Topsy, on the other hand, is unearthing Twitter's illusive history with its latest upgrade that allows users to search tweets at least as far back as May 2008. By comparison, Google's Twitter archives only go as far back as early February, 2010. Advanced search tools and the extra 21 months of coverage are a huge advantage for Topsy, but there are still 2 years of preceding tweets locked up on Twitter's servers.

News of Topsy's enhanced Twitter search functionality comes from Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, who recently took the service for a test drive. His results were so-so when attempting to use Topsy to locate Ashton Kutcher's first tweet, and my brief experience with it has been similarly mediocre.

Looking Back, Something's Missing

In November of 2008, Twitter exploded with information surrounding the Mumbai terrorist bombings. Using Topsy's advanced search, I searched for "Mumbai" within a 5-day range surrounding the attacks, but only about 28 results were found. By comparison, http://search.twitter.com/ turns up roughly that many tweets about Mumbai in just the last 20 minutes.

A search even further back in Topsy's Twitter history to the summer of 2008 during the California wildfires turns up a good amount of tweets, but only those with links. The company says that results from a time-specific search (especially those at the earliest dates of its archive, it seems) are just "highlights" of the tweets from that period.

Topsy's real strength as a search engine comes from its ability to derive relevancy from search results, and thus its Twitter efforts are more focused on these goals as well. Providing a full reverse chronology was not their primary goal, but the company says they are working on improving this side of search for a future release.

It appears that Topsy's Twitter archive has some improving to do before it can really be put to use for searching our 140-character past. It's a bit buggy right now, but a few feature tweaks and upgrades to the archive's data could make Topsy a valuable research asset in the near future. That is until Twitter rolls out its own solution, potentially destroying (or perhaps acquiring) Topsy's hopes and dreams.

The self-described "Twitter-based social deals search engine site" does precisely that

CheapTweet allows its users to search for deals by category and keyword and will customize the stream of tweets according to their votes and Twitter conversations. They can also up and down vote tweets, like they've become accustomed to on sites like Reddit, Digg or Google Moderator. The "DealStream", which contains a user's customized results, can also be read as an RSS feed.

As CEO Hayes Davis points out in a press release, CheapTweet is poised to help distinguish the good from the bad as more and more companies prepare to monetize through Twitter.

"Online channels will only become more cluttered, as social networks start to monetize with ads," said Davis. "CheapTweet's service makes it easier for shoppers to sort through the clutter online and shop more effectively."

We've not only heard a number of rumors and anonymous tips on what the Twitter ad platform will look like, but other companies like 140 Proof have begun to enter the market, bringing tweet-like ads to third party clients. This doesn't even account for the vast number of small businesses taking advantage of the service to pass out Web-only deals and coupons.

With all of these ads, CheapTweet will help weed out the bad apples. Its users down vote nefarious tweets, the algorithm cuts out spam using a form of natural language processing and the multiple tweets about the same deal are combined to cut down on the noise.

We think that a service like CheapTweet has found a perfect niche and its the ideal service to recommend to your less technically-savvy relatives, as well as those just looking for a deal. Like we said, searching for online deals can put you in some dangerous waters and this service helps clear out some of the flotsam and jetsam.

What Ellerdale is now doing with Twitter's 50 million tweets per day is definitely interesting - the service uses an intelligent data-parsing engine to analyze the context of tweets and the links they contain and combines that with other data sources like RSS feeds and Wikipedia to create a real-time search engine and trends tracker that provides more than just a list of tweets - it provides an understanding of the world's conversations.

You can click through on any of the topics or sub-topics to learn more about what's being discussed. Although Ellerdale's best feature is its ability to highlight these sorts of trends, you can also use it to search the real-time web for your own keywords. Here, unlike Twitter's own search engine, Ellerdale won't just return a simple list of tweets in response to a query.

