Sifting through public status updates posted on Twitter and Facebook can be quite useful for instantly tapping into people’s thoughts on any given topic and links to more information about it.
But sometimes it’s even more useful to search only the status updates published by your friends and family, like when you’re looking for something specific to your social circle or only want to get an overview of thoughts or recommendations from those people you know and trust. Enter Status Search, which aims to fill that particular void in real-time search.
Once registered for this service, brought to you by Elad Meidar and Lior Levin, you can authorize it to gain access to what your circle of connections on both Twitter and Facebook is saying without the need to enter your credentials for said social networks. Basically, it’s what you can accomplish by searching FriendFeed updates from your friends but without the need for them to actually register for that service. Firefox users can enable a quick-search plugin for Status Search inside the browser, which takes away the hassle of having to remember to visit their website to search.
I tested a couple of search queries and the results were satisfactory, although I’m not sure exactly how far the index goes back. What I particularly liked was the fact that the trending topics that are displayed in the sidebar are generated from the stream of messages originating from the people you know and not the herd. In the past, I’ve called out for this type of implementation because Twitter’s trending topics have simply lost their appeal from the early days now that the service has gone mainstream.
Also nice: an alerts system that enables you to track specific words or phrases that you would like to get notified about. You can choose to receive an unlimited amount of e-mails on these terms, delivered either immediately or on a daily basis. From what I can gather from the Status Search website, the alerts are currently free of charge but there are apparently plans to start charging as much as $10/ month per word at some point (which is ridiculously expensive if you ask me).
Simple and useful, just the way I like my web apps. Now if we could get this functionality as a feature in TweetDeck, Seesmic and the likes …
(Hat tip to Eyal Sela)
10$ is really high when there are many free alerts related search engines all around.
tweet search is useful. trending topics not really, as most people don’t follow so many people as to create useful trends. in any case, nobody would pay for this service. i ‘d suggest a change of business plan
I always use theliftguy:
theliftguy
The didn’t pony up for the .com and they have a private registration. Both of which doesn’t lend much credibility in the project for this net cowboy’s opinion; it seems all very…temporary.
Not Worth
I’ve been using the service for a number of weeks now, and it’s pretty impressive.
I think the price point is more of an open business model idea.
Twitter has a variety of (supposed to be private) ideas for monetization, so I wouldn’t get hung up on the $10 idea.
Perhaps TweetDeck, Seesmic and the likes could buy them out. Plenty of other companies are doing that.
They need something to do with that $2m!
Okay…but this service is completely new for me! Is it useful?? I’m new so I would like to know more about this …
I am a heavy user of Seesmic (although I used tweetdeck for almost a year).
Anyway as Robin says in the post I would also like to see this functionality in those applications. It could come in a partnership or a buyout. what ever just add it.
Lior did a great job.
Appears to be inflicted with the same shortcoming that FriendFeed (FF) has for those of us whose closest contacts feed (through real or imaginary FF IDs) to FF but don’t have their posts rated. This prevents the most relevant info from rising to the top.
For FF users fortunate enough to have a critical mass of their friends already participating in FF, the process of scanning the most relevant posts from the previous 24 hours can be a breezy, enjoyable five minute experience.
Pulling feeds into FF is not the problem because of the capability to add imaginary friends on FF. STATUS SEARCH DOES NOT SOLVE A REAL PROBLEM. The real problem is managing information overload.
How to pull people into FF? A post can be started there. The feed runs to Twitter etc., with an automatic link pointing back to the full, original post and resulting discussion thread on FF.
After n repetitions, a friend may join FF. But then the problem is how to keep them coming back and participating in the assignment of ‘likes’ that allow the most relevant information to appear in best-of-day or best-of-week displays on FF.
Am very proud of this great Israeli startup! Loved the idea, way to go Lior and Elad
A great application, with great team behind it!
Thanks Robin. Great review.
Status search? Seriously? How many friends does a regular internet user have? 50? 60? 100? How many actually update their status regularly?
Is it really that hard to keep track of 50 friends’ status on FB?
Give me a break…what next? An app to check if your computer is switched on?
Thanks for the idea.
There ARE people that update their status frequently on Fabebook, twitter is meant for daily updates.
you guys did this company last week. why two posts within 5-7 days?
I use both StatusSearch and FriendFeed, i don’t think they really compete in any way.
StatusSearch is very narrow compared to FriendFeed, yet it has a unique value of pointing out friends/local trends.
Twitter and FriendFeed rule “Now”, StatusSearch is more about “Here & Now”.
Best of luck to the founders.
Heh, it was pretty slow today.. probably cause all of the traffic and the fact that RAILS DOESN’T SCALE.
This is a brilliant idea/site,i bet people are queuing up to invest in this………….
The only other thing is “why don’t they buy the .com” as i am sure it will cost them a lot more in the future if the site continues with it’s success…….