(Updated) Twitter started off like a confusing but fun way to keep up with what your friends or favorite bloggers were doing. Slowly more and more people started using Twitter and with that, many applications were built to accompany it. I call them courtiers. Here’s some that I like:

Twits Like Me helps you find other Twits who may share the same interests as you based on your updates. You can choose to exclude Twitter followers already included in your friends list if you don’t want to be matched up with someone you already know. I didn’t select this when trying out Twits Like Me and not one of my Twitter friends was on the list. I guess opposites attract.

Twubble wants to help you find more people to follow and it bases friend recommendations on your current set of friends. You’ll see Twubble slowing trolling through your friends friends and then it will come up with a list of people you should be friends with based on various connections between your friends. I tried it out and Twubble actually suggested a lot of people that I should probably be following. It’s just so hard to make the first move sometimes, ya know?

TweetCloud allows you to make a fun tag cloud of all of the words you use in your Twitter updates. It’s interesting because you’ll see what words you are, perhaps, overusing. For example, I frequently use the words “thanks”, “think”, and “need”. Strangely enough, the word “totally” wasn’t there and that’s one word I know I use way too much when speaking. Good to know that I’m not polluting my Twitter followers with my “valley girl” speak. (According to some members of the Digg community, I am like totally a valley girl, OMG!)

GroupTweet allows you to create and inner circle of friends to send and receive private Twitter messages. You need to create a new Twitter account for your group and activate the appropriate privacy settings to keep your updates protected. Then just register your group Twitter account at GroupTweet.com and tell the people you want included to follow your group. If you want to send a message to all group members just send the group name a direct message. Pretty handy for co-workers or family members.

TweetStats gives you statistics of your tweet activity in the form of graphs. You can see how many times you tweet per month, average tweets by day, and average hourly number of tweets. You’ll also see how many times you reply to other Twits and your most used interface. To view your TweetStats, you just need to enter in your user name so you can also check out stats of anyone else you’re following.

Tweet Scan lets you do real-time searches for Twitter posts.  So, if you forget a link or tweet that you thought was interesting, you can simply do a search.  You can also subscribe to the RSS feed for your search term and have results emailed to you.  You know what?  I did a search for DemoGirl (I know, I know) and I found some people I haven’t even heard of talking about me!  I am soooo popular. (Thanks, Amit!)

More noteworthy Twitter courtiers:

Post Like A Pirate – Converts your updates into priate talk. Who doesn’t like a little pirate talk?

TwitterMail – Get your very own TwitterMail email address and whenever you send email to that address it will be posted to Twitter. Your Twitter replies will be sent back to you via email.

TwitterLocal – See who’s tweeting around you. Check out the screencast here.

TwitTown – The unofficial Twitter community where you can find even more Twitter Courtiers!