Instead, any topical page on Ellerdale returns an incredible amount of data. There are summaries provided from sources like Wikipedia, Freebase (an online semantic database), New York Times' people search and more. Related topics, in the form of thumbnail images, are listed above the live-updating message stream on every topic's main page. To the right, a graph charts that keyword's popularity over time and you can manipulate this to show you data from the past hour, day, week or month. Also to the right is a list of top articles from around the web, ranked by how many times they've been mentioned on Twitter. That article list can even be subscribed to via an included RSS feed.

And let's not forget the main dish - the live-updating stream of tweets. The message stream shows who tweeted what, when and what Twitter client they used to do so, which is the same information you would see on Twitter.com. However, where Twitter's own homepage and search results pages stay put until you refresh them, this message stream moves in real-time as tweets come in. If it goes too fast for you (something that's a real possibility when you watch a currently hot trend), you can pause the stream with a click of a button.

For data hounds, search results like these are tantalizing to say the least. And this engine is now just one of many that has access to Twitter's entire stream of tweets. The other new Twitter partners are also search and discovery services, including Collecta, Kosmix, Scoopler, twazzup, CrowdEye, and Chainn Search, all of which parse the Twitter data feed in their own way. Is any one better than another? That's hard to say. Each has their own niche, site design and unique features which allow them to appeal to select groups of searchers. Ellerdale is interesting because of its semantic capabilities, but it's not the only one to offer those. Kosmix, for example, has been developing their semantic-based news portal for the last three years.

The best part about all these new partnerships is that we're about to see an entirely new way to search the web emerge. For quick real-time results, there will always be the major search engines and their more basic lists of tweets, but for true data analysis, we now have incredible new options like Ellerdale and all the others.

Luckily the Web offers many ways to gather information on a topic and the conversation around that particular topic or product, in real-time. In fact we are spoiled, even overwhelmed, with free listening tools.

Search Your Product, Service or Topic Using Twitter Search

Most of us know how to use Twitter to follow, tweet, retweet, @reply and direct message our friends and colleagues. However, not many of us employ Twitter as a research tool. Here is how:

1. Go to search.twitter.com
2. Type in keywords in relation to your product, service or topic. For example: ReadWriteWeb, RWW, @RWW, #RWW.
3. Read the conversation.

Yes, it really is that easy to locate people that are talking about your product or market of interest. These tweets can be really very positive, but also so revealing it hurts. But don't take them personally, take action and you will be rewarded.

Use Hashtags

You may see that people are talking about a topic using a particular hashtag. That's twitter-speak for a pound sign followed by a word. Twitters use them to identify tweets that have a similar topic. For example, when I search for RWW on Twitter search, it gives me results for all the people that have tweeted using #RWW.

Where do hashtags come from? People and companies just make them up so they can easily follow particular conversations. Hashtags are basically a hack for the search system to easily find everything on a particular subject. I am not sure if a ReadWriteWeb staff member was the first person to use the #RWW hashtag, but I know it is out there and being used, so it is one of the things I search for when listening to what people are saying.

Here's a real-world example of how hashtags can be used to instantly identify and solve problems. We just launched the ReadWriteWeb iPhone Application . Within minutes of tweeting about the application and sharing the download link, we were able to identify a few bugs right off the bat that our developer Nicolas Toopia was able to resolve.

Progressing to a Desktop Application For Market Monitoring

Once you are comfortable searching for your product or service, you may want to progress to monitoring your market using a desktop Twitter application. Desktop applications make it easier to monitor your product as you can create many custom filtered conversation streams and watch them all at once, as opposed to watching one stream at a time on twitter.com. For example I use TweetDeck. It allows me to easily set up several streams that I want to monitor. Other desktop clients like Seesmic Desktop and PeopleBrowsr offer similar options.

Create Custom Filtered Views of the Conversation

Setting up canned searches: You can set up a canned search so you can watch the ongoing stream of conversation around your product or service. Use the search function of your desktop client and search for your favorite search terms. TweetDeck, for instance, immediately sets up a conversation stream in a column for you to view. In one stream I have created a canned search for @RWW. This allows me to continuously watch what people are saying about ReadWriteWeb, what they are tweeting and retweeting and answer any questions or issues someone may have.

