Every so often I come across a tool that will be useful for journalists and others looking for first hand accounts and viewpoints on breaking news stories. Today I came across David Sterry’s Tweet Scan which allows you to search public twitter updates for keywords. The screenshot to the right shows the results for the search term Bhutto.
Registering as a user gets you additional functionality, including the ability to subscribe to specific keyword searches. You can then configure Tweet Scan to send you an email when your chosen keyword(s) appear or you can subscribe to the RSS feed for that search.
Tweet Scan is a lot more than just a clever tool for keeping track of whose talking about, and linking to, your blog – it could be particularly useful for journalists seeking first hand accounts and opinions about breaking news stories.
[Other tools I find useful are Technorati (for blog posts), Chipwrapper (for searching UK headlines) and IceRocket (for searching myspace)]
It’s worth noting that twitter has a “track this keyword or phrase” feature built into it already if you are registered – just type “track [word]”. And the notifications come to your phone…
How is Chipwrapper better than the search in Google News UK?
Oh and for searching blog posts I recommend using http://www.bloglines.com/search too (last time I used it it found stuff Technorati didn’t).