OneRiot Launches Alternative Twitter Search Engine

by editor on Apr.02, 2009, under ReadWriteWeb

OneRiot, a relatively new real-time search engine, launched a new Twitter search engine this morning that takes a very different approach to Twitter search from similar ventures we have seen lately. Instead of surfacing specific tweets, OneRiot focuses on shared links instead of just doing a keyword search on Twitter. While Twitter’s own search, for example, will show you the conversation around the leaked copy of Wolverine, OneRiot will actually find the latest shared links about this topic on Twitter.

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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.

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