App Development Request: The Web’s Opinion About One Topic

lightbulb I want to see every conversation happening around the world right now about one specific topic. ANY topic.

Notice I said conversationTwitter search nor the many other search tools accomplishes this for me. They’re just real-time people search engines.

FriendFeed comes close. For short conversations, it’s great. However, their way of threading conversations makes it a horrible experience to follow when the conversation draws on and many people chime in. It’s a little discouraging to look at (and I’m not trying to belittle FriendFeed).

I’d like to better track conversations around the web and I know a ton of geeks and soccer fans who are interested in doing the same. I’ve search and search but my search has been fruitless for a service that accomplishes my goal.

So to the developers around the web I ask: can start focusing on creating more of these tools rather than yet another Twitter client or twitter add-on for my site? And I don’t need to track conversations across the entire web at this point. That may take some time. Maybe just across social media sites and in the comments section of blogs. I want to be able to visit this service, type in a keyword, and instantly view threaded conversations only that are happening around my keyword (in real-time when possible).

Who’s interested?



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View Comments to “App Development Request: The Web’s Opinion About One Topic”

  1. Nice request. Do you think the new JS-Kit Echo service would be a good starting point? Then broaden the capability to create your own search for conversations by Keyword (rather than a specific post?). It could return some huge results… Would you like the service to allow you to enter the conversation from there? (ie posting directly to the conversations as you see them).

    The more I think about it this would be an awesome tool.

  2. Backtype might be helpful, as they pull in comments from twitter, friendfeed, and also blogs. Not the same as a Google blog search because it's focused on the comments only and not the blog posts themselves.

  3. The comment below from Alpinefolk is more of what I'm looking for. Rather than a specific post I want to see it from EVERY service, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Stumbleupon, Digg comments, and the little guys in between. It's like a conversational Google search engine I guess.

    Backtype is what I use now though and it is pretty helpful for the most part. But it misses a lot and if I did a google blog search, I'd see more conversations than what backtype has to offer sometimes.

    I hate the limitations of technology sometimes. We've come a long way, but we still have miles to go.

  4. Thanks for the tip about JS-Kit Echo. I Googled it and it could definitely be a great starting point! Being able to jump into the conversation also without leaving the page would be awesomesauce! Sounds like heaven.

    Now we just need someone to develop it! :D

  5. Thanks for the feedback, Corvida. We're definitely working to improve the scale of properties and platforms we support (including Echo). We currently support hundreds of thousands of properties, including Digg, Reddit, FriendFeed, and more.

    We'll be making some updates to BackType Search that will help surface better conversation on any given topic, rather than every single mention (which is what we do now)

  6. Yes, this would be an awesome app! As well as being able to see the entire conversation, in a perfect world it'd also be great to highlight and summarize the most interesting comments.

    JS-Kit Echo looks interesting, and I'll certainly check it out.

    jon

  7. Corvida this is certainly the goal of Echo – stay tuned – we're excited by the possibilities :)

  8. Exceptional idea, Corvida. Question is: what is a “topic”? I could see it being a small discrete little thing (e.g. “Canon 35 mm L f/1.4″) or a big topic (e.g. “photography”) with every subject having a taxonomy around these topics.

    But I love the idea in general. Keep me posted on what you find!

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