Angela Booth’s Life Stream

Writing and more...

(Mac) Nifty Twitter search client

I've been whining about the woeful state of Twitter search for months, and while Twitter's own Search may be fine for most users, it's horrible for people who want to research, namely writers.

Thank heavens there's now an application (Mac) which is focused solely on Twitter search.

Incoming! New Twitter App for Mac That Only Lets You Search reports:

At no point during any of this do you log into your Twitter account or post any tweets of your own. Some users will no doubt find this bothersome, and question the app’s usefulness, but if you use Twitter for research as much as I do, the arm’s length passivity of Incoming! is just what the doctor ordered. It might also appeal to people who don’t yet want to take the Twitter plunge themselves by signing up for an account, but want access to all the content that’s available via the service, in a much more manageable package than Twitter.com’s own search page.


Of course, the first search I did was for "freelance writing", and I'm ultra-pleased with the no-frills, workable results.

So if you're a tweeting writer, and you own a Mac, check out Incoming! It's sure to save you time and frustration.

New to Twitter? Follow me for daily writing tips.

How's your traffic from social networking sites?

I suspect that Twitter and Friendfeed today are major traffic drivers to many sites. I have heard this in meetings with execs at major media companies. What this means is that you must to syndicate your content where the people are and then engage in conversations around it in order to influence.
via steverubel.com

The above article from Steve Rubel says he's getting major traffic from sites like Twitter.

I just checked my Clicky stats for some of my blogs, and here's what I found -- for niche blogs, most of my traffic is from Google.

Ditto for my writing blogs. I'm just not seeing major traffic from Twitter et al, probably because I haven't got anywhere near the followers which Steve Rubel has. Also probably because many/ most writers are not heavily using Twitter.

This presents a conundrum. If you want to get more traffic from the social networking sites, you need to spend more time there building presence.

On balance, for the time being I'd rather spend more time developing content on my blogs and attracting search engine traffic, since that's where most of my traffic is coming from.

Microblogging on Twitter: can't say what you need to in 140 characters?

while you may think Twitter’s character limit is silly or frustrating, it’s actually born out of two other forms of communication that are widely accepted and used the world over. You may not think of Twitter being just like a postcard, but in some ways it is — one that you can instantaneously send to many friends or acquaintances at the same time. And minus the cost of a stamp.
via techcrunch.com

If you're wondering whether Twitter can help your writing career, yes it can.

If you're a new writer, Twitter helps you to connect with other writers who can teach you how writing for money works.

If you're an experienced writer, Twitter helps you to network, and to build your platform as a writer.

And if you feel that 140 characters is much too limiting -- edit. :-)

Bing brings out the tweets | Webware - CNET

Bing will now surface results for certain celebrities (leading to the odd pairing of search guru Danny Sullivan and American Idol host Ryan Seacrest in the same sentence) when users search on their names and "twitter," the company announced Wednesday afternoon. It's not indexing all of Twitter, instead picking "a few thousand people to start" and using Twitter's public API to display those results in a special box among the other search results, such as stories that a person might have written about Twitter.

via news.cnet.com

Hmmm... might take another look at Bing.