Whether a daily social media user or someone just getting acquainted with social media, you’re no doubt familiar with the concept of real-time search. If not, the definition is simply the ability to view information as soon as it’s composed, with virtually no delay between publication and viewing. Twitter is the best example of real-time search and the first real-time application to gain widespread acceptance. Once a tweet is posted, it’s instantly available for all to view.

If you see an area on Google automatically scrolling, don’t be alarmed. Google is now offering real-time search results as part of its services, not to mention the infamous Google Wave application which is still in invitation-only beta. Microsoft’s Bing has also jumped on the real-time search bandwagon. Facebook purchased real-time search provider FriendFeed last year in their effort to update Facebook’s instant search capabilities.

As real-time search has evolved, application providers have written code for Twitter that capitalizes on the site’s popular photo-sharing capabilities and provides images in real-time.  Simply, it’s a steady stream of images gleaned from every single tweet that publishes an image. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest gripes of retweeting on Twitter is the fact, by default, there has not been an easy “one click” way of retweeting a tweet.  If you find a tweet worthy of being retweeted, you would need to copy the original tweet and paste it into your status box.  Then you also have to put “RT @username” in front of the tweet.  Sounds like an oversight on the earlier development of Twitter, but they are now stepping up to correct this tedious oversight.

Twitter is implementing a retweet function that will make the retweeting process alot easier.  An announcement appeared in the Twitter Blog detailing the initial phase of the project.  Read the rest of this entry »

Awhile back I came across a site, Twittley.com which I reviewed in the article “Twitter + Digg = Twittley“.  The site had just launched, but nonetheless, I really liked the concept.  Some time has passed and I am pleased to say that the site has made some great improvements in not only functionality, but features as well.

A New Look

If you read my previous article about Twittley, you will notice that one of my comments was about the layout of the site.  I had suggested that the site was deserving of a more “web 2.0″ look than it previously had.  Please checkout the before and after screenshots of the layout.  I think most will agree, that the new layout is alot better! Read the rest of this entry »