Setting up groups: I have also set up a group list of the RWW team by simply selecting their @names from a list so I can see only what the RWW team is saying on Twitter. This is another function that sits at the very top of the screen in Tweetdeck. You can also follow Twitter Lists in TweetDeck.

Building Community and Learning from the Twittersphere

The true power of Twitter is realized when you start to use search, groups and conversation tools to build community, networks and identify expertise around your product, service or learn about a particular topic of interest. Let's say I am really interested in dressage riding (which I am). I go to search.twitter.com and use keywords to find people that are talking about dressage, or I go to a list service like Listorious. I may follow both the list someone has created on Listorious, as well as create my own lists and perhaps a canned search for various words in my Twitter client. Tracking all of these conversations, I can very quickly get up to speed on top dressage tweeters. When I am feeling brave, I can engage in the conversation. If I am active enough, I will slowly build relationships and useful networks, possibly around the globe.

Warning: These services are addictive!

Once you become a Twitter addict, and you get used to customer and market information in real-time, you will find it very difficult to go back to your old ways of marketing. In the future, I'll discuss how to use more listening and analysis tools such as notification tools. However, once you get started and realize how easy all of this listening, information gathering and engagement is, I have no doubt you will start searching for and discovering new tools on your own.

Photo credit: Jean Scheijen

If you are interested in following all the marketers in Portland, OR, for example, you can do so with just one click - or you select those users who seem to be the most interesting ones by examining their follower numbers and their latest tweets.

LocaFollow uses OAuth to connect to Twitter and this makes it easy to bulk-follow all the selected users with just one click.

Hopefully, once Twitter expands its lists feature, services like LocaFollow will also make it easy for users to immediately create new lists based on their selections. After all, the more users you follow, the more useful these lists become.

There are, of course, other services that allow you to discover local Twitter users. LocalTweeps, for example, lets you discover local Twitter users, but this service doesn't allow you to search for users with specific interests. The same is true for similar services like NearbyTweets or TwitterLocal. TweepSearch makes it easy to search through users' bios, but it doesn't have LocaFollow's focus on finding local users.

Become a Fan

One feature that makes Tweetmi unique is that it gives users the option to become 'fans' of a certain topic. While this is definitely an interesting concept, users actually have to send out a tweet about the fact that they are now fans of 'RWW' or 'Follow Friday,' which somehwat limits the usefulness of this feature.

Another feature we liked is that the application can show you a list of all the Twitter users who tweeted a popular link. Like most Twitter search engines, Tweemi displays a list of the most popular links about a topic in a sidebar.

Given that there are already numerous Twitter search engines and more comprehensive real-time search engines like OneRiot on the market, Tweetmi will probably have a bit of a struggle to attract a dedicated user base. It is however, a perfectly capable Twitter search engine that offers all the typical features you would expect and definitely worth a try.

Microsoft started to integrate some Twitter search results with the main Bing search engine a few weeks ago, but these were only from very popular Twitter users. Interestingly, BingTweets will run on its own Bingtweets.com domain, and, as far as we can see, isn't linked to from the main Bing site. For now, it's a completely separate entity, but chances are that Microsoft is already experimenting with other ways to incorporate more Twitter search results into Bing.

This is Federated Media's second Twitter project together with Microsoft. The first was the launch of ExecTweets, a site that allowed users to find, follow, and engage business executives on Twitter.

Not Quite A Fusion of Twitter and Bing

Bingtweets looks like an interesting project, but while its tagline is "Fusing Twitter Trends with Bing Insights," the reality is that it displays a Twitter feed next to Bing's search results and there is no real fusion between the two.

