DENVER -- If you think Twitter is a waste of time, think again.

The social networking, micro-blogging site can save you money -- a lot of money.

"I guarantee you're going to find a bargain out there," said Julie Lucas, who is new to Twitter. "I just sort of stumbled into it. I really didn't know what I was doing."

When it comes to bargain shopping, though, the Denver public relations guru is a pro.

"It's the thrill of the hunt!" Lucas said.

So recently, when she started searching for steals on a San Francisco hotel room, she tried her usual search engines -- Orbitz, Expedia, Kayak -- but felt she was getting robbed.

"The hotel was wonderful, but way too expensive," she said. "Then I realized I had been looking at all the wrong places."

Enter Twitter. Lucas sent out tweets like, "looking for #orbitz bargains," and "looking for #expedia bargains."

On Twitter, the hash symbol (#) in front of any keyword broadcasts your tweet to a group of people interested in the same thing.

"What Twitter is really is almost as if you're in a great neighborhood, and you're asking your friends to give you ideas for bargains," said Lucas.

Within an hour, she received a Tweet with a coupon code for serious savings.

"From $278 a night, I got it down to about $132 a night," she said. "I didn't realize I could do that just simply from sending out one little sentence."

But that's just the beginning of saving money on Twitter.

If you have a specific product in mind, you can try a Twitter Bot, such as tinymassive, Couponbot or retrevoq.

You tweet out the name of the product you're looking for, add a space, and then include @ and the bot's name (@tinymassive, for example) in the tweet. So if you were looking for a deal on an iPod -- you would type ipod @tinymassive.

Eventually, you get a reply with the lowest price and a link to the search.

You can also track specific money-saving hashtags, such as #bargains, #coupons or #freebies.

It helps to download a free desktop application like TweetDeck, set up a separate account for all your money-saving deals, set up a search and save money.

Follow Twitter bargain sites, such as SteepandCheap and CheapStingy. They use Twitter to heavily advertise deals.

You can also save by using Twitter-Related Web sites like Cheaptweet and Coupontweet.

The sites break down the most Tweeted bargains, so you can know what people are talking about.

Tips:

Look into Twitter Bots @tinymassive, @Couponbot, @retrevoq.
Check out Daily Deals Sites such as SteepandCheap and CheapStingy.
The Popular Deal Sites are CheapTweet.com and CouponTweet.com.
You'll also want to track Money-Saving Keywords, or Hashtags: #bargains, #coupon, #freebie.
It's easier to track Hashtags if you have several Twitter Accounts on a desktop app such as Tweetdeck.