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.
Customizing TwitterSearch to put in a web page or blog
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.
Lock the search term: 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 as described above.
Robert
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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 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.
A couple examples:
http://betwittered.com/twittersearch/?locked_search=#sunny
http://betwittered.com/twittersearch/?locked_search=sunny+day
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
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.
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. (update: I updated the examples)
Robert
Super handy! Can you really put a few of them on your site with different search terms?
I was wondering if you could tell me how to change the background or text color. Thanks!
thank’s for sharing
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I have a relatively new twitter handle and I’m wondering how your site sees it and Twitter does not?
I am hoping to get a from: and to: at the same time. Basically I want to see all the traffic that references the name as well as from that name.
Thanks
Hi,
Is it possible to track people’s location from where he is tweeting?
Regards,
Sjon
@Sjon,
Twitter doesn’t appear to be handling requests like:
near:”los angeles, ca” within:15mi
I’ll have a look to see if I need to handle this as a special case, then add it as a feature.
Thanks for asking
Robert