Researching people on Twitter is very limited – users have to settle for reading a 160 character bio, some recent tweets, and one link to another site. Twitter has proven to be an excellent medium for discovering new contacts, but often the information there isn’t enough. So, do you turn to Google and wade through an ocean of results? Look up their LinkedIn bio, blog, company website, or…?

With qwerly, one can simply type in a Twitter username, and the site aggregates all related social profiles tied to the account. It will even include recent activity for the profiles, including recent tweets and Plancast posts.

There are similar services for aggregating social profile info about users (Gist, Rapportive), but these services are for people you are already in contact with (mostly via email). With Qwerly, you just need to visit their site and type in a Twitter username.

What tools do you use to discover people on Twitter? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.

by Michelle Lentz

Yesterday, Facebook announced a new real-time updating feature in your news feed. Similar to how Twitter Search displays recent additions, Facebook will display a link under your status field: “Show X New Posts.” If you click the link, you’ll free the new updates. So while it’s not as engaging (or distracting) as FriendFeed’s live updating of the stream, it is more controlled.

I like the idea of being able to see when there are new updates, without having to continually check the page or feel like I’ve missed something (as I do with FriendFeed). Facebook is rolling the new update out gradually, whatever that means.

What do you think of real-time feeds on Facebook?

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

Last Thursday, Twitter rolled out the new Search features to everyone. While my professional account was in the beta, my personal account has now caught up and I have the features on both accounts. I first blogged about the integrated search in February. Those changes were refined and rolled out to beta users throughout March and April. Now, everyone is reaping the benefit of the beta period.

If you only use a desktop or mobile app, it’s worth taking a few minutes to log into Twitter.com and explore the new features. Search and trends are now built into the left column. Click any trend and the results appear on your Twitter.com page.

Search works the same way. Instead of heading out to search.twitter.com, you can search and view results from within your Twitter profile.  Searches can also be saved, allowing to you basically track your own trending topics.

Saved Searches, Trending Topics, and Following are now collapsible so that you control how much information you see.

Basically, all of those great features you love so much in Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop are now available directly from Twitter.com. What do you think of the new roll-out?

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

About a month ago, I posted that Twitter had officially added search and trends. Well, they’ve added them again, in that they’ve moved them. According to the Twitter blog,

A few weeks ago we started testing Twitter Search in the web interface for a subset of folks. We had the search box way up near the top of the page and the results on a separate page. It turns out that’s not the awesome way to do it. The best way to experience Twitter Search is when it’s a natural part of your normal Twitter experience.

I’d have to agree. Now, the Search box is in my right-hand column with Trends underneath. In this screen capture, I did a search on social media. Instead of going to a new page, my search now shows up right on my Twitter.com home page. Much more seamless than last month’s design, where I was taken to a new page of search results. Settings and Profile have both been moved back to the top of the screen, which is good.

Interestingly, you can also save the search. That’s a great feature, especially if you reference the same search repeatedly. (Maybe you’re tracking your brand.) However, once you save a search, I can’t figure out how to access it again. It’s supposed to be permanently in my sidebar, but that didn’t seem to stick. Ah, the joys of beta.

This newest redesign is in beta for a subset of users. Once Twitter gets some feedback, it may or may not roll it out to everyone.

Any thoughts on the newest changes?

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Blogs: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about Twitter giving new search features to beta users. Well, the features are apparently out of beta, as Twitter is rolling out its latest user interface changes today. Refresh your Twitter.com page to see if they’ve arrived on your account yet.

At the top are two new menu options. Click Trends to see what’s trending right now on Twitter. Each of the trend keywords is a hyperlink to view the real-time discussion. As you can see,  #followfriday is currently the trending topic.

There’s also a new Search box. This is different from Find People, where you can search for friends. This Search box finally integrates search.twitter.com into the UI. Type in a topic and you can access the real-time conversation.

Have you been updated yet? What do you think of the changes?

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Blogs: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

FINALLY!

How many times have you clicked that Find People link at the top of Twitter, only to be rebuffed by a “This is not active/working” type of message? I’ve clicked it repeatedly, only to be disappointed.

It’s now working. Officially called Twitter Name Search, you can now search for people by their actual names. It’s not the smartest of searches – for instance, I couldn’t search on anything except a name. It’s not picking up words in profiles. (For that, you can use Twellow.)

According to Evan Williams, the new search feature is smarter than it used to be:

… new name search is much faster, more relevant, and it even has a phonetic similarity algorithm which is basically fancy talk for spell check on names. For example, if you type in “Even Williamz” it will ask you, “Did you mean Evan Williams?”

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology
Friendfeed: michellel
Blogs: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

I first read about Twellow on Mashable yesterday. Once I started using it, I was hooked.

The one thing Twitter has always lacked is a reliable and useful People Search tool. Now there is Twellow. Twellow was developed to help you “cut through the clutter.”

Twellow is a service of WebProNews and at this writing, it had indexed over 331,000 Twitter users and filed those users into categories based on their Twitter profiles. A lot of folks, myself included, make sure to use useful key words in their Twitter profiles, and now there is a reason other than SEO. You can be indexed in Twellow!

You can’t be indexed if you have a Twitter account without an entry, no Twitter account, or a private/locked Twitter account. Therefore my professional account is available and my personal account is not. For me, this is perfect.

A search on my name or my Twitter user name produces, well, me. A search on my company name does not produce me, so obviously I need to make some adjustments.

Much more fun is a search on topics – “Blogging” brings up names like Anil Dash and Six Apart. You can also search within pre-defined categories, many of which you can find on the front page of the site, and from there you can drill-down into sub-categories.

The oddest thing I found about Twellow is its seemingly random updating of your latest Twitter post. My latest is listed as several days old, when I have in fact Twittered since then, whereas other folks are listed as “8 minutes ago.”

Regardless, Twellow is a much-needed search tool that just adds to the power of Twitter. Twellow is currently in Alpha, but is open for public use.

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Events, news, apps, and more – let me know at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, via Twitter, or via Pownce.