Tweetbeat Captures World's Events In Realtime, Spam Free

One of the most valuable and pervasive user-generated features of Twitter has been the evolution of hashtags. Whether used to signal discussion of a specific topic, or to participate in a shared event, searching for mentions of popular hashtags has become a frequent occurrence, aimed to capture the pulse of the world in real time. But, like most good things, they too can be used for ill will, as spammers and other jokers latch on to popular events and topics to push their nefarious agenda. Also, search results from Twitter, especially as the service grows in popularity, are not categorized or grouped. Tweetbeat, the latest introduction from search company Kosmix, delivered a solution last week that brings the world's events to the fore, with Twitter as the filter, spam free.

Just like the company's previous (and ongoing) efforts with the Tweetbeat Firsthand extension, which surfaces relevant Twitter accounts through the entire Web, Kosmix is again trying to make the pervasive noise from Twitter useful, bringing the best of the service forward, and pushing the dreck to the back.

Tweetbeat tracks the opening of The Social Network

Tweetbeat, launched last week at the TechCrunch Disrupt event, features what the company calls LiveFollow event streams to see real-time reactions from experts and others, Replay functionality to show tweets that took place during past events, and recommendations to find people who are engaging in events of shared interest.

The Disrupt event was not only a good launch conference for the product, but also a good test case, as Tweetbeat chronicled people's reactions to startup introductions, panels and yes, the AOL/TechCrunch news. Companies and people mentioned in the event were featured in a leaderboard, showing who was getting the most digital ink.

Tweetbeat tracks the Giants and Padres as they fight

But Tweetbeat is more than just tech conferences. Tweetbeat fires up for weather hotspots, movie releases, and all manner of sporting events. (See: http://tweetbeat.com/events. For me, one of the most compelling and fun uses of Tweetbeat is the service's dedicated NFL section, which shows real-time reactions to games across the league, with breakdowns by contest. You can even play back each game to ride fans' highs and lows. Even the baseball pennant race got a look in (See: Giants vs. Padres - Game 162 on Tweetbeat).

Tweetbeat NFL in Action for the Lions & Packers

Kosmix was among the earliest partners to have access to Twitter's full firehose feed, and they are leveraging that access to its fullest with Tweetbeat, pulling in about 3,000 tweets per second, filtering them for relevance and hiding those with low influence - a rank they have developed for every single active Twitter user, utilizing multiple factors, such as retweets and the influence level of those who have retweeted them. The result? An incredibly fast, no nonsense view of the world's reactions to real-time events.

Twitter's trending topics are well known to often be led by frivolous or off-color hastags, and you won't find that on Tweetbeat. While Twitter search may be a quick click away within the service to see what people are saying that very second, Tweetbeat is capturing it all and ranking it for usefulness. You just might find the event you are searching for is not just on Tweetbeat, but organized with style. So check it out at http://www.tweetbeat.com. With the NFL season under way, and fall TV shows hitting the air, you know I'll be sneaking over to see what the world is saying.

Disclosure: Kosmix, the parent company of Tweetbeat, is a client of Paladin Advisors Group.