Naatan

Twitter Status is a very simple no-fuzz plugin that gets the current Twitter message from the Twitter ID specified, when someone visits your website there will be an ajax script running in the background doing a GET request every 30 seconds, this request will trigger the Plugin to get all Author profiles with a twitter ID, and update their Twitter status, given that they haven’t been updated in at least 30 minutes and with a limit of 5 twitter profiles per request.
You can change these settings by editing the plugin file (before activating it).. the settings are easily accessible, no knowledge of PHP required.. I will incorporate a configuration page in future versions, for now I wanted to make an initial release that’s down to the complete basics.
<h3>Usage</h3>
After installing, edit the author profiles in wp-admin that you would like to assign a Twitter profile to.
You can use the following tags in your templates:
<pre><code><?php twitter('Username') ?>
<?php twitter('twitter_id=xxxx') ?>
<?php twitter('user_id=xxxx') ?>
</code></pre>
These functions will all echo the current status stored in the Database for the given user.
You can use the following function to get the twitter status DIRECTLY from twitter, but keep in mind that using this will cause a delay in the loadtime of the page;
<pre><code><?php echo twitter_status_get('xxx') ?>
</code></pre>
For “xxx” enter the twitter ID.

Twitter Status

Twitter Status is a very simple no-fuzz plugin that gets the current Twitter message for your blog authors.

samlesher

Ping.fm (http://ping.fm) is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap. You can use AIM, GTalk, iGoogle, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, WAP, iPhone/iPod Touch, SMS or E-mail to let Ping.fm relay your message to a multitude of social networking sites. This plugin lets you use Ping.fm to add your status to your WordPress Blog’s sidebar via Ping.fm’s “Custom URL” integration.

Ping.fm Status Widget

Ping.fm (http://ping.fm) is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.  You can use AIM, GTalk, iGoogle, Windows Live Messenger …

Twitter Status vs Ping.fm Status Widget