January 24, 2009 at 9:47 pm · Filed under Twitterfall
I recently launched TwitterFall, a web application that allows you to view Tweets about popular topics (and your own custom searhces) in near-realtime as they are being posted on Twitter, the popular micro-blogging site. The response has been amazing, with loads of feedback and comments and people talking about how they use it. I thought I’d briefly run through some of the uses of Twitterfall, personal and business:
- Keep up with the latest news by watching all the popular terms. These automatically update, so you’ll never be left behind, you don’t even have to refresh your browser to get a new list of trends – your ‘Twitterfall’ will automatically start showing you Tweets related to the new ones. If you have a second monitor you’re not using much, it’s great to throw Twitterfall onto it so you don’t miss anything (this can also be a massive time-sink if you get distracted, so be careful!).
- Track conversations regarding interesting people in realtime by using a custom trend. If you’re a popular person, you can even use it to keep track of conversations regarding you! This is also known as ‘Falling‘ by some Twitterfall fans.
- Track your products. If you’re a business and want to know what people are saying about your products/brand, load up a few custom trends, and select ‘All Custom Trends’.
- Track interesting tweets. Virtuallin suggested adding ‘RT’ as a custom trend to spot all the interesting tweets people are rementioning.
- Follow an event up to the second. Loads of people used Twitterfall during the inauguration because it provided up-to-date information about what was going on, and thoughts from everyone on Twitter. During major events, we also add ‘Special Trends’ which are combined ‘Twitterfalls’ of several key trends and people.
- Be nice to Twitter. No matter how many people are looking at the popular trends on Twitterfall, it’s just one query to Twitter. This means that during popular events when everyone is searching for the same thing (e.g. #inaug09), Twitterfall is massively more efficient. This doesn’t apply to Custom Trends, which at the moment are requested from your browser directly (so if 100 people have the same Custom Trend, it’s still 100 requests to Twitter).
- Follow the #hashtag conversations. Did you know on Fridays people chat using the #followfriday hashtag, suggesting interesting people to follow? You can watch this conversation in realtime thanks to Twitterfall! Also, #myfirstjob, #changecamp, and more. Whenever they’re being talked about a lot, Twitterfall will show them up on the ‘Trends’ list, or you can keep up yourself by adding them as a Custom Trend when things are quieter.
- Find content for your blog. Do you run a blog about Apple? Or maybe furniture design? Whatever it is, add a few custom trends to the list, and you’ll be able to catch any conversations and comments on topics as soon as they happen, letting you keep your blog articles fresh and new.
These are just a few of my ideas. I might add some more soon. But I want to open it up to discussion. How do you use Twitterfall? Leave a comment on this post, or write a tweet with the #twitterfall hashtag!