The only constructive way is through search.twitter.com. A lot of mentions there are from potential customers looking to make a decision. Having that informatio

The only constructive way is through search.twitter.com. A lot of mentions there are from potential customers looking to make a decision. Having that information often lets us insert ourselves into the discussion. All the other stuff is just a total time waste and way to make yourself unhappy. I'm trying to train myself to just think about my own business and customers. I remember when I was at Odeo, a podcasting startup, we'd hear about all of these startup competitors and I'd get sort of worried. When the company switched to Twitter, Odeo was left un-updated for an entire year (it now has new and active owners). At the end of that year, Time voted Odeo a top-50 website and I can't even remember the names of the competitors. My take away is that competition is either much less important than your own execution or so massively disruptive that you don't need to track them. In Odeo's case, itunes was that big of a disruption and was the major reason we were experimenting with side projects (like Twitter).