Twitter is a rapidly growing social network, but until recently, it was a real chore to find someone on the site. Twellow.com, the brainchild of the minds behind WebProNews, has changed all that. The self-proclaimed “Yellow Pages of Twitter” offers a whole new method of searching users and has made Twitter even more useful for business.

Now you can search for people within a specific industry and start following those with similar work interests. But Twellow is much more than just a profile checker.

A New Way to Find People

Just being able to look for people in your area of business might not sound like the cat’s meow, especially considering that you can look for specific keywords right on Twitter, but there is far more potential here. Twellow offers a whole new method of searching, by not only registering keywords in the user’s profile, but also in their recent tweets. So if you`re tweeting a lot about freelance writing, then you`ll appear under that category in Twellow.

You can also drill down, getting more and more specific until you are looking at only expat freelancers living in London, as opposed to all freelancers. This lets you get very specific about who you start following and you`ll be able to see their recent tweets, as well, to help you determine if it`s actually worth following this person.

The other big advantage of Twellow is the ability to set up your own “pulse” or area on their site where you can follow specific conversations and topics. Here`s the blurb from their page:

The Twellow Pulse section is still in Beta, but it looks like it will be extremely useful for keeping on top of the industries that interest you the most.

Other Useful Features

One thing that makes Twellow really stand out is the fact that you can add your other social media accounts to your Twellow account. That means if you are active on sites like FriendFeed or LinkedIn, you can add these to your Twellow account and make it even easier for people to find you. For networking purposes, this is invaluable.

When you do a search on Twellow, the results are automatically sorted by number of followers, but you can change this to show the most recent activity. This makes it very easy to see who is worth talking to and networking with on the site and lets you choose who to follow from the search results.

Another new area that is being worked on is the Twellowhood section of the site. Here, you view a world map and click on the area that you want to search, letting you find people by location. At the moment, only Canada and the US are available, but there will be more countries featured in the future.

Getting Set Up

Twellow has already added a lot of Twitter accounts automatically. I found that my account was already on there, for example, though I hadn’t added it. Chances are, if you are posting regularly on Twitter, you`re profile will have already been included in the directory. If not, you can add it here.

Once logged into the site, which is easily done using your Twitter password and username, you can set up your Pulse, look for people with similar interests and check out what your friends are up to.

Twellow is still growing, since it is relatively new, but the directory is already insanely useful. If you have ever wanted to network via Twitter with others in your niche, Twellow is an excellent place to start your search.

Genesis Davies is a YouCanSubmit writer. You can reach her through her website.