We do like, however, that Microsoft stressed overall trends on Twitter and allows users to quickly get a grasp on what a trending topic is about. After all, Bing's results often display information about current news events like the earthquake in New Zealand today, for example. Breaking these trends down by popular terms, people, places, and products is also quite nice, and we are not aware of any other Twitter search engine that currently does this. We also like the ability to share results directly on Twitter through an oversized form at the top of the page.

Overall, this is an interesting effort, though we are not sure that Bingtweets currently offers enough value to differentiate itself from other Twitter search engines and memetrackers like Twazzup or Tweetmeme.

DailyRT also allows you to save your searches, which is especially useful if you regularly search for the same terms.

One problem we noticed, though, was that dailyRT does not support the Boolean searches (AND, OR, etc.) that Twitter's own search engine offers. This takes at least some of the usefulness out of the service's advanced search features. (Update: DailyRT's Chris Williams tells us that Boolean searches are coming tonight).

We'd love to see a service that, in addition to dailyRT's advanced search features, would also add some of the personalization that a custom memetracker like MicroPlaza offers. But, for now, we'll have to do with dailyRT's advance search which is already a great step forward.

One of the most interesting aspects of Twazzup is that it also displays a list of the most authoritative Twitter users who have tweeted about a given subject. This should allow Twazzup's users to quickly find interesting users who might be worth following.

In addition, Twazzup also allows you to easily restrict your searches through lists of related keywords and sub-trends.

Of course, Twazzup is entering into a rather crowded market. Oneriot, for example, just launched an alternative Twitter search engine that focuses on links, and services like MicroPlaza are trying to give users personalized Twitter meme trackers.

Thanks to its clever mix of real-time search and top-tweets, however, Twazzup offers a lot of functions that its competitors can't currently match. It would be great if we could also specify persistent searches on Twazzup, and some of the top tweets and related photos sometimes seem a bit off, but for a first public release, Twazzup already provides a lot of functionality and the team will surely improve upon this in the future.

Using TwitterMass couldn't be easier: you simply set up a keyword search and TwitterMass will automatically follow every user who uses this keyword.

The twist here is that you can also set a 'timer.' After a set number of days, TwitterMass will check if those users it added followed you back, and if they didn't, then TwitterMass will automatically unfollow them.

In the near future, TwitterMass will also provide its users with detailed statistics, the ability to bulk upload user lists, and the ability to 'clone' a Twitter account, which, we assume, means you could automatically follow every user who is currently following @rww, for example.

Because these new 'relationships' are built on mutual interests, TwitterMass should, at least in theory, be a better way to extend your Twitter network than just blindly auto-following users who subscribe to your feed.

There are, of course, other Twitter auto-follow tools like SocialToo and Twollow (though SocialToo charges $5 for this feature ), but few can rival TwitterMass' feature set, especially once TwitterMass activates its stats features.

TwitterMass describes itself as a "hyper networking tool for Twitter," and it will surely stir up some interesting discussions about the nature of Twitter as a social networking and marketing tool. Judging from our own tests, however, TwitterMass will definitely help you to increase the number of people who follow you on Twitter.

Thanks to Marjolein Hoekstra (@cleverclogs) for alerting us to this new service, and, as you would expect, you can also find TwitterMass' developer Jonathan Nelson on Twitter (there is also an official, though oddly spelled, TwitterMass Twitter account here).

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Rick Turoczy, Sean Ammirati, Lidija Davis and Phil Glockner.

The latest version of TweetDeck has become somewhat infamous for how much memory it often eats up after a few hours of continuous usage. Nambu, on the other hand, keeps a relatively low footprint. Just like TweetDeck, Nambu features the ability to create groups (which is really the only way to keep up if you follow a large number of users) and separate columns for specific searches.

Nambu also features a number of other features that set it apart from its competitors. You can, for example, translate any tweet into English with a simple keyboard shortcut, and you can easily add users to a group from a very straightforward right-click menu. Nambu can also auto-complete the names of users you follow when you write a new message. For real power-users, Nambu also supports more than one Twitter account, and for URL-shortening, it currently defaults to tr.im, which was developed by the Nambu team.

