple web page that contains a text box to write your tweet.  When you’re done writing, click the big save txt button and you’ll be presented with a shorten URL to your tweet and a button that says Tweet This! After clicking on Tweet This! button part of your tweet will be placed in the main twitter.com page message box with the link to your longer tweet you created at txtB.in.  Very simple, effecient and effective.

If you find yourself going over 140 characters often, you might consider starting a blog for free at the Google Blogger service.  That way you can provide really long tweets (articles), tweet the link to the blog post and enjoy some Google Juice (eventually getting indexed in Google so people can find your articles for a long time).  

Hey folks, here are some more cool twitter tools. If you’ve missed any of the tools I’ve listed so far at my blog, visit the Twitter Tools category page to view a more organized list of cool twitter tools.

1. First up is BubbleTweet – “Add a Video To Your Twitter Page In Seconds”.  This is just plain cool.  BubbleTweet allows you to break out of your normal twitter page and provides a video that you upload and is placed over your twitter page – in a bubble.  Check it out.  Very cool.

Here’s what folks are saying about BubbleTweet.

2. Staying with the video theme is VidTweeter – “Play Videos On Your Twitter Page With VidTweeter”.  This is from the folks who created BubbleTweet but you have other choices of videos services.

The videos are played hovering above in the middle of your twitter page.  Services like YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion and Metacafe are supported.  VidTweeter is another cool way to pop out of your twitter page and provide video.

Here’s what folks are saying about VidTweeter.

3. TwitterImage.com is a place to buy custom twitter backgrounds.  Just visit the site to see who are some of the clients.  For $100.00 you can get yourself an excellent twitter background.  There are quite a few free backgrounds as well.  Check it out.

Here’s what folks are saying about TwitterImage.

4. TweetBeep – TweetBeep allows you to track what folks are saying about you, your product, your company and provide updates every hour or every day. “TweetBeep is like Google Alerts for twitter.”

Here’s what folks are saying about TweetBeep.

5. daily RT – “the most popular tweets on the web.”  daily RT is like the Digg of twitter.  It lists popular tweets that are being retweeted in the last hour, last 24 hours, last 7 days and best of all time.

Here’s what folks are saying about daily RT.

Are you a business that wants to start using twitter?  Do you want to present your company on multiple levels on twitter?  In other words, you want to listen to what people are saying on twitter about your company but you also want to promote your products, services, campaigns, and any other element of your business at the same time.

Whether you’re someone who manages multiple twitter accounts on your own or work as a community manager online for your company, you’ll find the web app HootSuite an invaluable tool for managing your twitter universe.

Here are 5 attributes of HootSuite that will give you complete control of your twitter life.

1. Multiple Twitter Accounts

One of the main features HootSuite offers is managing multiple twitter accounts.  This allows you, for example, to have multiple customer service reps working with folks on twitter who might have complaints, concerns or requests related to your company or the industry you’re in.

It also allows you to provide more specific support for products or services you provide as well as promoting deals, sales, news, etc. on twitter.

2. 140 Characters and more

While working in HootSuite, you’ll have the same 140 character text box to enter your tweets, but you’ll also be able to schedule your tweets as well, and shrink any links that you provide in your tweets.

While entering your tweets you’ll have the ability to select one or more twitter profiles to send a tweet from.

Also, when you do provide a link in a tweet, HootSuite uses the URL shortening service Ow.ly to record stats on how many clicks the link received.

3. The Dashboard

While managing mutliple accounts, you’ll be able to view all those accounts on the HootSuite Dashboard along with a few tweets that were sent, pending tweets that will be sent, replies and direct messages for each account.

A stats graph in the upper right-hand corner of a “Sent” tweet, displays how many clicks a link has been clicked on.

4. Working with Profiles

You can look at each profile (twitter account) on its own page with typical twitter actions to interact with tweets.

• Favorite and Unfavorite a tweet (favorites are like bookmarks)
• Follow and Unfollow a person
• Direct Message a person
• Reply to a person
• Retweet another person’s tweet

Under their own tabs, you’ll also be able to see:

• A list of Replies to you from other twitter-ers
• Direct Messages or DMs that people have sent you
• Sent tweets – The tweets you’ve sent out to twitter
• Pending tweets to be sent – Your scheduled tweets
• Stats – As mentioned above, the URL shortening service Ow.ly is used to shrink links and provide “clicked” stats on URLs.
• A List of your favorited tweets
• A search tab that allows you to search twitter and saves the keywords you’ve searched on so you can quickly search on those keywords later with one click.

5. Feeding Twitter Automagically

Do you know what RSS is?  It stands for Really Simple Syndication also known as Rich Site Summary.  RSS can be used in HootSuite to send out information to the twitter stream automatically.

