Twitter Search was a red hot topic last week, and will probably continue to heat up as Twitter usage grows beyond tech peeps and early adopters and penetrates the masses via Presidential Twittering, Rick Sanchez (@ricksanchezcnn) of CNN motivating his viewers to Twitter and other timely events like the baseball season, holidays and unfortunate events all result in the wildfire spread of Twittering.
- Nothing has really caught on online with such a grassroots movement since, well, since Google.
Speaking of Google, a lot of last week’s Twitter buzz was Google oriented, with acquisition and search buzz including :
- The notion that Twitter could be more important to Google than YouTube
- Google actually launching an official Google Twitter Account
- Twitter testing a search bar on Twitter.com and sponsored Twitter ads
- Google’s CEO claiming that the company is not yet interested in buying Twitter (but not saying that they will not).
Twitter’s ability to document and search real time conversation gives it an advantage on Google in this area, since users are entering their information directly into the Twitter database as opposed to Google having to depend on indexing via bots or the intangibles of sites not being SEO friendly. Therefore, by using Twitter Search or Twitter to find information (as I like to call Twoogling), more current, human and real-time information can be found.
Twitter Search however has its faults, and is kind of a boring example as the best way to tap into the Twitter Search API. Various 3rd party applications do a much better job of using Twitter Search to the best of its abilities and here are some of my favorites I’ve come across, and have implemented into my daily search routine.
- IceRocket Twitter Search : Lets you reply directly to the Tweets and view the Tweets from the members’ profile pages. IceRocket just launched their Twitter Search as part of their overall IceRocket BigBuzz service whch searches Twitter, blogs, Friendfeed, videos ..etc. Blake Rhodes, CEO of IceRocket, says that BigBuzz is “offering the best real-time search options out there.”
- Flaptor Twitter Search : Fro a fas, efficient and beautiful way to search tweets, I enjoy Flaptor’s Twitter Search. It’s sleek design makes Twitter searching so much more enjoyable and it also offers an easy to install Firefox addon. Best of all, there are no advertisements on the site.
- Tweet Scan is a simple Twitter search tool (updates results every second) which serves Twitter search results in a Google style fashion. It’s easy to use just for this reason alone.
- BackTweets : I LOVE this tool. If you’re a publisher, you need to bookmark this. BackTweets lets you enter any URL and then will serve the search results for the Twitter profiles which have linked to that URL in their tweets. Being that so many Twitter users use different forms of shortened URL’s, BackTweets is an amazing tool for keeping track of who is linking to your site on Twitter.
- Twitter Spectrum : Visualizes Twitter conversation which is based around specific keyterms. Although this may not be the best tool for finding information, it is a fun way to visually track Twitter trends in searching.
- Twopular : Tracks Twitter trends over time spans of hours, days, weeks, months and custom time lines. Grouped with Google Trends, this is an important tool for measuring the buzz within the Twittersphere and if done correctly, you can be proactive about tracking Twitter trends which peak around holidays, news event days, or other times suring the year and implement them into your editorial calendar or SEO campaign.
- TweepSearch : Allows Twitter users to search the bios of other Twitters, to identify people with similar interests. This is a good way to streamline your friend-making capabilities on Twitter by searching for people with similar jobs, like the same sports as you, or have the same hobbies.
- TweetMeme : A hybrid of the social media voting system made popular by Digg and the popularity system of Techmeme, Tweetmeme identifies the most popular sites being tweeted and retweeted on Twitter and gives its users the ability to vote for a topic via Retweeting it. One thing I really like about this tool is that it offers an easy to use “Retweet Me” box which can be embedded in your blogposts (see an example at Daily SEO Tip)
- Twit Scoop searches and tracks the keyword-related conversations. It will also show you the trend for your keyword popularity on Twitter
In my opinion, in order for Twitter to fully complete with Google, and if sponsored ads are going to be part of its business model, Twitter is going to have to implement the best and brightest of these and similar Twitter applications into its main Twitter Search functionality, which would position Twitter as a nucleus of real-time search services, and conversation.
What are your favorite Twitter Search applications? Please feel free to share them in the comments below, and please Tweet this post.
Yes, I find that Twitter search applications are interesting than Google but it is mainly focus on showing newest tweets. Old tweets might have been ignored.
I like the Twitter search apps to but must share one of the coolest apps ever AUTOPILOT TWEET http://www.autopilottweet.com – It is a full Twitter automation software for Twitter marketing includes a Twitter Friend Adder / Follower Adder, auto follow, follow by keywords, follow your followers, auto unfollow, schedule your tweets and automate most of the mundance daily chores of managing your Twitter account.