Unlike TweetDeck, however, Nambu doesn't feature integration with a lot of third-party applications like StockTwits, and it doesn't support Facebook yet. Looking forward, however, the team plans to enable support for FriendFeed, identi.ca, and Ping.fm in the near future.

Three Views

While Nambu most closely resembles TweetDeck, the application also features two other views as well. The first resembles a traditional, one-column Twitter client like Twhirl, while the second looks a lot like the interface for EventBox, which we reviewed last week, and which sports a sidebar with all your groups and persistent searches.

Twitter Threads

One of the most interesting features of Nambu is that it automatically organizes your conversations into threads. It will also do this for conversations that you don't participate in, but you have to be subscribed to both sides of the conversation.

Still in Beta

Of course, Nambu is still in its early beta phase, so you can expect things to break now and then. The development team, however, is issuing updates regularly and development is clearly moving ahead swiftly. There are obviously still some bugs in the application, and the latest update, for example, seems to take up more memory than the previous release.

Nambu also offers an iPhone application, and while it's a decent enough mobile Twitter client, we would recommend other options like Twitfone or Tweetie over Nambu on the iPhone platform.

On the Mac desktop, few applications can currently rival Nambu's feature set, so if you already like TweetDeck, and if you are on a Mac, then Nambu is definitely worth a try.

Two common ways that have developed are link tracking and meme tracking. In the first case, it's fairly simple - just take all the URLs posted on Twitter, uncompress them if necessary, add up the uniques, and sort them by popularity. But today we are going to focus on the latter case, services that look for a specific keyword, topic, or hashtag (all falling under the fuzzy category of meme or viral idea) and cluster related tweets together.

There are two types of topic trackers out there: List and waterfall. The first category (and first four on our list) are basically search engines for Twitter keywords, perhaps with a little extra thrown in. The second category is very much as it sounds - real-time Twitter results that flow down the screen like a waterfall.

Tweetizen

Tweetizen (sounds like citizen) is a relatively new discovery that was brought to my attention via a comment on my Tinker post. Tweetizen has a lot of power hidden behind its simple facade. There are two main types of groups that you can create, friends and interests. Friend groups are just that: friend groups. Add a bunch of your Twitter friends' nicknames here and generate an instant stream with just their updates. Very nice!

Interest groups are more complex, they are similar to, but more powerful (in some ways) than Tinker, which we covered here. You can start out by giving your new group a name, and then choose any combinations of keywords to search for. The real power here is anything you enter here gets passed directly through to the Twitter search API. So, if you want to search for #followfriday, but only see tweets including the word 'Saturday', use Saturday as your search term, and #followfriday as your tag term. Then, go to advanced options and select 'use all of these tags & text'. You can also remove keywords from your search results by putting a minus (-) in front of the term. As a demonstration, I constructed this simple group as an example: FollowFriday Saturday. I'll leave experimenting with other Twitter search terms (like from:) as an exercise for the reader to try.

Some other great features of Tweetizen are; the ability to embed groups on external web pages, using Twitter OAuth to be able to directly create or reply to tweets in a group you've made, a live refresh option, and extra filtering options to remove tweets without URLs and retweets.

Twitscoop

Twitscoop is a clever site that shows a constantly-updating cloud of popular terms (although not necessarily hashtags) that you can click on to get some more details. You can also grab a widget that creates a new cloud every time it is refreshed. Finally, there is trend tracking that gives you a constantly-refreshing list based on username, tag or keyword, plus a little graph on the popularity of the search term over time. An expanded view of search results is also available, like this one.

