NAR Newsletter - Twitter View

Ever since I started using Twitter, I have been interested in the kind of information that you can glean from the mass of tweets send people every day. Given the growing number of Twitter users (and sure to grow even more quickly, now that it has been adopted by the likes of Oprah), Twitter can be a great source of all kinds of information. Companies are using Twitter information to learn in real time what people think of their products, as reported in this NY Times article.

And there are many tools out there that can take Twitter data and turn it into valuable information you can use. One example is TweetStats. TweetStats gives basic information about trends on Twitter, what the hottest topics are right now, as well as information about a specific Twitter feed's trends. Another, more humorous analyzer is Cursebird, which tracks the use of swearing on Twitter, and can give a Twitter user a swearing score from 0 (Lame) to 100 (George Carlin Wannabe).

Twitter's search is a good place to start if you want to start tracking Twitter trends yourself. Just type in the search terms you wish to track and a results page will appear. Using a hash(#) tag can help your search for tweets relating to specific topics, for instance, if you want to see what people are saying about REALTORS, just search for ‘#realtor' and see what the people are saying about REALTORS. Want to know how panicked or calm people are about swine flu, use a search for ‘#swineflu' and watch take a look at the collective mood of the Twitter community. You can also use the advanced search feature to refine your search by criteria such as location, date and mood.

Another great tool is TweetDeck, a multi-platform Twitter client. Not only is it a great Twitter client for posting and reading the people you follow, it also allows you to create tabs based on Twitter searches, so you can see the results of several searches at once.

As increasing numbers of people use Twitter and as more and more people start digging into Twitter data, we will see some great tools that can make use of all that data. For instance, you could have a tool that tracks how people feel about the housing market in a given geographic area, or the popular reaction to a given news announcement over time. The best killer app for Twitter trending is likely to be something no one has even thought of yet.

Andrew Tillman
atillman@realtors.org