TwitterSearch will let you set a search term, and it will update every 60 seconds to let you know what is going on in the Twitter universe. You can simply put in a search word or term, or be a little more tricky.
Try setting one of these as your search:
- “#hashtag” to track a topic of interest. I like to follow #ubuntu to see the latest topics on my favorite Linux distro. (NOTE: this now works in “search” and “locked_search” modes mentioned below)
- “@username” to follow all mentions of someone. You could see what people are saying to @ev, or about him!
- “to:username” You can see what people are saying ONLY to a specific person.
- “from:username” You can track what a specific person is saying.
My favorite: Just enter a username without the “@” You’ll get to see the combo of what someone says, what is being said to them, and anything anyone says about them.
Add it to iGoogle.
The web page is at http://betwittered.com/twittersearch
Just like everything else I put up here, feel free to embed it anywhere you like.
(ADDED, 18 MARCH 09)
Would you like to personalize TwitterSearch to put in a web page or blog? You can change the default search to fit your site. Just add “?search=searchTerm” to the URL. For example: http://betwittered.com/twittersearch?search=from:metarobert Note that I used a slightly advanced search of “from:metarobert” If you want to get fancy, you’ll need to know how to URL encode things like spaces and special characters.
(ADDED, 15 SEPT 09)
UPDATE: There is a new search option. By adding the option “locked_search” you can now set TwitterSearch to lock in to a specific search. With this set, the text area and button will be hidden and the search will always be set to your prference. This is perfect for using Twittersearch to display a site specific search as a gadget on your web site. Adding it is as simple as using an URL like :
http://betwittered.com/twittersearch?locked_search=from:metarobert
If you are wanting to embed this in your own site, here is how I did it in this page:
<iframe
src='http://betwittered.com/twittersearch'
style='
height:300px;
width:400px;
border:0px;
margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;'
>
</iframe>
To use the “search” or “locked_search” options, just change the ’src=’ parameter.
Thanks,
Robert
[...] TwitterSearch was approved by Google and showed up in the iGoogle gadgets list last night. I’ve been using it a while, and my favorite search is currently “metarobert” (my twitter id) Because keeps up with all of my conversations with people, it has turned my iGoogle page into a bit of a dashboard since I’m also running BeTwittered. [...]
[...] and you can even tweet from your cell phone (I recommend the iGoogle gadget BeTwittered, as well as TwitterSearch). Various web services, like Sandy, used Twitter as an interface to quickly exchange messages [...]
[...] You should probably have a standing Twitter search for phrases related to you industry anyway, and this should pick up any tweets about RFPs or RFQs. You might also try testing some RFP-specific phrases to see if that is worthwhile. There are a variety of options for creating these searches. My current favorite is TwitterSearch for iGoogle. [...]
dumb question perhaps, but I’m blind here…where do I get the code for embedding? It’s available as a gadget in blogger.com (and that’s where I got it for my blog), but what if I wanted to put it on a non blogger.com website..?
Hi Robert, A great site and thank you for sharing l found a lot of useful items and added a whole page to igoogle to follow. I have a twitter site and will add your details to mine plus it is linked to a gadget and it can be downloaded and this will spread your site further a field, my way of sharing. Also all our network updates are provided by ” The Roving Giraffe News Report ” this is also has a feed in to the gadget.
Once again thank you and keep up the good work and will add it to bookmark and bloglist of favorite sites on network. Bye for now G
Hi, the locked search is ace, but is it possible to lock in a hashtag search? Like putting #cars in the bottom seatch box but having it locked instead? Please email me if this is possible. thanks.
Hi Martyn,
I emailed you, but for the sake of other people visiting the site, I’m replying here, also. Basically, you’ve pointed out a bug. Thanks very much for that. I’m working on updated code right now that will handle hashtags and multi-word searches with spaces.
Hashtags (#) will simply need to be replaced with %23
Spaces ( ) < - kidding, sorry will need to be encoded %20
A couple examples:
http://betwittered.com/twittersearch/?locked_search=%23monkeysarefun
http://betwittered.com/twittersearch/?locked_search=evan%20williams
I’m testing the fix now. I should have it done shortly and I’ll update the main post to let everyone know.
Thanks,
Robert
Update to allow hashtag searches is live. But I lied a bit in my last post, I made it so you can type in the literal spaces and # characters. No need to go look those up.
Robert