TweetChannel

TweetChannel is a very clean site that is similar to Tinker in that it attempts to link a user's login with certain hashtag topics. In order to create your own channel, you must provide your Twitter login and password, which causes you to automatically start following a Twitter user @tweet_channel. This is the listener account for the service. Once logged in, you can create your own hashtag-based channel and any subsequent tweets you send out with that hashtag will show up in TweetChannel, under that channel. You can then grab an RSS feed of anything from that channel (or any other channel registered in the service). For example, you can check out the #sandbox channel.

Tweetscan

Tweetscan is the only application in this round-up with a subscription fee. But after we tell you some of its features, you may find subscribing worthwhile. Its unassuming front page offers a trending topic cloud that you can click on to bring up a quick search result, or you can use the search bar. Once search results are up, you will notice some unusual refinements; first is choice of service! Yes, Tweetscan supports identi.ca. You can also narrow results by user, and grab an RSS feed of any search, even tweet your custom search link. Example #followfriday search here.

Additionally, Tweetscan offers the paying customer the ability to download any search result as a CSV (comma separated value) file, suitable for import into a spreadsheet or database application, as well as sending regular search result updates via email. Also, Tweetscan has a separate portal specifically for searching user profiles! We are actually fairly impressed with this tool, it is trying to bring more to the table in exchange for a small subscription fee.

Twistori

Twistori (not to be confused with Twistory, which lets you add tweets to a calendar) is one of the original Twitter meme waterfalls. It is based on an infographic art project by Jonathan Harris called We Feel Fine, and its mission is very straightforward: You can choose from 6 verbs that show up quite commonly on Twitter, and once chosen, you get a reverse waterfall highlighting recent, anonymous tweets containing a personal use of that verb. Very zen and relaxing, but more art that function.

Extra features include a mac screensaver version and a custom mac application.

Twitterfall

Twitterfall is basically where twitterers go after they watch Twistori for a while and want a tool they can use to make their own custom waterfalls. Twitterfall supports searching for keywords and hashtags, and will support additional search parameters like the minus to exclude terms (mentioned above) and the from: operator to limit tweets from a single account. You can see my FollowFriday Saturday example here.

All the parameters for your waterfall experience are adjustable, from the background color theme to the appearance speed of new tweets. You can log in via Twitter OAuth (although that didn't work for me, it falls back to a traditional login prompt) in order to perform operations on tweets in the waterfall, such as replying and retweeting. The waterfall helpfully pauses if you hover over a tweet. You can limit search results to a specific geographic region.

There are also widgets for the Mac and Windows desktop but no javascript embed or RSS output, which is unfortunate. Although, you can save your custom searches if you log in.

Monitter

Monitter takes the Twitterfall concept a step further by giving you not one but three fully-customizable keyword search waterfalls that are constantly updated with recent tweets. Each search, like with Tweetizen and Twitterfall, is passed directly to the search API so you can add advanced parameters to fine-tune your results. There is also support for regional tweets, although it looks like imposing a region affects every column, which may be overkill.

Monitter pipes Twitter search results directly back out into the columns in a waterfall format. Oddly, the RSS icons link directly to Twitter search query results. Also, there doesn't seem to be any way of sharing columns with other people. I did discover though that apparently the session is saved in a cookie so, you can feel safe leaving the page and returning to it later.

Extras include the ability to add or remove columns and a customizable jquery widget that, with a bit of PHP programming skill, you can add to your blog's web page.

A final note we would like to mention about Monitter: It seems to like Chrome a lot more than Firefox. It may just be my setup, but as a warning, your mileage may vary.

Honorable Mentions

There are a number of very similar web apps, which I am calling "Twitter search front-ends," that all replicate the same functionality in slightly different ways:

1. Twendz: Created by marketing firm Waggener Edstrom, Twendz is just a nice, clean Twitter search utility that supports a waterfall result and advanced search term constructions. Here is an example Followfriday search.
2. Tweetzi: No affiliation or creator name attached to this search, but it has the distinction of using the biggest Courier font we've ever seen plus the ability to filter by mood. Good stuff. Example search here.
3. Twemes: Twemes is one of the few web sites we looked at that doesn't seem to use the Twitter search API directly. Unfortunately, as a result it is extremely slow on certain searches. It does have a couple of unusual features but the interface and responsiveness get in the way of this being a useful tool.

