Webnomena

Summize is a “conversational search” tool pulling updates from Twitter. It allows searching (near) real-time through Twitter entries.

The home page is Google’s style page with a single edit box for entering the search term. It is very common these days minimizing the functionality presented on the first page. I’m not sure that this is in favor of this powerful tool in this case. In addition there is a list of Trending Topics showing very smartly selected items that are frequently mentioned.

Trending topics: iPhone, iTunes, Hellboy, App Store, Slurpee, Hancock, Loopt, IndyMac, GPS, Twittelator

The list above was taken on July 11th, 2008 the day Apple released its iPhone 3G, Dark Horse Entertainment released its Hellboy II movie and Seven Eleven served free Slurpee (7/11). We can also learn that the movie Hancock is still on peoples’ mind or watch list (released on July 2nd). Is Loopt the next big thing? IndyMac bank crashed – the financial sector is still in big trouble (7/11 was a bad stock market day).

Now, real-time tag cloud generating tool like Twitscoop should find these too but I did not see it or it just changes too fast.

Now this is what that I consider a great summary of that day’s agenda. Don’t you think?

It is very American oriented, I know, yet some of it has relevance to the rest of the world too.

Few comments on the home page minimalism:

• I think that some of the Advanced Search capabilities should be brought forward. I really like the Attitudes section.
• Maybe by showing examples for some relevant queries they could help people see how to use this important tool.
• Trending links could be cool too  – I guess that this could be a challenge due to the use of multiple URL shortening services.

In the next post I will try looking beyond single “subject” search. Possibly looking at multiple subjects and looking for the associated “verb” too. Maybe there is a chance to learn more about the crowd, using Summize. Can you see how the business world can benefit from using Summize?

I will leave you with two Summize, iPhone 3G queries for July 11th: positive and negative.

I’m not sure what can be learned from it but it is fascinating to see how a digital gadget is able to draw so much excitement, disappointment, frustration and appreciation. Summize provides a nice way for seeing it.