After much rumour and fanfare, today Twitter has (finally) announced Twitter Music, a new service that they say will change the way that people find music on (and using) Twitter.

Launching on the App Store later today and rolling out at music.twitter.com as we speak, Twitter Music is available in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and streams music from three sources: iTunes (the default), Spotify or Rdio.

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Twitter Cards, which allow brands to attach “media experiences” to Tweets that link to content, launched in June of 2012 and are already being used by more than 10,000 developers.

Yesterday, Twitter announced the availability of three new types of Card, one of which will allow brands to bring users directly to their app via a Tweet.

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Even the most tech-savvy among us inevitably have mornings where all the tweets, texts and status updates threaten to overwhelm our inboxes – and brains.

It’s important to always be on the lookout for helpful hacks that let you take advantage of all that technology can make easier for you, effectively separating the wheat from the chaff.

To help save you time, energy and sanity, we’ve pulled together five useful Twitter features you might have overlooked. From the ability to unsend any DM to the creation of completely custom Twitter widgets, we’re sure there’s something on our list that will make at least one part of your digital day easier for you.

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Over at the AVC.com blog noted VC Fred Wilson has written about an interesting feature that he’s seen on his Twitter timeline this morning that encourages him to engage with a friend who has recently returned to Twitter after a period of inactivity.

This is an interesting development from Twitter who, like all the major social networks, continuously struggles with the problem of retention of users, and this prompt could play a significant role in keeping people interested. After all, who doesn’t like getting a “welcome back” message from a friend?

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As the world’s fastest growing social network and, increasingly, the go-to platform for breaking news, Twitter is bigger and better than ever before.

That being said, there are five specific features on our “Twitter Wish List” that we’d like to make an official plea for.

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Twitter takes some getting used to, but once you’ve trained yourself to stick within the 140-character limit and you understand an @mention and a retweet, you can navigate it pretty well. However, in order to get the most out of Twitter, you’ve got to go beyond your comfort zone a bit and experiment with some of the advanced – but essential – features the pros use. Here are three that you should know… but might not.
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A little over a month ago I wrote about how Twitter was making some pretty major changes to Twitter.com, which included the removal of the @Mentions and Retweets folders and the implementation of new username and activity tabs, and that these would be ‘rolling out’ to all users in due course.

Twitter made this announcement on August 10. It’s getting on for five weeks later, and I’m still seeing the same old Twitter.

You?

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Picture the scene – you’ve had a long, really hard day at work. You’ve been run off your feet and haven’t had time for anything except that client and that project, neither of which will quit.

You come home and want to spend a bit of quality catch-up time on Twitter. So you log on, sit back… and stare thousands of unread tweets in the face.

Where do you even begin?

Remember Friendfeed? Sure you do. Friendfeed was the social aggregator that was like a more complex version of Twitter, and it came with a ton of really cool features. However, that complexity meant it never really took off with those all-essential masses. The site was acquired by Facebook in late 2009, and (in what was essentially a talent purchase) the good bits were sucked out and the rest of it was basically ignored. It’s still out there, but nobody really knows why. It’s all but been abandoned, visitor and press-wise, apart from a hardcore few and whatever programming team they can spare away from Facebook.

I don’t mean to sound so negative – I liked Friendfeed a lot, and on those few occasions when I wander back I still like it. One of its best features was Best Of Day (you’ll need to be logged in for this to work), which gave you access to a one-stop page that let you see the most popular entries amongst your friends (i.e., your network) over a given period, which defaulted to the last day.

This was incredibly convenient when time was scarce. Which, let’s face it, is most of the time.

Twitter needs this feature.

I want to be able to log in to Twitter and click one button and see an immediate summary of the past 24 hours. I want two options – one that lets me see the best of all of Twitter for that day, and one that shows me the best of my network. And I want to be able to filter this for the past week and month, too.

What is ‘best’? Best is the most retweeted, read and replied to content.

If we all had access to something like this, catching up with Twitter after (or during) work would be a breeze. Sure, you’re not getting the same rich experience you get from working your way through each and every tweet, or being on Twitter all day, but that’s not always something you’re able (or willing) to do.

Without this feature, a 10-minute end-of-day check-in with Twitter isn’t really an option. Much like lots of unread email, you either put in the time or take the shortcut to check all and ‘mark as read’. It’s counter-productive. And because Twitter is real time, once you’ve let too many hours go by you’re always chasing it.

Twitter needs this. I want it. What say you?

(PS. And before you ask – no.)

It’s not available to everybody just yet, but Twitter has started to add the promised lists feature to user accounts.

Already, many lists have been built. You can check out the Twitter team here, for example. And when you visit a list page, you can easily follow the updates of everybody within that group, and more conveniently, add them all with just one click.

Within your own profile, you’ll (soon) notice a new lists link where you can check out any lists to which you have been added.

From here you can also see any lists you are following yourself.

This, of course, poses a major threat to the very similar TweepML service. More agreeably, it should also hopefully put a major dent in the #followfriday meme, which is, in my opinion, well past its sell-by date.

This will be an extremely useful feature for any and all tribes that use the Twitter platform – for example, it’s now very easy to link up everybody who works at a given organisation, and fans can quickly group their favourite sports teams and TV show casts.

One (obvious) thing that’s missing would be a way to add a note next to each person in your list explaining why they have been included. Otherwise, there’s not much more incentive to follow anybody within that group (and certainly the entire group itself) just because they’re there.

If it’s an established team (like the aforementioned Twitter or Mashable lists) then I can immediately see the value. It’s less apparent when it’s a list of people you don’t know who have been collated simply because they’re ‘cool’ in the opinion of somebody else. This of course is one of the more common complaints about #followfriday recommendations when made in bulk. And it won’t be too long before some genius starts putting lists of mass-marketers and spammers together. (Maybe a way to mass unfollow or block everybody in a given list might be nice?)

Still, this should be fun, and I would imagine could have a positive effect on many of our follower counts. Will you be building any lists? Let me know your thoughts in the comments area below.