The Twitter Book

Advance your advanced search

When you want to see what people are saying about several topics at once, and you want to watch the conversations in real-time, try a service like TweetGrid (http://tweetgrid.com) or Monitter (http://monitter.com), shown here.

They're useful not only for seeing what people are saying, but also for getting a sense of the speed and volume of tweets on different topics.

If you find yourself keeping an eye on the same searches every day, consider using Twitter via a client like Twhirl or TweetDeck, which lets you easily save and see searches. We describe third-party programs later in this chapter.

twitter tip

For services that let you include a complex query, here's an easy way to get the search string. Use Twitter's advanced search to run your query. At the top of the results page, you'll see your query converted into a search string (something like Yankees OR Yanks near:"New York, NY" within:25mi). Paste it into your current app.