Interesting news in micro-blogging. Twitter will soon release it’s newest feature — the ability to search in real-time for key words and get results from recent twitter posts. (Read full ZDNet article here.) ZDNet notes that this will allow Twitter to become “the ultimate buzz tracker for those who are interested in what’s being talked about at any given moment in time”. The journalist in me is excited about being able to see exactly what real people worldwide are saying about real events. Definitely an interesting development…. I just wish Jaiku would step up. (IMHO, Jaiku’s just a better tool — it’s cleaner, easier, and does/did more tricks. But that’s another blog post.)
Howdy folks! I’m an Instructional Designer at UT Dallas. I have a Bachelor’s in Elementary Education from Angelo State University and a Master’s in Computer Education and Cognitive Systems from the University of North Texas. I’ve been working in edtech for 11 years. Hmm… what else? I’m a *huge* fan of that little Irish band called U2, and I’m a bigtime Firefly/Serenity advocate.
I like the hype that this promises, but the skeptic in me realizes that Twitter doesn’t always deliver on the hype. Sometimes they do, so if so, this will be cool. But the other problems you have to look at: not everyone on Twitter speaks the same language, or even spells stuff in their native language correctly :) I don’t know if it will be the ‘ultimate’ buzz tracker, but at least a good buzz tracker for the demographic that is attracted to Twitter.
I’m pretty confident that, if this lives up to hype (which I think there is a good chance that it will – I just remain cautiously hopeful based on Twitter’s track record), that Jaiku will step up and add this. From a programming perspective, this actually isn’t that hard to do this kind of thing.