Searching Twitter With Summize

Summize is a very cool way to search Twitter conversations, it’s a search engine for Twitter. In their own words:

Summize’s mission is to search & discover the topics and attitudes expressed within online conversations.

Here are some of the ways you can search those Twitter tweets for the gold you might be looking for:

1. Summize Your Handle

Search your Twitter handle – Enter your Twitter UserName in Summize to see what you find about yourself. Your username can be found in the Twitter settings screen when you’re logged in. It is your http://twitter.com/USERNAME.

2. What Are People Saying About Your Company?

Another way to use Summize is to search for your company name and see what, if anything people are saying. Recently there’s been discussion on the new thin Apple iPhone coming out and I wanted to know what folks were saying on Twitter so I entered Apple in Twitter as well as AAPL (the stock symbol for Apple – should have bought some call options on the dip – end of February – DANG!!).

3. Who’s Talking About That Link?

Find people who have linked to a URL on Twitter. Let’s say you have an article that you tweeted about and it ended up in a TinyURL formatted URL. Paste the originial long URL or a blog post into TinyURL (TinyURL should remember it) and then take the shortened URL and plug it into Summize. You should find everyone that has tweeted about that specific blog post. Source: Digital Inspiration

4. What’s Going On Near You?

Find Tweets about something near by or just tweeters near by somewhere. Search Summize to find happy hours wherever you’re at using a query like “happy hour” near:SF

5. What Updates Did He/She Send to Twitter?

Did you miss something someone said on Twitter in the last 24 hours? Let’s use Problogger for example, enter from:problogger in the Summize search box. Enter yesterday’s date in the Since this date field.

6. Find Weather Information

Enter this search to find out what folks within 15 miles are saying about the weather in San Francisco: weather near:”sf” within:15mi. Use your own parameters for other locations or just use the Summimze advanced search.

7. Interesting Links

Want to find some links on a specific topic or interesting links, or just some links to read? Pick a topic and search like this: apple filter:links. This search willl return tweets with the word apple in them and links. If you’re a fan of Scoble, use this search to find some of the links Scoble is talking about: from:scobleizer filter:links.

8. Who’s Talking to Who?

Trying to remember a conversation where you saw a couple folks talking to each other? Try this search: from:techcrunch to:scobleizer.

9. Movies that have positive tweets

This search will give you movies that have positive tweets – movies 🙂 Or see what folks are saying out a camera you might be checking out.

10. Movies that have negative tweets

This search will give you movies that have negative tweets – movies 🙁 Or see what folks are saying out a camera you might be checking out.

There’s also a Search Operators page with examples of the operators you can use to search Twitter and what those operators mean.

Summize also has an API (Application Programmer Interface). An API for any product allows outsiders to write software or somehow access the functionality of that product. Here are some apps that use the Summize API:

1. Hahlo – A Twitter client for the iPhone/iPod Touch using the Twitter API and the Summize API
2. Quotably – Provides an easier way to follow Twitter conversations
3. Get Satisfaction – A direct connection between people and companies that fosters problem-solving, promotes sharing, and builds up relationships.
4. StrawPoll – A dailly poll conducted on Twitter.
5. Addict-o-matic – “Inhale the Web” – searches the best live sites on the web for the latest news, blog posts, videos and images.
6. twistori – displays real time thoughts and feelings expressed on Twitter.
7. Twitturly – a service for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on Twitter.
8. Slandr – A mobile Twitter client
9. Twitter Spectrum – visualizes co-occurring words associated with Twittered topics.
10. HelloTwitFace – A Windows Mobile application for viewing and updating your status with Twitter and Facebook.

The Sidebar

The sidebar on a search results page at Summize lists the following:

• You can subscribe to the search results via RSS.
• You can Twitter the search results.
• Show the search results in another language.
• Summize lists Trending topics you can click on to catch up on what’s popular on Twitter.
• A Nifty queries section lists some example queries to try and alter as you see fit.

When you are viewing the search results from Summize, you’ll be able to see a conversation link next to the Twitter tweets that multiple people have responded to.

There’s also a plugin that allows you to add the summize search to your search box in Firefox and Internet Explorer. You’ll find it at the bottom of the Summize web pages.

Don’t forget the Summize Labs. Currently there is a Realtime Sentiment graphical representation on the sentiment of a subject. Kind of cool. The Summize folks seem to keep their blog updated as well.

Now go play!!   🙂