Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [56]
As a result, Twitter is a living application and community, extending far beyond what Twitter itself controls. Conventions and third-party tools have popped up to fill in functionality that Twitter may have missed, chosen not to implement, or intentionally left for other developers to handle.
You can find a rich toolset online to enhance and personalize your own Twitter experience. In this chapter, we introduce many of the third-party tools that enrich the service. We’d like to note, though, that it’s very hard to capture the vast and dynamic Twitter ecosystem in these few, and static, pages. The daunting challenge of writing a book chapter to direct people to the best tools and services is a significant reason for the very existence of Laura’s startup oneforty inc. (www.oneforty.com).
By the time you read this book, dozens, if not hundreds, of new mashups, services, applications, and other tools and products will be built out onto the Twitter ecosystem. Please check out www.oneforty.com and the book’s official Web site at www.twitterfordummies.com for up-to-date guidance on how to find the best and latest tools.
Finding Interesting Twitter Talk with Search Tools
With so many conversations going on every day on Twitter, how can you manage to find the ones that are relevant to you? You can use search applications to manage your interactions with Twitter; you can track people and topics, find data about what’s trendy and buzz-worthy up to the second, and more.
You can search Twitter many, many ways, but here are three noteworthy things for you to know:
Twitter Search (formerly called Summize and now finally integrated right into the pages at Twitter.com)
TweetScoop and TwitScoop
Hashtags
Twitter Search
Summize, a powerful search engine that trawls through the enormous volume of public tweets in real time, emerged in 2008 and soon became the go-to tool for searching Twitter. The powers that be at Twitter noticed. Seeing the value in Summize’s application, Twitter acquired Summize and began a slow process of incorporating it into Twitter itself, renaming it Twitter Search. So although the Summize name is a thing of the past, Twitter Search is a powerful and important part of the Twitter experience. Just as this book went to press, Twitter formally rolled out its search functionality displayed right on Twitter.com with the rest of your account. Search is still also available at its own Web address, http://search.twitter.com, as shown in Figure 9-1, or by clicking the Search link at the bottom of your Twitter Home page.
Twitter Search isn’t static: It keeps searching for your query, even after you click the Search button. When Twitter Search finds a new search result, a link appears at the top of your Twitter Search results telling you how many new matches for your search term have appeared since you last hit the Refresh button on your browser. This may not seem like a big deal, but it’s extremely useful when news is breaking, or you’re following a live event. Just click a trending topic to see what we mean. Note: Search as embedded into Twitter.com is static. You have to hit Refresh to see whether any new results have come in.
Figure 9-1: Find what you need by using Twitter’s search engine, formerly called Summize.
Something else that makes Twitter Search so useful is how specific you can get with Advanced Search. You can fine-tune searches by usernames, locations, or keywords. Keep in mind, you’re better off using only a couple of advanced search settings at a time, or you may find no results at all!
Here’s more on how to use advanced search:
1. From the Twitter Search page, click the Advanced Search link located below the text box.
A new page appears that contains a fill-in-the-blank interface to help you search for the information and people you want to