According to BBC News a High Court in the UK has approved an injunction that will be served through the Twitter social network.

The court order will be served against an anonymous Twitter user who posts on Twitter using the same name as a UK political blogger.

The court order requires the anonymous Tweeter to reveal their real identity and stop posing as Donal Blaney, who writes for his own blog called Blaney’s Blarney.

The order claims the anonymous Twitter user is violating the copyrights of Mr Blaney’s writing.

Blaney told BBC News that the opinions being posted anonymously to Twitter under his name are “mildly objectionable”.

Mr Blaney requested the court to serve the injunction through Twitter instead of dealin with the hassle of contacting Twitter headquarters and asking them to handle the issue.

UK law allows injunctions to be served by various electronic means including faxes and email.

Mr Blaney got the idea to use Twitter to serve the injunction after he heard about a recent legal case in Australia where a court order was served via the Facebook social network.

Mr. Blaney said he believes this to be the first time Twitter will be used to deliver a court order.

Source: BBC News

Twitter is a goldmine of two things: people and the topics they are currently talking about.

There are numerous services out there that help you mine the Twitter database to find out information on the trending topics on Twitter as well as the people who are tweeting about them, here are a few:

Hashtags.org –
this site posts real-time information about Twitter’s hot topics (#hashtags).

Back Tweets -
a search service that finds out how many links to a web site have been posted on Twitter.

Retweetability Index -
a site that measures and ranks Twitter users based on the influence of their tweets.

Twitter Search –
Twitter’s own search engine function for searching people and topics on Twitter.

Tweet Effect –
allows Twitter users to find out which Twitter updates made people follow or leave them.

Tweet Scan –
a keyword search engine and popularity cloud of topics on Twitter.

Tweet Stats –
people can graph their Twitter stats with this service.

Tweet Volume –
search for keyword or phrase volume on Twitter.

Twinfluence –
lets people calculate the indirect influence of themselves and their followers on Twitter.

Twist –
a search and statistical tool that allows people to find the trends on Twitter.

Twitalyzer –
is a Twitter tool that measures the activity of a given Twitter user and reports on their influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity, clout, and other key success measures on Twitter.

Twitter Sheep -
a Twitter application that allows people to form a tag cloud based on the biographical information of their followers.

Twitter Friends –
Twitter friends lets you find out about the hidden network of Twitter contacts that are relevant to you; visualize the Twitter network of relevant contacts and their contacts and see which of your Twitter contacts are online at the moment.

Twitturly.com –
a real-time report of the top links posted on Twitter.

Source: KD Nuggets Data Mining Resources

The Twitter people search isn’t always the best way to find people based on a business or occupation. Twellow.com is the Twitter yellow pages that organizes Twitter users based on business and professional areas.

You can search with a keyword like “accountant” or “skip tracer”. You can also find people by browsing the Twellow directory with dozens of professional categories.

Twellowhood allows you to find people on Twitter based on location or geographic region. So you can find Twitter users in your area or in other areas of the USA and Canada.

You can visit the Twellow Yellow Pages @ Twellow.com and Twellowhood @ Twellowhood.