How To Search The Entire Twitter Archive

Tweets are almost like listening to the NPR in your car while you're commuting. Something really interesting might be broadcasted, but once you've heard it, it's gone. Worse, if you don't have the radio on, you might miss the conversation completely. There's no way to go back. Same with tweets; once they're posted, they're gone.

Except now they're not. Social analytics company Topsy now has a new search tool that allows you to search the entire Twitter history going back to when the company first began in 2006. That's 435 billion tweets!

Not only that, you can now search all social history of a person or topic, or just the links, photos, videos and influencers. All you do is go to Topsy and put your keywords in the search box, and you'll have numerous views of the results.

Why would you want to do that? Although you might already use Google Alerts to tell you when you, your band, or a topic is mentioned online, Topsy shows you a much more intricate picture of how the keyword was used. It's great for doing research on just about any topic, including who mentioned you their posts.

Want to know what your fans really think about you? Just put your band's name in search box. How about the response to an album or video? How about a gig? Research about a venue? How about a hashtag? You can find out a lot from this great research tool.

Topsy also offers more advanced analytics and more precise search with their Pro version, but don't underestimate the power of the free search tool.

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.