You provide an RSS feed to a profile (twitter account) in HootSuite, set how many times to send a tweet out from that feed to twitter, and presto, you have an automatic news feed going out to twitter on your behalf.  This is a great way to keep your twitter presence fresh and “out there”.

So there ya’ go, a quick look at some of the many features HootSuite provides when managing your twitter presence.

If you’re a WordPress blogger there are quite a few cool plugins you can use to make it easier for your readers to promote your blog posts on twitter using a twitter wordpress plugin or two and at the same time promote their twitter username and profile.

1. TweetThis

TweetThis is a WordPress plugin that places a Tweet This button at the bottom or your blog post.  But that’s not all.  TweetThis has quite a few customizations and social buttons that represent social networking sites like StumbleUpon, Ping.fm and more.

By default TweetThis places a link at the end of you blog post to make it easy for your readers promote your blog post on twitter.  The link, when clicked, takes the reader to the twitter.com main page and the tweet is ready to send to the twitter stream.

That’s just the start.  Here is the options screen in WordPress with all the other social capabilites you can use with TweetThis on your blog.

Click image for larger view (600px)

2. TweetMeMe Button

You’ll find this tweet Button on quite a few sites.  It’s kind of become the Digg of favoriting stuff on web.  TweetMeMe is:

Tweetmeme is a service which aggregates all the popular links on twitter to determine which links are popular.

You can download the TweetMeMe WordPress Plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory.  When activated the TweetMeMe button is place at the bottom of your blog post.  However, there is an option screen as well as the ability to use a short bit of code to place the button anywhere you need it.

By default:

The TweetMeMe Options screen in WordPress:

Click image for larger view

3. WP-Twitip-ID Plugin

The WP-Twitip-ID Plugin places an entry field in a blog post’s comment area so your readers can include their twitter id.  This helps promote them on twitter as other curious readers of your blog post will click on their twitter id to check them out on twitter.

As you can see below, here’s the default placement, below the Website field.  You can adjust where the fields displays in the comment area:

Here’s the options screen for the WP-Twitip-ID WordPress Plugin.

4. Twitter Link

Twitter Link rips through a blog post looking for @<twitter-username> and places a link to the twitter profile of a twitter username mentioned in your blog post.  So if you look at the image below you’ll see the @DailyTwiTips  automatically linked to so when a reader clicks on it, they’ll be taken to that twitter’s profile.

5. TweetSuite

TweetSuite can be found over on Dan Zarelle’s blog and it offers quite a bit of functionality.  Most notably the ability to place tweetbacks in your blog post comments area.  Tweetbacks are the tweets that people are using when talking about a blog post.  Here’s the options screen:

Those are just some of the twitter plugins for WordPress you can try.  There are others listed in the WordPress Plugin Directory.  I wouldn’t try to use all of them at the same time, as it can become overwhelming for readers.

Have fun and if you like this post, please use the retweet button below.      I appreciate your support.

Here are some more cool twitter tools.  From providing more than 140 characters for your tweeting to finding out who are the twitterholics on twitter to a bunch of statistics about you and your fellow twitter-ers.

1. Twitlonger – Twitter only allows you to enter 140 characters when updating your “What are doing now?” messages.  Well, when you need it, Twitlonger allows you to write more than the 140 characters

Check out what folks are saying about TwitLonger.

2. Twitterholic – Twitterholic is a website that lists all the folks who twitter a lot.  They scan twitosphere and gather stats.  That is how they list who tweets or twits the most.  Tweet your head off and you just might make their list.  Great place to find folks to follow that you might be interested in.

Check out what folks are saying about Twitterholic.

3. betweeted - The premise around betweeted is using the viral part of twitter to spread the word about various products.  You have followers and your followers have followers and on and on.  So why not use that viral stream of people to get products in front of them  That’s what betweeted does and you can make money with every click.

Now, I haven’t particitpated in betweeted but it sounds like something that could work as far as monetizing the twitter stream.  However, there’s always a fine line with some folks who will feel like monetizing some services on the web is spam.  Nevertheless, the twitter stream is viral and should be taped responsibly.

Check out what folks are saying about betweeted.

4. PageTweet – PageTweet allows you to enter a url to a page you want to promote.  Enter a short description of the url and a message.  A shortened url will be created and a list of social networking sites you can promote your shortened url on.

Check out what folks are saying about PageTweet.

5. Tweepular – Tweepular gathers a bunch of information about who you’re following on twitter and who’s following you and a bunch of stats on all of ‘em.  You can sort people various ways, you can bulk follow and unfollow folks.  There’s a lot there.  Check it out.

Check out what folks are saying about Tweepular.

6. TwitterAnalyzer – TwitterAnalyzer analyses and charts a twitter user’s various statistics, including:

• How many message updates
• What apps a user used for tweeting
• Subjects tweeted about
• Hashtags used
• Links used
• and much, much more.

