There's a nifty new Twitter service I've been trying over the past week which does an old trick and a few new ones. It's called TweetLater and the basic idea is to automate your Tweets for posting in the future.

The idea of posting a regular tweet in the future is not a new one. The interesting new features are the "Auto Welcome" and "Auto Follow". I like the idea of personally welcoming every person who decides to follow my Twitter account but after a few days of publically repeating "Thank you for following me" in the exact same way to every person, I started to feel a bit guilty. Some people responded to this message with sincere wishes and gratitude to my message.. a message generated by a machine. Also, the SAME message publically sent to every Fake Chris Brogan or other account gathering people to follow for whatever reason. Just doesn't seem right somehow. I've reconciled this a bit by switching over to privately DMing them my thanks, but still not sure if this cold "warm and fuzzy" is the best way to go. I'll be keeping an eye on it.

The other feature, "Auto Follow" is something I've seen a few people talk about as well. I've contacted Twitter directly and have had them do this for my account in the background, but it took them almost a month to get back to me and I'm sure it will take them that long if I decide to turn it off. This solution is MUCH better.

Try these features out and let me know how they work for you and your "social" networking.