Twitter’s search engine leaves a lot to be desired. The native search frequently brings up incomplete results, both in a current search and going back. Plus Twitter search seems to frequently be down, and always be shoddy.
The best alternative, and a great way to track and search Twitter, is Scoopler. Scoopler is a fast, real-time search engine for Twitter – that’s also got some cool features of its own. It does its main job well, and adds just enough features to make it miles ahead of Twitter’s own search.
For the sake of full explanations, let me tell you that Scoopler also searches results from Flickr, Digg, Delicious, and some other sites – given the relative slowness with which these sites are updated, Twitter tends to both dominate search results and be the most functional use of Scoopler’s search.
When you search for a word or phrase (pick your own, or use one of the popular ones Scoopler suggests), you’re taken immediately to a waterfall-looking column of tweets, that updates as new ones come in. Frequently, it’s too fast to read, especially if you’re tracking a popular subject; you can easily pause the updates if you need to catch up.
In addition, Scoopler does an excellent job with multimedia stuff – videos, images, links, and the like. Within the stream of tweets on your topic, Scoopler extracts all the videos, image, and links to a convenient sidebar, where it organizes them by type, and by the number of shares. If a video is being passed around, you can see it without digging through the stream to figure out what it is you’re looking for. You can easily share anything on Scoopler, too, just by clicking “Peek.”
One thing I like to do periodically is click the “view all” button on the home screen – this tracks all of the most popular topics at once. First of all, the speed at which they update is crazy. Second of all, it’s a lot like skimming news headlines, and is a great way to get caught up on what’s happening.
One day, I predict, Twitter will fix its search – it’ll probably look a lot like Scoopler, actually. But for now, Scoopler seems to be one of the best of a small number of Web apps that let you search and track what’s happening on Twitter and in the world, pretty much at the speed of light.
The best alternative, and a great way to track and search Twitter, is Scoopler. Scoopler is a fast, real-time search engine for Twitter – that’s also got some cool features of its own. It does its main job well, and adds just enough features to make it miles ahead of Twitter’s own search.
For the sake of full explanations, let me tell you that Scoopler also searches results from Flickr, Digg, Delicious, and some other sites – given the relative slowness with which these sites are updated, Twitter tends to both dominate search results and be the most functional use of Scoopler’s search.
When you search for a word or phrase (pick your own, or use one of the popular ones Scoopler suggests), you’re taken immediately to a waterfall-looking column of tweets, that updates as new ones come in. Frequently, it’s too fast to read, especially if you’re tracking a popular subject; you can easily pause the updates if you need to catch up.
In addition, Scoopler does an excellent job with multimedia stuff – videos, images, links, and the like. Within the stream of tweets on your topic, Scoopler extracts all the videos, image, and links to a convenient sidebar, where it organizes them by type, and by the number of shares. If a video is being passed around, you can see it without digging through the stream to figure out what it is you’re looking for. You can easily share anything on Scoopler, too, just by clicking “Peek.”
One thing I like to do periodically is click the “view all” button on the home screen – this tracks all of the most popular topics at once. First of all, the speed at which they update is crazy. Second of all, it’s a lot like skimming news headlines, and is a great way to get caught up on what’s happening.
One day, I predict, Twitter will fix its search – it’ll probably look a lot like Scoopler, actually. But for now, Scoopler seems to be one of the best of a small number of Web apps that let you search and track what’s happening on Twitter and in the world, pretty much at the speed of light.
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