SilverBird or Kung Fu Twitter Search

    In my work, I use Twitter to find news on interesting topics and people who are interested in these topics at a given time. Many are contemptuous of this service, so you should explain what its strength is. The power of Twitter is in a good search, in a large number of live, open to communication users and the most simple communication scheme. In addition, it’s important to understand the conceptual difference between Twitter searches and google searches.

    The more you understand the logic of his work, the closer the analogy with the work of associative thinking becomes. But this is not either philosophy, or lyrics, so I will explain this comparison in the postscript.

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    Let's get to practice.

    I haven’t figured out the native interface and mobile applications yet, so I’ll talk about how I use the Chrome extension:


    The SilverBird extension was written by Brazilian developer Rafael Carício, his Twitter account @cezarsa. This is an open source project, its code is posted on GitHub.

    Instead of the Home tab, which I’m not using, I set the “Unified” tab, the content of which is customizable. It displays the contents of the Home tab plus @mentions and private messages (DMs). As you can see from the screenshot, all the other tabs are search queries, which I will discuss in more detail below. Managing tabs becomes apparent by right-clicking on the tab bar. For tabs drag and drop works.

    Work with search queries


    The difference between a search on Twitter is that it often searches for an information stream on a given topic, rather than an answer to a specific question. When the stream is found, the request can be left unchanged for a long time and simply monitor the information stream. Issuance is limited to five days from history (the restriction was introduced recently, I think, due to the high load). Basic tricks are easier for me to tell on specific examples of search queries.

    • rizzoma OR rizzomacom

    On Twitter, you can quickly track what they write about your service. Often users come up with direct questions. We have the name of the service itself, Rizzoma , different from the name of the Twitter account: @rizzomacom. Therefore, the query has both names.

    • #confluence OR wrike OR streamwork OR "cisco quad"

    My work is closely related to collaboration tools. This request allows you to monitor what people say about some services that are interesting to me at a given time. I rarely use #hashtag in requests: recently it was captured by vile spammers or the so-called SocialMediaMarket-ologists (SMM-schiki). Here is a recent article about this issue (in English).

    • google wave OR googlewave OR co-meeting OR waveinabox OR WIAB -google + -g + -google plus - # google +

    I keep track of everything related to Google Wave and the Wave successor projects. This request uses G + SMM garbage filtering. The request is supplemented with exceptions for new spam flows.

    • kobzevvv OR kravtsovd

    We often answer questions with a colleague. I use this query not to duplicate our answers.

    If you go this route and type in your search queries, then at some point the extension will begin to fail. This is due to a violation of the server limit on the number of requests. Go to “Options” and increase the timeouts.

    Ticket systems for working with Twitter


    We had the idea of ​​sending user feedback from Twitter to the ticket system for accounting and distribution within the team, followed by sending the response back to Twitter. There are many such services. We worked with Zendesk for a while. As a result, they refused - working directly, through the search queries above, is faster and more flexible in settings. I think this solution may well be suitable for a large team.

    Russian-language segment of Twitter is small


    I came to the conclusion that the Russian-language segment of Twitter is still too small and not particularly useful for searching for “interesting things”. But Russian politics in it is a Klondike for studying the work of information flows. To better understand Twitter promotion, I recommend learning how Navalny works. A lot of good tricks and ideas.

    Facebook and Google Plus are not interesting for search so far


    On Facebook, the search interface in public posts is too complicated for regular use. Many people don’t even know that there is such functionality, and the search itself does not index all public content.
    In G +, of course, search works much better. There is even an option to save searches. I have not yet found a convenient extension for the lazy, which exempts from going around the pages. I believe that a critical mass of an active audience has not yet been gathered, among whose content it would be worth doing such a search.

    PS About Twitter and Neocortex


    At the beginning of the article, I compared Twitter to the work of the brain. I will explain the comparison. There are two principles of neuron organization in the cerebral cortex. One of them is the construction of tree hierarchies. This principle is described in more detail in the book "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins.
    The second principle is horizontal associations. The fact is that neurons can have completely unexpected connections. And these connections are constantly being completed and opened. This behavior of neurons is reminiscent of user connections on Twitter (follow). From this point of view, a limit of 144 characters looks reasonable, because Twitter is more a way of organizing information flows than the information itself.
    One way or another, I like this analogy. Let me remind you that this is only a model, and it can be challenged from a thousand different positions. I am sure that there are many other interesting analogies.

    Enjoy everyone diving into the information flows of global intelligence.

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