Check out what folks are saying about TwitterAnalyzer.

If you liked this article, please using the retweet button below.  Thanx.

Here are some more twitter tools you can use online. This is a continuation of the twitter tools I listed in 10 Cool Twitter Tools. In this list there’s a tool to track your twitter statistics to easily unfollowing people who don’t tweet too often to finding folks who are tweeting about what you’re interested in tweeting about. So without further ado, here are some more cool twitter tools. Have fun playing!!

1. TwitterFriends allows you to see your relevant network and statistics about your tweeting behavior compared to other twitter users.

Some of the feature TwitterFriends provide are :

• Find the twitter contacts that are relevant to you
• Visualize your relevant contacts and their relevant contact
• Who of your twitter friends are online at this very moment

See what folks are saying about TwitterFriends.

2. Twindexx – “Crowd-sourcing the best of twitter”

Twindexx will help you:

• Discover like minded people to conntect with
• Add keywords to help others find you
• Endorse your favorite people and brands
• Reduce the “noise” and connect with the best of twitter

See what folks are saying about Twindexx.

3. UnTweeps will look for the people you follow who don’t tweet often and let you unfollow them. You can select whether to look for folks who haven’t tweeted in the last 30, 60 or 90 days.

After logging in, you’ll be presented with a list of tweeters and their last tweet date. All of them are checked by default so you can just click on “Unfollow Selected Tweeps” button. This helps keep your followers and following balanced if that’s something you’re trying to do.

See what folks are saying about UnTweeps.

4. TweetCall – Update Twitter from anywhere by simply speaking into a telephone.  Here are the steps:

1. Dial 1-877-TWEET-CALL
2. Speak your tweet
3. Your voice is transcribed and posted to Twitter as text!

TweetCall works by you logging in with your twitter credentials so you can get a PIN number associated with your phone number.

See what folks are saying about TweetCall.

5. TweetALink – TweetALink does one thing, you enter your twitter credentials and it will create a bookmark link that you drag to your browser’s bookmark toolbar. Now when you’re browsinig the web and you want to share something with your tweeps, you just click on the TweetALink button on your bookmark toolbar, a window will pop open with your twitter details and the tweet already formatted and ready to go.

See what folks are saying about TweetALink.

Have fun!! Please retweet to share with your twitter friends using the retweet button below. Thanx.

If you use Firefox for browsing the Internet, there are quite a few add-ons that will make it easy for you to work with twitter right inside Firefox.  Let’s take a look at a few.

1. TwitterFox

TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that sits in your status bar at the bottom of your browser.  It will display a lower case “t” in the status bar with a count of new tweets that have come into your twitter stream but you have not seen yet.

So, that’s a great reminder of how many tweets you haven’t seen but it can be an issue if you’re trying to concentrate on something else while working in Firefox.  But, you can always logout of it.

But, TwitterFox is very popular, it’s small and gives you most of the functionality you need to stay up with your twitter friends.  You can send a message, view your tweets, view your replies and direct messages, as well as control how it works through various settings.  Check out TwitterFox at the Firefox Add-ons page.

2. Twitter Power

I just started using at Twitter Power.  It adds a lot of functionality to your twitter stream if you browse twitter.com using Firefox.  For instance, with Twitter Power, you’ll see a small RT in the lower right-hand corner of every tweet that allows you to retweet a tweet from your twitter stream.  That’s been needed for a long time.

It also places a couple buttons above your status message box that allows you to upload a photo and shorten a url.  This is great because it uses bit.ly and bit.ly can track statistics about the urls you tweet – how many clicks on what days, etc.

Twitter Power will also display photos that were tweeted as well as show video that are part of your twitter stream.  It also places a Facebook menu selection in the right sidebar which displays your Facebook status message stream when clicked.

Power Twitter is nice.  It seems to take a bit longer for the twitter.com page to load but for all the functionality it provides is well worth the wait if you use twitter.com page as your main interface to twitter.  Get it at the Firefox Add-ons page.

3. Twitter Search

Twitter Search add-on places an additional search source in your Firefox search engines list.  It allows you to immediately search twitter using search.twitter.com.  I don’t know about you but I’m finding myself use twitter search more than Google search.  Get it here.

There’s plenty more Firefox add-ons that extend the functionality of Firefox to include all your twitter needs.  Here’s a link to more extensions for you to check out.  However, I stay on the side of using an add-on if I’m really going to use it.  Load too many add-ons up and you risk possibly slowly down Firefox.

That’s it is for this article.  If you have any Firefox tools that help you with twitter please share them in the comments.  If you liked it or think someone else could benefit from it, retweet it with the retweet button below.  Thanx!!