Those of you interested in increasing your networking circle on Twitter probably already have a good handle on how to do it within your industry niche. But there are distinct advantages to having a wide circle of connections within your own neighborhood, whether it's to raise your company's visibility as a corporate citizen in your region or just to get quick recommendations for restaurants in the area. There are many Twitter-related sites designed specifically for locating and connecting with locals; here are just three to get you started:






Localtweeps is still in beta, but it was created to "help localize the Twittersphere." Your listing is indexed by zip code, so at this time, you can only register once. (Note to @brevig, @colinhirdman, @joshbecerra and @zacksteven: it'd be great to be able to temporarily localize for when one is traveling to a new city.) Registration is fairly straightforward. After signing in to your Twitter account, go to the Localtweeps site and put in your zip code. It takes about five minutes for your name to appear in the database. Click on the "Search" tab to find others in your area, and you can then click and follow at will.

One nice feature about Localtweeps is that you can promote an event or special offer within this zip code.






Another site that's still in beta is StreetMavens. StreetMavens has a different function than Localtweeps in that its purpose is to capture what's happening in any given city in real time. Go to the site, click on your city and you'll see a listing of local tweeps and what they are currently saying via Twitter. From here, you can click on the individual user names and follow folks of interest. StreetMavens is a little harder to use than Localtweeps if you want to register yourself, but it's worth the effort -- particularly if you're a business, as you can register your profile to the site. If you want to see what the page looks like for the VOXUS neighborhood, go to: http://www.streetmavens.com/city/Tacoma



Chances are, you're already listed in Twellow.com, also known as The Twitter Yellow Pages. Finding your city in "the TwellowHood" is pretty simple, just click on the search tab if you don't want to navigate through the nifty maps. On the resulting list, tweeps are ranked by number of followers, so simply cruise through the list and find people of interest to you. Click on their Twitter user names to navigate back to Twitter so that you can follow them.

-posted by Rachel

Tags: twitter, localtweeps, streetmavens