For those seeking more professional insights, Wimbledon-mania has officially kicked off on Twitter, and here follows a guide to the top ten must-follow feeds:

1. @wimbledon

First stop is the official Wimbledon Twitter account, with over 112,000 followers and 3,700 tweets to date. As well as minute-by-minute, rather jovial updates on the latest news and weather, @wimbledon also offers Twitpics and videos.

2. @tennis.com

Tennis.com’s excellent Twitter feed serves up all things tennis related, including articles from former players like Jimmy Connors.

3. @tennis_updates

Does exactly what it says on the tin, so expect tweets by the minute during key match play this Wimbledon.

4. @andymurray

Join the 445,555 fans already following British star Murray. Tweets haven’t been exactly flowing to date, but as Murray put it on 18 June: ‘Someones ready for wimbledon!’ (sic)

5. @andyroddick

A more frequent tweeter than Murray, Roddick has over 600,000 Twitter followers.

6. @DjokerNole

As Novak Djokovik’s official account insists: ‘this is me, real me’. The Serbian player only joined Twitter this March, but already has 158,000 followers hooked.

7. @serenawilliams

One of the most popular accounts not just within tennis, but of all sports personalities, Serena Williams’ official Twitter account boasts over 2,000,000 followers. Serena is a prolific Twitter user, tweeting religiously every day.

8. @venuseswilliams

Venus tweets less regularly than her little sister, but still attracts over 750,000 followers to her official feed.

9. @espn

Many of this year’s matches will be shown on ESPN2, while ESPN’s Twitter feed will keep its 2,000,000 followers updated on all on-court happenings. ESPN covers sports more broadly than the others on this shortlist, but has kicked off Wimbledon season appropriately by paying homage to the 30th anniversary of John McEnroe’s infamous “You cannot be serious!” outburst.

10. @tennischannel

According to zimbio.com, the TennisChannel’s official Twitter feed is one of the best tennis sites on the network. Latest tweets include seed placements, articles, player news, match results and breaking news.

Currently hosting one billion tweets each week, Twitter is a crowded marketplace to say the least, so here are five ways to boost your presence on the increasingly influential microblogging platform:

1. Get visual

A picture is worth a thousand words, and video is pretty great too. If you’re stuck for copy one day, use images to tell your brand’s story and convey some personality and warmth through your profile.

2. Get physical

While social technologies like Twitter undoubtedly connect people in a virtual sense, they can also be used to facilitate face-to-face contact. If you or a colleague is attending an industry event, get it out there via a tweet and arrange to meet your potential customers in person. Even we concede that nothing tops real-life interaction for new business growth.

3. Get personal

The potential to add a personal touch via Twitter is vast, particularly if your business is relatively small. By answering questions and conversing with individual followers you’ll show appreciation for your customers and build on their loyalty.

4. Get inspired

Turn to other tweeters for inspiration. The first stop should always be those who are already tweeting about you. A re-tweet of a glowing customer comment has two-pronged benefits: your tweeter feels good, and you’re sharing a positive story with your follower base.

5. Get smart

In case you didn’t hear us before, Twitter users demand value from brand tweets. While offers and deals are always welcome, fans are also likely to appreciate useful tips and facts related to your business. They’re also more likely to drop by again for another juicy tidbit.

Source: tips adapted from the American Express OPEN Forum

Interactive marketing services company ExactTarget has researched the issue, and here we present some of the foremost stats and tips to encourage your online relationships to thrive.

Of the 73% of Facebook users surveyed, a majority of 64% claim to be ‘fans’ of, or have ‘liked’ a company or brand.

Despite this, 55% of those fans find they no longer want to view your posts, and 51% rarely, if ever, visit your business page on Facebook after liking it.

Excessive posting accounts for 44% of the decisions to ‘unlike’, while 43% of Facebook users feel that their account is too crowded with brands.

38% say marketers aren’t offering fresh content, while 26% say claim that all they were interested in were offers and discounts.

Of the 17% of consumers with a Twitter account, 56% have followed a company.

Almost half of those have however stopped doing so, citing repetitive, boring tweets (52%), tweet streams overcrowded with marketing posts (41%), and over-frequent posts by companies (39%).

Some 27% only followed a brand on Twitter to take advantage of a one-off offer, while a similar number found the amount of offers to be inadequate.

So far, so challenging. But the good news presented by the study is that Twitter users are perfectly comfortable with using Twitter as a platform for interacting with brands. As well as being the most active and connected of all social network users, they are far less likely to ‘dump’ brands once a connection has been made.

