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RSSNow before you get all fired up and click away to something else thinking this is just another Twitter article, at least take the time to go read about the Ketchum/Fedex debacle and heed the moral of that story. If you are interested in how Twitter is replacing search, at least for this writer, then stick around.
Twitter For Local Search
I have begun to use Twitter and other-third party Twitter tools in place of traditional search for a number of things. I was recently at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. It was packed, there were multiple sessions, events and parties happening simultaneously, and it was impossible to keep track of where people where and what the hot part was. Impossible, that is, without Twitter. I set up a custom search for #asw09 that fed all tweets regarding the conference to my iPhone in real time. Ten seconds of screen scrolling later, I knew exactly where to go and how to get there. That was the passive method -- the active mode, of course, is to tweet "Where is everybody? #asw09."
The beauty of all this is that it reaches a community that is multiple times larger than your contact list in your phone. In fact, I used Twitter for at least 50% of my digital communications at the conference.
Recently a Twitter user I follow tweeted that he was in Seattle and jonesin' for some good sushi, but it was 1 a.m. He had already exhausted Yelp trying to find an open restaurant -- but within three minutes of his tweet, he had several suggestions from locals on places to go that were still open and close to his location. Twitter trumped every single local search service that night.
Twitter For Shopping And Reviews
Last year I was speaking at Shop.org in Las Vegas. I had waited too long to book my room and get the discounted conference rate. Enter search.twitter.com or www.whostalkin.com or www.twingly.com. A few combinations of hotel name plus "discount," "promotion," "code," and "sale" produced a Web promotion code that resulted in a better rate than the conference was offering.
Sure you can use Yahoo, Live, or even Google for that search -- but sifting through the results takes much longer. Twitter search is real time in reverse chronological order. You know right away how fresh that sale code is immediately. Needless to say, I check Twitter before I buy anything online these days. I also follow Twitter accounts like @delloutlet and @VirginAmerica.
Product and company reviews are also a snap to find and address what is happening today, not last month or last year. We have yet to hear of someone gaming Twitter for reviews as Belkin did when it posted a bunch of fake 5-star reviews at Amazon this month.
Twitter For News
I used to scan headlines in an RSS reader for my news, but I haven't fired up my news reader in a long time. I simply keep Twitter open on a second monitor and from time to time scan the public timeline, so it's easy to spot breaking news very quickly. I knew about the US Airways flight landing in the Hudson within minutes. I knew that the head of Merrill Lynch spent $1.2 million decorating his office and no longer works there.
These are the things I like to know; my news is largely filtered based on the people I've chosen to follow, like @richsanchezcnn, @weridnews and @mediapost.
My name is Todd Friesen and I'm a Twaddict -- and I'm OK with that.
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@nicolegalletta @sojoinc
If your vices also include over-spending, you can use another Twitter tool called www.Tweetwhatyouspend.com to help find the answer to that elusive question; "what happens to my money between trips to the ATM?"
Great article, keep up the good work!
@aressidi on Twitter
I found Twitter especially useful while watching the presidential debates. While the CNN/Facebook collaboration was useful, Twitterers had been already doing this!
I am wondering if journalists/reporters for various publications will be using Twitter more for story leads and ideas? I hope so! It could be a mutually beneficial relationship for them and the pitchers!
I've not yet seen any to bad but I have un-followed a few people who were pitching me on their products.
The basic rule of Twitter is know your friends so that you can trust your friends and don't be afraid to stop following someone if their Tweets are not for you.