Real-Time Search Engines for Artists: A Quick Look at Some of the Leaders
There's been a lot of activity around real-time search during the past year, and rightfully so, as apps like Summize have readily shown the power in real-time information - it's part of what we do at Band Metrics for musicians and bands as well, as there is significant value for artists to see what's being said about them and their music at any given moment. But, there are now dozens of real-time search engines, and there are differences between them so here's a quick breakdown between today's leading, real-time search engines (listed alphabetically):
- Collecta: This may be today's present winner from the list below, as not only are the results the most recent, relevant and comprehensive, but Collecta has some nice filtering options, a solid API, and their pulling from comments in the blogosphere as well.
- OneRiot: A bit cluttered, and most of the results are seemingly coming from news topics that are shared on Twitter, but they do have an API, and I like the ability to see how a topic/story is shared by expanding it.
- Scoopler: Possibly the second best from this list, as they've got a great UI that easily separates popular content from videos, images and links, but they do not have an API yet.
- Summize: Arguably the first, and very fast, simple and accurate, but it only searches Twitter, possibly because they were acquired by Twitter - it's still my first choice for running a simple Twitter search.
- Tweetmeme: Nicely displays both tweets and online content that is being tweeted, and I like the breakdown of information between Best Match, Highest Tweets and Age, but it's a bit too Twitter-centric.
- Topsy: Possibly the least accurate of this list, as the results are not comprehensive enough, but they have a nicely designed UI, and I like the ability to easily search by day, week, month and all-time.
- WhosTalkin?: Probably the most comprehensive from the above list, as they gather information from about two dozen sources or more, but they only have a URL API at this time, and you have to refresh the page to see the most recent information, and even then it may not be displayed.
