Using Google Reader As A Twitter Search Engine

Search.Twitter has a long way to go. It doesn’t store data long-term and it isn’t very stable. Google Reader, which relies on that relic of the Web, RSS, provides an alternative to store and search the data flowing into Twitter. Although it may be in vogue to write-off RSS and Readers, I don’t think they are going away anytime soon- in fact, Twitter itself is a sort of RSS: a reverse chronological listing of headlines.

Anyhoo, if you’re interested in conveniently focusing on a select group of Twitter accounts, search terms or hashtags, there’s an app for that: Google Reader. I use hashtags as an example in the presentation below, but any Twitter feed works, including  Twitter Favorites. I’ll share that process and my ideas about the value of Favorites in a future post. Here’s a short vid on how to set it up:

You can also use FriendFeed to store and search through tweets, Google Reader may be more manageable.

Is this helpful? Or are you satisfied with Search.Twitter?