Twitter has been increasing in popularity as an application for bloggers.

Dr. Steenbarger of Traderfeed produces invaluable information for traders through Twitter. He supplies followers with not only links, but proprietary indicator updates and real-time analysis and observations.

Jeff Pietsch from Market Rewind also sends out real-time market observations on Twitter.

Personally I’ve subscribed to both services via Twitter, and Dr. Steenbarger’s Twitter service through the RSS feed. The frustration I’ve experienced in following them is that even with an RSS feed the Twitter update may not arrive for an hour or so. And even then I’ll only notice it if I happen to flip over to my reader application. Trying to follow real-time commentary on a much delayed basis just doesn’t provide the same value. This is no fault of theirs as the information is good and timely.

This all changed recently. Why?

I discovered Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is a free beta application that updates and organizes Twitter feeds that you are subscribed to. It updates once per minute and can be set to notify with a tweet sound and popup when a new tweet arrives. It makes manually refreshing Twitter or subscribing to an RSS feed obsolete. I’d strongly recommend everybody check out the free twitter services from Dr. Steenbarger and Market Rewind. And with Tweetdeck you’ll have real-time insight from some terrific intraday traders.

If Twitter updates aren’t enough you should also note Market Rewind just started a chat feature accessible from his main page.

Other worthwhile Twitter feeds to follow are Corey at Afraid to Trade and Greenfaucet – though neither are quite as dependent on real-time up to the minute information.

I’m admittedly no expert on Twitter. I’ve never sent a tweet and have no plans to offer any such service. If anyone knows of other valuable tools or services that could be incorporated with Twitter I’d encourage you to post about them in the comments section.