Nearby Tweets lets you search locally (or a specific location anywhere in the world). Check it out: http://nearbytweets.com
Don’t forget Twitter Fall. They got the best interface.
http://twitterfall.com
I also really like Twitter Karma.
Try MicroPlaza.com (your personal micro-news agency) and Tribal Search.
In a nutshell MicroPlaza filters your Twitter timeline and displays the Web pages shared by the people you follow along with all associated comments. Essentially it delivers you a personalized news wire created by people of interest to you.
WHAT IS TRIBAL SEARCH?
Twitter provides people the means to discover real-time news and information through their network. Tribal search now allows people to search for the most popular and freshest websites on a particular topic. Try for example “enterprise 2.0″ or “url:news.bbc.co.uk”. You can even monitor the appearance of new links through your rss reader.
There’s a few other bells and whistles such as being able to “be” somebody else and see the news wire from his or her network. You can also group people into Tribes for targeted information, discuss and bookmark shared items. Follow @MicroPlaza on Twitter for invites to the full service.
Excellent !!
-http://probablefuture.com/cmd.php?af=711646
-http://www.linkedin.com/in/jg2009
Thank you !!
Great info….
You missed http://AskTwitR.com and http://TwiTR.Me
Or checkout;
http://www.futuretweets.com
Publish tweets in the future!
I think I’m going to stay with my favorite, TweetDeck; it still gives me great search capabilities
Well I think Google are very interested in Twitter, and rightly so.
Twitter have in my opinion a larger social potential than the other social medias.
Tweetdeck works for me also!
What a valuable post, Loren! Thanks for your insights and such great tools to help us listen to conversations!
I’m hooked on http://www.whostalkin.com for real-time monitoring.
Tools mentioned:
Twitter Spectrum gave me a JavaScript runtime error Firefox, too bad.
MicroPlaza looks cool, but since they posted their marketing blurb in the comments, I won’t take another look. :-(
What about http://tweetgrid.com/ ?
wow just more to add to the social network addiction
Geez, my bookmarks/favorites file is really filling up with all this wonderful Twitter information!
I use Tweetdeck, too, but there is SO much more info out there, and more to come, I’m sure!
Cindy H
Sun Faces
Great article!
I would say I’m a newbie of twitter. So, it’s very useful to me.
A problem is which tool to use. Do you usually use all of them, Loren?
What about Twendz ?
http://twendz.waggeneredstrom.com
Nice, isn’t it ?
Nice job. Good collection of Twitter apps. If you own a Flip video camera follow @flip_video_tips.
Great article. I was wondering the other day how long would take to google to take over twitter…
Great information posted here. Twitter needs to start creating a money flow….
don’t forget http://chirpcity.com for local search
don’t forget http://chirpcity.com for local search.
Wow I had no idea my pic (@SEOcopy) was in your article until a friend/client mentioned it. Crazy thing is I read a lot of your posts. lolol Needless to say I feel like a “super star” thanks for the icing to my day.
Yes, this is a fantastic and timely post! Love all the new twitter apps that you highlighted and others listed. Great stuff.
It’s amazing how many apps there are now for twitter. Thanks for posting these all in one place, makes it a lot easier to find what you need.
Great list, thanks for sharing. I REALLY like backtweets.
Doug
great list, i agree: thanks for sharing.
Wonderful article. Im pretty new to twitter, so its very useful for me. Thanks for the info.
This is a great article, Im pretty new to twitter, so this is very useful. I came across a blog the other day that was very helpful and exciting… it teaches you how to make money with twitter! Stephen’s just posted his Definitive
Twitter Resource Guide on his blog.
It has 201 Twitter Tools and Twitter Apps.
It’s a free pdf download on his blog here
http://www.dtalpha.com/talkback/?p=355
I really enjoyed it!!
thankks you
sohbet chat
Thanks for Icerocket!
the best site is feeltiptop.com to view twitter tweets.
feeltiptop.com launched last week is a new concept for all the internet users, and of course revolutionary with respect to the existing search engines.
amazing site for twitter tweets for all twitter fans is feeltiptop.com.
TipTop is a platform for semantic analysis of natural language which provides live search results capturing individual and group sentiment, opinions, and experiences from content of various sorts including messages on Twitter.
Check it out http://www.feeltiptop.com
The site which you can feel and make tiptop your life.
Check out for all the happening in present time.
Thanks for Icerocket!
Twitter search is a great way to find information you are interested in, but its a long way from replacing google. News feeds on google are less trustworthy than RSS feeds. So much of twitter is spam, and even more of it is pointless banter. Google, on the other hand is the number one search engine in the world.
Very nice article with a lot of interesting resources. Also, if you are looking for any easy way to search Twitter, try http://twittersearchengine.net