Twitter is an exceptional tool to engage community. It allows you to communicate in real-time, share information, get help to questions and build relationships.

One feature that has been difficult to achieve, with accurate and up to date information, is searching the bio database of people you follow on Twitter.

I engage with many great people on Twitter, many are creative people, I have often thought it would be great to keyword search the biographies, similar to Linkedin. The limit of 160 character bio, encourages people to use short keyword descriptions of what they are about, including professional specialties.

As recent as last week, a dear friend Simon Salt, @incslinger to those on Twitter, posted an article “5 Ways Twitter Can Monetize Without Ads”.  The number one element he suggested? The ability to perform a keyword search on the biography. Imagine his surprise when I contacted him about TweepSearch Beta, which had not yet gone live.  His interest peaked further when he discovered the developer was Damon Cortesi or @dacort on Twitter. A very smart individual.

The latest creation is called TweepSearch.  This is the first BETA release and it allows users to search keywords, within the 160 character biographies, of people you follow on Twitter.  It is simple.

•    Enter Twitter @Username.
•    Que – The first time you use it, TweepSearch will que your information. *
•    Search – Create a simple search by typing in keywords.

Example:

In this example I searched “web design” and TweepSearch quickly searched the people I follow, and returned 72 results for web designer.

TweepSearch results included:

•   Picture
•   Full Name
•   Twitter address
•   Location information
•   Bio details

Results: 72 web designers.

The ability to search by location is available, in addition to the ability to sort by last update or screen name, and the ability to view which followers, you are NOT currently following.

The best feature for average users is the nightly update every 24 hours, instead of those outdated and inacurate.  Individuals with a larger followings, might experience longer delays between updates.  Remember, this is a beta.

How valuable is it to you, to have this new ability to “search” bio’s on Twitter? Does having the correct keywords in you bio becomes more important to you? Does it create an larger advantage to now use a landing page, leaving the bio field specifically for searchable keywords? Very interested in hearing your thoughts?

*Note: users with > 1000 followers may experience a slight delay depending on sites traffic.test

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