Topsy: a search-engine whose results come from highly trafficked Twitter links

Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 27, 2009 10:04 PM | permalink

Rishab sez,

Here's something neat - all the links posted by @Boingboing on Twitter, and for each link, all the things people are saying about them on Twitter. Its a result page from Topsy, a new site that lets you search through what people are saying about things. Topsy sees the Internet as a stream of conversations between people. It ranks each search result based on how much people are talking about it, and the influence of the people discussing it. Like Cory Doctorow's Whuffie, Topsy computes influence as something you can earn and spend. It does this based on how much you talk about other things and people, and how much other people talk about you. Of course @Boingboing is "Highly Influential" on Twitter (which is all Topsy's index has, for now).

Topsy (Thanks, Rishab!)

Favorite This! (0)

Older Nominations open for IP3 awards: achievements in Internet protocol, information policy and intellectual property

Newer Cambridge study: DRM turns users into pirates

Discussion

Take a look at this

#1 posted by PaulR, May 28, 2009 8:47 AM

From commondreaams.org
"Tuesday morning the BBC people revealed that Twitter may be ruined by SPAM. Now there's a bit of unalloyed good news at last-one blight
destroying another" - C Cooper.

/snicker

Take a look at this

#2 posted by Matt Katz, May 28, 2009 9:41 AM

I don't understand. They say they search identi.ca, but do they only index twitter?

http://topsy.com/about

Hopefully they'll index the other conversations soon.