Status Search: http://www.statussearch.net/
We used to value a search engine by its sheer size. How many pages did Google or Yahoo! know about in their crawling of the Web, assuming that the engine with the largest number wins, offering a greater percentage of the Web's content in their database? But there is room for small too - helping you to find data from much more close-knit groups, like your connections on social networks. A new search engine called Status Search, in early beta, returns only results from friends' updates on Facebook and Twitter - the idea being, of course, that you are finding information from trusted sources, and therefore, potentially higher relevancy.
Status Search, created by Elad Meidar and Lior Levin, is not looking to be yet another real-time search engine in the ballpark of Twitter Search, OneRiot or Twazzup. Instead, it is just focused on friends' status updates. And this means that every single answer you get on their engine is from a connection you have made.
The initial product supports both Facebook and Twitter, but support for LinkedIn and MySpace connections, for starters, is also planned.
Status Search Results for "Movies" In My Networks
Status Search Results for "Sleep" In My Networks
Instead of leveraging the "real time" buzzword, Status Search hits another one - the "social graph". As is common with sites that are using social graphs at their center, the product helpfully suggests you look for things such as where to eat, what movies to see, what books to read, or even if there are parties.
Unsurprisingly, when I searched my connections, I didn't find too much on eating and drinking. I did get a few positive hits on movies that had just been watched, and I always found responses when looking for more techie items, like Google or Twitter.
Status Search Results for "Google" In My Networks
The results with Status Search are accurate, and personal. But as the site is just getting started, I found queries to be slow, and found responses from Twitter typically overwhelmed those from Facebook. It also isn't clear how often the updates are polled, or how far back their database goes, as I was surprised when some queries found no results or many fewer than I had anticipated.
I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that FriendFeed also lets me search my social graph, seeing more than just status updates, but also shares, blog posts and video, from just my friends. But Status Search isn't trying to pull in anything else but status updates, so they are laser focused. You can also set up alerts, so you get e-mailed every time a keyword is mentioned in your social graph. Alerts can be sent immediately, or daily, much like BackType, TweetBeep, and Google News Alerts.
To search what the world is saying on Twitter, Twitter Search is the right product. If you want to search what just your friends are saying over multiple social networks, Status Search could be a clearer, quieter, alternative.