Although Twitter applications such as TweetDeck let you filtermessages in highly customizable ways, Twitter's own site can help youmanage this information overload. Twitter search can be found at thebottom of your Twitter homepage under "Search," or, when logged in toTwitter, go to search.twitter.com.
Hereare some tips for using Twitter's search tool, including ways to catchup with tweets you missed, and find tweets that you want to read again.
After you arrive at Twitter's search tool, click on the "advancedsearch" link that appears just below the main search bar. The first boxon the advanced Twitter search is for "Words." Here, you'll find avariety of options for finding the term you need, while accounting forthe fact that people might not type their Tweets to be perfectly searchfriendly.
For instance, if you type iPhone 3.0 into the "All of the TheseWords" search bar, it will return results where someone tweeted notonly "iPhone 3.0," but also tweets that mention the " iphone softwareupgrade (3.0.). In other words, it improves the chances you'll findinformation on the 3.0 version of the iPhone even if 3.0 and "iPhone"don't appear next to each other. If you only want those terms directlynext to each other as you type them, then use the "exact phrase" searchbar.
You can also search within a "hashtag." The Twitter communityorganically uses a Hashtag (#) in front of frequently used terms tohelp categorize them for searches and filtering. So when talking aboutan iPod, people might also reference "#Apple." If you're looking forcompany specific news that's happened recently or what's being saidabout a company's product, the hashtags can be very helpful.ReadWriteWeb also has this interesting write-up on Hashtags that helps summarize their usefulness.
Looking for a Tweet not in English? Twitter search has a pull downmenu here with other options, so search away from Arabic to Thai.
Twitter search also allows you to catch up on tweets from yourfavorite people. On Twitter, a person's username on the service appearswith the @ symbol in front of it. It's usually more effective to searchfor someone using a Twitter handle than using the person's actual name(sometimes those two items are conveniently the same, however).
Twitter's people search lets you search for tweets from a person, toa person, or referencing a person. When you use the search bars in theadvanced search feature, you don't need to put the @ sign in front ofthe person's name.
A Tweet "to" a person will be accounted for if someone mentionedthat person's name as the very first word of their message. A mere"reference" means the name could appear anywhere in the tweet.
People Shortcuts
Here are some shortcuts if you want to get similar functions from people search from the main Twitter search bar.
Type: @lancearmstrong. Twitter will search for: tweets referencing Lance Armstrong Twitter handle.
Type: from:lancearmstrong. Twitter will search for: tweets from Lance Armstrong.
Type: to:lancearmstrong. Twitter will search for: all tweetsdirected at LanceArmstrong (messages that put his name at the front ofthe tweet).
The Twitter audience is global, so sometimes it's helpful to knowwho tweeted a certain topic in your geographic area. You can type in alocation such as "Boston" and then search as far away as a thousandmiles or as close as one mile. This information is gleaned from thegeographic information that people feed into their Twitter profiles.
Shortcut location search
Want to see what's happening from local area Twitter users?
Type: "cricket game" near "Bangalore." Twitter will search for:people in the Bangalore area who are tweeting about the cricket game.
Type: near:Bangalore within:10 kms. Twitter will search for: all tweets done within 10 kms of Bangalore.
This is especially important within the Twitter community, becausepeople post so many short messages during the course of their Twitterlives. Knowing that you wanted to reread a Tweet you sent yesterday canhelp narrow your search substantially compared to sieving throughmonths of messages. When you click on the date bar, a simple drop downmenu appears for you to select the dates in which you'd like to searchfor a message.
While Twitter is not a social bookmarking service, sharing links isdefinitely one of the most popular activities. People share links toarticles, new products or websites, and people "retweet" links too(meaning, they share again, with their own followers).
This can be especially helpful if you remember a Twitter friendsharing a link with you from a previous day. If you forgot to bookmarkit, you could go to Twitter and type that person's name into the"people" search, a key term into the keywords search, and check thelink box to say you only want to return a tweet where the link wasincluded. Add the aforementioned date search (if you remember) andyou'll improve your chances of finding it
One of the more interesting features that Twitter searchers can tapinto falls under the "attitudes" section. You can search for tweetsthat appear negative or positive in tone. This one is especiallyhelpful for looking at product reviews.
So if you type iPhone into the search field, and check off the tweet"negative in tone," you might see a tweet that says, "New York TimesiPhone app crashes EVERY SINGLE TIME I try to open an article."
Shortcut: If you want to check attitudes withoutvisiting the advanced search page, simply put a :) or a :( after thesearch term. So, for positive iPhone reviews, type: iPhone :)
Thanks to PC World.