You probably won’t be surprised to hear that, as a journalist, Twitter is a pretty important tool for me. The links, opinions and little nuggets of information that fly at speed through the Twittersphere can help provide insight as well as tip offs. But you have to be ruthless with who is in your network to avoid becoming overwhelmed by information.
But now Berlin startup Tazaldoo is hoping to make it that bit easier for people like me with what it says is the first context search engine for Twitter. Tame enables you to search the real-time Web for more relevant results, and is aimed at users such as journalists and politicians.
Twitter has become astonishingly important to the digital world – Tazaldoo dubs in “an integral node of a new media ecosystem” – and also makes communication and information collection extremely easy. It’s in organising that endless stream of information that is where the problem lies.
Frederik Fischer, CEO of Tazaldoo, believes that Twitter’s full potential is yet to be exploited, and that the current search options are not good enough. Twitter itself has acknowledged that – revealing earlier this month that it will improve its search function with a real-time human computation engine to identify the context of trending topics quickly to improve results.
Yet Tame, its creators say, has already found a way to achieve the same thing automatically. Once you have connected it to your Twitter account it displays lists of the top ten hashtags, Twitter users and links from the previous 24 hours, either for your own timeline or for a search inquiry. The service is now in open beta with 1,000 users reportedly including journalists, politicians and PR and marketing experts.
The team behind Tame grew out of the Berlin chapter of Hacks/Hackers and includes a mixtures of developers and journalists. At first glance, they seem to have created a product that this particular journalist will find extremely useful. There are plenty of other Twitter search services such as monitter and Twinitor, but it’s in keeping you fully informed within your own carefully-selected network that may well make Tame a success.