Posts Tagged ‘search engine’
How Twitter has evolved as a search engine
September 8th, 2009
We all know that Twitter has come a long way in a short space of time. Below are my thoughts on how Twitter has progressed as a search tool.
Stage 1
Due to Twitter opening up its API at a very early stage, third party Twitter apps have became a large part of the Twitter phenomenon. Twitter search tools were among the first to appear and were used primarily to monitor conversations at relevant events. Quotes were taken from the events, which helped to create a quick and easy blog summary.
Stage 2
Moving on from conversations, Twitter became a real-time breaking news service, with searches showing the latest information on news events of all types, a good example of which being the earthquakes in China and Mumbai bombings.
Twitter Searches were evolving from pure conversation to a hunger for instant real-time news. Twitter is now quicker than any news station when it comes to breaking news.
Stage 3
The next stage of Twitter was for it to be used as a real time help and recommendations search tool.
Example:
Can anybody recommend a good SEO partner?
Does anybody know of the best budget hotel to stay near central park NY?
These sorts of questions would lead to numerous people sharing experiences and sharing of links, especially when TINY url came into play.
Stage 4
Other searches started taking place in Twitter focused on Jobs, local events, classifieds, trends, sports scores and information, gig guides and events.
Stage 5
Finally the Celebrity search. Celebrities are often searched and quoted for sound bites in national and local papers via Twitter searches on their personal profiles. Celebrities also use Twitter as a quick fire response and personal promotion tool, for example: most celebrities on Twitter tweeted in response to the death of Michael Jackson.
Final stage
As more people use Twitter the search possibilities will grow, but for now Twitter is the premier search engine for real time news searches and quick recommendations. Search engines are now being built with Twitter searches in mind, e.g. Microsoft’s Bing has its search results sitting alongside its Twitter results for keywords.
A threat to Google?
5 Excellent Social/Traditional Search Engines
May 8th, 2008
I’m always on the look out for the ultimate search engine, something that ticks all the boxes and can rival Google, for my needs at least. So today I’m going to give you a run down, in no particular order, of some of the better social/traditional search engines that I use.
Carrot2 is the first offering. The main reason i like Carrot2 is because after you have typed in your search criteria, you get a three tabbed architecture-style breakdown of topics, sources and sites that help to break down your search criteria even further. View an example here.
Search Crystal is next up. It calls itself a search visualisation tool, which is probably the reason I like it. You can also share your results via email easily or embed them into your blog. View an example here.
Addic-to-matic is a new search engine that i have recently come across, it’s much more about social news and social bookmarking sites in the style of a Netvibes page. View an example here.
Whonu is essentially a Google search front end with the option of adding Ask or Yahoo! results, the reason i use it is because it is very simple. Type in your search and then hover over one of the subcategories to perform an advanced search. View example here.
Cluuz if my final offering - “Cluuz patent pending, core technology understands the relationship between the entities, terms, or persons searched, leading to more relevant, easy to understand search results.” Again it’s a nice visual play on search engines and offers something a little different to the norm. View an example here.
Other notable options are the Joongle browser search engine plug-ins that i use a lot, especially the Social option, these are handy go-to options when all else fails.
As always if you want to recommend other good social/traditional search engine options, please let me know.
Video game only search engine that is HOT STUFF
May 2nd, 2008
I have to admit i am a bit of a gamer and i do own a Nintendo Wii, so it was a joy to find a search engine that was 100 % for gamers! It’s called Game Skoot.
One interesting tab on the Game Skoot site is called Hot Stuff, at first glance it looked like some sort of RSS subscription button, but how can you subscribe to a pure search engine? Or maybe it was a page full of scantily clad beauties?
After clicking it i realised it was a collection of stories from “all the top” games sites on the web, very much like the Alltop site which has best story’s from the web in various categories.
Other nice features include news, test, cheats and forums search tabs and a nice big tag cloud so that you can see what games are hot at the moment.
I’m definitely going to Del.icio.us this site so that when i get stuck on the new GTA i can get some cheats quickly!