TwitterSearch to track people or topics

This TwitterSearch is not the one at search.twitter.com or twittersearch.com (due for launch in July, 2009....exciting!), but the gadget designed by Robert Arles at 32hours, which you can view in action over there on the right side of this page. You enter a search term - e.g. #libraries - and TwitterSearch will update every 60 seconds to display tweets about the topic. If you want to change the topic, go ahead! Here's how  Arles presents it:

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.
    * "@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.


The application is free and can be embedded in any blog or website.
For searching twitter, you can always go to search.twitter.com, but even better is Mark Carey's GreaseMonkey script Realtime Twitter Search Results on Google. I've been using this for a couple of weeks now and find it extremely useful. When you use Google to search for a term, it adds the 5 most recent Twitter search results at the top of the list, like so: