Skip to main content

Now Search for Any Tweet in History

Twitter is great for real-time news and updates, but searching through your history for tweets on a specific topic — that's much less efficient, even with hashtags. With more than 450 million tweets created every day, finding one from, say, 2007 may be harder (and more painful) than finding a piece of hay in a stack of needles. Topsy, a San Francisco-based social-analytics company, aims to change that. Topsy is one of a small handful of companies that offer advanced Twitter search tools for the microblogging network's entire stream, known as the Twitter "firehose." On Wednesday, Topsy took it a step further by opening up an archive of Twitter's entire history to the public — more than 425 billion tweets, videos, images, blog posts and location pins dating back to founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet in 2006, Topsy CEO Duncan Greatwood said in a release. Topsy's archive previously dated back to 2010, when it first partnered with Twitter.
The real-time benefits of Topsy's analytics tools have been on display for years. During last year's presidential race, Twitter's political index — or "Twindex" — used Topsy's analytics features to determine public sentiment for each candidate. Twitter used information pulled from publicly available tweets to see if the public had a positive or negative view of certain politicians. The company could even aggregate the sentiment geographically by breaking down tweet locations to the city level.

In August, Topsy opened its API to developers, allowing them to use Twitter data more creatively in other applications. This new, all-encompassing archive could benefit political and marketing campaigns. For example, if a political campaign wanted to go back and gauge public opinion surrounding a specific issue during the 2008 presidential race, it can now do so by searching Topsy's archives. The expanded wealth of information is available to the public at Topsy.com, but the more advanced analytics tools are reserved for users who pay for "Topsy Pro," according to a company spokesperson.

Popular posts from this blog

LG’s first flexible OLED phone due before the year is out

LG plans to launch a flexible OLED smartphone before the end of the year, the company’s VP of mobile has confirmed, though it’s unclear to what extent the work-in-progress handset will actually flex. The OLED panel in question is the handiwork of LG Display according to VP of LG mobile Yoon Bu-hyun, the WSJ  reports, with the proposed device set to launch sometime in Q4. LG Display’s work on flexible OLEDs has been underway for some time, though the company’s efforts have perhaps been overshadowed somewhat by rival Samsung’s YOUM development. Last year, according to a Korea Times report, LG Display was preparing for
Post a Comment
Full Story »

Bing Apps for Windows 8 get major updates

Late least year, Microsoft rolled out a half dozen Bing Apps for Windows 8 users, each one focused on a specific category, such as travel and sports. The apps were designed to offer “immersive vertical experiences,” and now, about six months later, a big line of updates for them is being pushed out. Users can grab the updates now by heading into the Windows Store and selecting the updates notification.
Post a Comment
Full Story »
Flexible displays are the Future of IT Industry! A part from 4k and smart home appliances, the CES 2013 saw a lot of attention being drawn towards bendable, flexible displays. The elasticised display idea isn’t something new as we have seen hoards of device concepts being crafted around flexible, bendable and even foldable displays. These concept devices give us a futuristic feel, be it a flexible phone to be worn around the wrist or a phone that opens up to turn into a tablet or PSP-like device. But how far is this future? Nokia has been toying with the idea ever since we remember. The technology sounds very fascinating and the possibilities and the extent to which bendable displays could be used are vast and leave us spellbound. However, these have always been concepts and we haven’t seen any device materialise in the real world. There have been several technologies that were conceived in these years and all have been put to their practical use. But the bendable d
Post a Comment
Full Story »