With the enormous amounts of information and the appalling signal to noise ratio on Twitter, good search tools are always welcome. How else would we get at the gems? Tweetzi is a Twitter search engine, developed by Craig Hughes, that is great for monitoring trends and following breaking news.

Tweetzi is a deceptively simple search tool: A start page that is googlesqe in its simplicity and uncluttered search results displaying tweets in real time. But the simple design contains some advanced features.

Real time Twitter search

Unlike any other real time Twitter search engine I have laid eyes on, Tweetzi lets you pause the stream of tweets. The pause/play button is on the right hand above the search results.

This is a very convenient feature if you are following breaking news: Pause search results when you find a tweet that you want to follow up on, then press play and the tweets start rolling again. But there is even more to Tweetzi.

Filter search results

Above the list of search results, right next to the play/pause button, you find five icons that will help you filter the search results. Clicking them (from left to right) will sort your search results to produce these filtered results:

• Tweets containing links
• Tweets with hash tag
• Tweets that contain a question
• Tweets with a positive attitude
• Tweets with a negative attitude

More tools

The search results page contains links to the top ten Twitter topics at the moment. If you are into celebrities or trendspotting, this can be useful.

Next to your search results, Tweetzi displays a list of your recent searches. If you want to repeat a search, it is only a click away.

If, like me, you find Tweetzi useful, a link on the search page lets you add Tweetzi to the list of search engines available in your browser’s search box. This works with Firefox and other Mozilla based browsers.

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