According to the study, only 41% of Twitter users are likely to opt out, compared to 55% of Facebook users and a whopping 91% of email users, making it the social medium of choice for ongoing conversations.

A study from Cornell University, posed the question ‘Is the public mood correlated or even predictive of economic indicators?’ The researchers investigated whether measurements of collective mood states derived from large-scale Twitter feeds are correlated to the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) over time.

According to an article in PCWorld, the research stemmed from the documented belief that the ebb and flow of the stock market is driven by decision making instead of reaction to news. The study looked at 10 months’ worth of tweets from almost 3 million users, focusing specifically on tweets about feelings.

The researchers analysed the text content of daily Twitter feeds by two mood tracking tools, – OpinionFinder that measures positive vs. negative mood and Google-Profile of Mood States (GPOMS) that measures mood in terms of 6 dimensions (Calm, Alert, Sure, Vital, Kind, and Happy).

Significantly, the research indicated a high percentage of prediction accuracy. The researchers said “We find an accuracy of 87.6% in predicting the daily up and down changes in the closing values of the DJIA and a reduction of the Mean Average Percentage Error by more than 6%.”

Cornell’s findings support the conclusions of our own research, released in June that suggested companies not using social media for investor relations purposes were missing out on influencing share price.

Twitter are introducing a two column format that allows you to see video and pictures from tweets on the right hand side of the page without clicking off the site, a move designed to make Twitter a Facebook type destination. More in this video:

Well some brightspark at MTV has come up with the solution to all these conundrums, with a big wad of publicity attached too. They ran a nationwide campaign to find an MTV ‘Twitter Jockey’ – a representative of the station who will serve as their brand ambassador on Twitter for as long as the DJ style contract lasts.

The winner, trailing a load of publicity in her wake, is Gabi Gregg AKA @MTVTj. The 23 year old fought off other contestants in a apprentice style competition which included organising a ‘Tweet-Up’.

While not every brand will have the $100,000 prize budget to attract a ‘Twitter Jockey’ in such a high profile way – the principal could be applied across any organisation prepared to invest in the channel.

According to ExactTarget, daily Twitter users are about three times as likely as internet users on average to upload photos, four times as likely to blog, three times as likely to post ratings and reviews, and nearly six times as likely to upload articles.

“Consumers active on Twitter are clearly the most influential online,” explained ExactTarget’s Morgan Stewart “What happens on Twitter doesn’t stay on Twitter. While the number of active Twitter users is less than Facebook or email, the concentration of highly engaged and influential content creators is unrivaled—it’s become the gathering place for content creators whose influence spills over into every other corner of the internet.”

The study also established that brand information is top of Twitterer’s wish list, closely followed by discounts and sales.

(source eMarketer)

This raises the intriguing question  - who does Twitter think is your profile match?

If it’s true you can judge someone by the company they keep, the people Twitter are selecting to align with your profile will have a bearing on your online reputation.

Who does Twitter think are my peer group? Stephen Fry, Seth Godin? or is it wee Jock Poo-Pong McPlop, custodian of the Aberdeen public lavatories? – who I’ve just discovered has a LinkedIn profile!

To find out I conducted a simple experiment from another account and found my Twitter profile buddies to be  NMA’s, Andy Oakes, Amy Mae-Lee from Mashable and Local Social Summit AKA Dylan Fuller. Not bad associations for an agent of online pr.

Twitter are pretty vague about how they reach these recommendations saying: “The algorithms in this feature, built by our user relevance team, suggest people you don’t currently follow that you may find interesting. The suggestions are based on several factors, including people you follow and the people they follow.”

The objective of the feature is not online reputation testing of course but to help tweeters grow their networks  - the social networking equivalent of Amazon’s, ‘people who bought this, also purchased these’ idea.

One side effect is citizens of Twitterland will become even more choosy who they follow now – and so they should.

Consumers’ motivation for tweeting about brands is 43% to do with sharing news and information, 35% comment on using the brand and 21% opinion about the brand. Only 1% actually want to converse with the brand on Twitter.

Other useful findings include that 90% of tweets come from consumers rather than brands and 12% of consumers’ tweets mention a brand.

When a brand is mentioned it is likely to be a social network, an entertainment or technology brand.The top brands mentioned on Twitter are Twitter itself, Apple and Google.

i360 say that as brands talk mainly at consumers rather than engage in conversation, there is still a massive opportunity for marketers to become part of the conversation.

Their whitepaper can be downloaded here.