Oneupweb Reviews: Topsy’s New Features
Billing itself as a “real-time search engine,” Topsy recently added a list of new features driven largely by its archival of old tweets. Topsy founders say they see the value in storing tweets because links contained within these posts are still interesting to users. The engine’s latest tools aim to keep the most “influential” of these messages on top.
Let’s look at “Top Links,” “Twitter Trackbacks” and advanced query syntax, the three newest improvements made by Topsy.
Purpose: Provide users with the top 100, 1K and 5K links being reposted (in Twitter speak this is called a retweet).
How it works: Links move up a category when the total influence for the tweet increases. In what is essentially a popularity contest, Topsy deems a small percentage of users “highly influential” or “influential” based on how often these people are cited in tweets. These influential people need to retweet your message for your link to appear in Top Links.
Does it add value?
At first glance this feature looks a little like Digg in its organization of news stories by popularity. Mixed in with articles from Mashable, TechCrunch and the New York Times, however, you’ll find links to YouTube video and even birthday wishes.
Top Links could give users an additional reason to check out the site and root for their favorite retweeted link. But you can’t vote on Topsy for your favorite link. In fact, you can’t even retweet your favorite link like you can from competitor search engine Scoopler. Instead, Top Links provides an additional layer of filtering that lets users quickly refine their search for popular links. This is different than competitor engines – like One Riot and Twitter Search – that offer general trends in the form of word clouds, which lead to messages that may or may not contain links.
ADVANCED QUERY SYNTAX
Purpose: Search retweeted links by username, domain, subdomain, or sections within a specific domain.
How it works: You’re limiting search results by using syntax that is similar to what you might use in Google. For example, you can search the content of the Oneupweb site in Google using the syntax “site: oneupweb.com.” The same applies in Topsy, only you’re searching solely through retweeted links. Read Topsy’s blog post for the all the new syntax and some good examples of how to use it.
Does it add value?
Without question these new search features provide more in-depth results that deepen the user’s experience with Topsy. The advanced syntax lets users efficiently comb through retweeted links faster than if you were to use Twitter’s advanced search form. Choosing too many search parameters crashed the Twitter Search site when I looked for the term “online marketing” in “links.”
Twitter’s advanced search form does offer a few more options, including allowing users to search by attitude and place. You also aren’t restricted solely to searching within retweeted links.
TWITTER TRACKBACKS BOOKMARKLET
Purpose: Discover which blog posts or other web pages are receiving twitter trackbacks.
How it works: Use the Topsy’s Trackback Bookmarklet, or type http://www.topsy.com/tb/ in your browser, to see who’s tweeting about the page your currently viewing.
Does it add value?
The bookmarklet satisfies any curiosity you have about which of Topsy’s influential users are retweeting a page. It also provides additional shortened links for that web page and lets you see additional popular pages from that site. Some may find this information interesting, while others have more sophisticated tools for tracking.
Overall, these tools simplify a user’s search for popular Twitter links. And I have to admit that Top Links is much more interesting than the trending information you would normally find on Twitter Search.
Even if you dislike that Topsy is keeping old Twitter posts, these new tools further distinguish the search engine from its competitors such as One Riot, Scoopler and even Twitter Search.
Oneupweb Reviews: Oneup Thumbs-Up! (If all you care about are retweeted links, then you’ll love these new features.)
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