Finally, we would like to give a shout out to Birdsall's Massive Twitter Sites & Tools Directory page that made finding these apps much less of a chore than it could have been.

Twitter Client

For most users, the most important part of EventBox is probably its Twitter client, and the good news is that this is also one of its strongest aspects though it does have its flaws. For example, you can easily create persistent searches and even though it is a bit cumbersome, you can also create groups within Eventbox's Twitter client. To do so, you have to set up a folder by right-clicking on the Twitter icon, and then you can drag and drop different users or searches into this folder.

Sadly, however, EventBox doesn't seem to feature any support for URL-shorteners, which might be a deal-breaker for a lot of users. Correction: EventBox does support URL-shorteners - the feature is just a bit hidden in the General settings. EventBox also only gives you limited control over how often it pings Twitter's API.

Other Services

The Facebook client works like you would expect it to, with support for photo uploads and status updates, and the Google Reader integration also works well, as long as you don't subscribe to too many feeds. Our standard Google Reader account, with far more than 1,000 feeds, crashed the application.

In many ways, EventBox is very similar to Skimmer, which we reviewed a few weeks ago, and which, since then, has been updated with a version that addressed a lot of our issues with the original release, but the two programs feature support for different services.

Get it Free from MacHeist

Overall, Eventbox is a pretty interesting social media desktop client. It would be great if it supported a few more features, such as easier group creation for Twitter, or the ability to sort stories in Reddit (and maybe support for Digg), but it is definitely worth checking out if you are a Mac user.

Normally, the application costs $15 after a free 14-day trial, but you can currently download a free version of EventBox from MacHeist. It is important to note, though, that while the MacHeist version is available for free without any limitations, any updates to the app that you initiate will start the 14-day shareware countdown.

While you are there, also have a look at the MacHeist bundle that is currently available on MacHeist for $39. It features a number of interesting Mac applications, and 25% of every sale goes to charity. Also, after MacHeist reaches $400,000 in sales, a number of new applications will become available as part of the bundle.

On the search results page, OneRiot emphasizes links, though you can also click on a small link at the bottom of each result to see the tweets that included this link. From there, you can also reply to a tweet. If OneRiot finds new tweets that fit your search, it will automatically prompt you to reload the page.

To get data about current trends on Twitter, OneRiot uses both Twitter's own API, as well as data it gathers from users who have installed OneRiot's own toolbar in their browsers.

Looking for Feedback

As OneRiot's GM Tobias Peggs told us yesterday, the company decided to test its new Twitter search feature on a separate page for now (twitter.oneriot.com), in order to get feedback from customers.

We, for one, would like to see the ability to organize results by how many users have linked to a certain page, for example. It would also be nice if OneRiot gave us the option to search for conversations around a specific link by copying and pasting a URL into OneRiot's search box.

Overall, we like OneRiot's approach to searching Twitter. In some ways, it is similar to MicroPlaza's search functionality, though OneRiot's results focus more on the real-time experience.

Clearly, adding search - and adding persistent searches in the sidebar especially - is a way for Twitter to get users to come back to their homepages regularly. For Twitter's most active users, the current homepage simply doesn't offer enough of the features they are used to from their desktop clients. However, if Twitter wants to monetize its service through advertising on its site (and the small ads that started to appear on the site in the last few weeks make us believe that this is the way Twitter is planning to go), it will have to give users a reason to come back to its site.

Twitter has also clearly recognized the real value of its service, besides offering a way for users to communicate, is in its real-time search.

As of now, Twitter is only testing this new homepage with a select number of users. The company will test the current iteration of the homepage with these users and then roll these features out to all users "as soon as possible" - assuming, of course, that the Twitter team doesn't decide to go back to the drawing board again.