Unless you've mastered the art of not blinking, you probably miss updates from connections on Twitter. Even the most attentive of people will have gaps in their attention to the real time stream. As Twitter has become a prominent place to share links and point followers to news and sites of interest, new services have arisen to find the best of what you may have missed. Among the newest, in early beta, is a site called KeyTweet, which finds relevant tweets that contain links, based on keywords in the streams of those you follow.KeyTweet, like Cadmus and My6sense's offerings before it, aims to find a relevancy filter for Twitter, to surface important updates and hide the more trivial. But instead of using implicit activity, as my6sense does, or collapsing duplicates and finding conversations as The Cadmus does, KeyTweet finds popular topics that people you follow tweeted about, and brings tweets that match multiple keywords to the top of your stream, sorted by relevance.
Top Topics from My Followers Today in KeyTweet
For example, in my stream this evening, I saw many updates on Foursquare, Posterous and Android, as well as the highlight of the day - the arrival of Sean and Laurie Percival's new baby. As many people, myself included, highlighted the infant's debut, Percival effectively became a "trending topic" among those I follow.
Many people have begged Twitter for trending topics among your friends, and they have seemingly instead opted for geographically chunked data. KeyTweet, like The Cadmus and Twazzup Reader, fills that gap, analyzing your stream live. As new matches to top keywords flow into your stream, they too get a chance to sit atop your feed.
Top Tweets in KeyTweet With Keywords
"Key" tweets are displayed with the matching keywords, includes a list of other people who have tweeted the link, and the option to provide explicit feedback to the application, indicating whether you "like" or "dislike" the entry. You can even retweet from the site. The more you like, the more the service is personalized for you.
Tweets shown in Keytweet are organized not in chronological order, but in order of importance - just as my6sense has done for the iPhone. The app shows tabs for top entries in the last week or month, and also the option to sort by time, but they are not yet live. I can only assume future product enhancements will convert those tabs from concept to reality.
You can find the key tweets you may have missed in your stream by heading to KeyTweet.com. In the age of information overload, relevancy that is personalized is becoming critical. Their approach is intriguing.
Disclosure: my6sense is a client of Paladin Advisors Group, where I am Managing Editor of New Media. My6sense is an assumed competitor to KeyTweet.