Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Twitter as Searchable Thought Stream

Fresh on the heels of the first ever Educhat, I'm glad to share with you the discovery that Twitter is a Search Engine! While it doesn't necessarily search facts and content, it does search the most current thoughts and ramblings of millions of Twitterers.




If you'd like to see how magical a search of Twitter can be, try your own query at Twitter Search. There are a number of search operators you can employ, or you can augment your search by using the Advanced Twitter Search.

Thanks to M-T Hacks, I now read the pulse of the globe related to select Google searches in Firefox. I'm not sure how long Google will allow this script to work, but it's a fascinating way to see who's saying what related to the search terms you employ. In the screen capture below, you'll note that another Firefox plug-in, Feedly, allows my searches to reference RSS feeds from my Google Reader account.


At least for the time being, I'm happy that Firefox, Google, and a number of creative developers are playing nicely together. Still, I'm left wondering what might this mean for the future of search?

1 comments:

loonyhiker said...

This was really great! I had never played much with it but now I've spent about 30 minutes finding lots of neat information. We are also planning a mega trip around the US for the next couple of months so this will come in handy when looking for places to eat and see in certain cities. Thanks.