Twitter bugs me sometimes.
Why can’t I see my tweets (and my followers tweets) from months ago, not just days ago? Why can’t I search my DMs?
And connecting with people to converse with can be a real challenge at times. It would help if I could search tweets from the people I follow…and if Twitter search was much faster.
That’s why I was incredibly excited when I saw that there was a new Twitter.com search feature that did ALL these things.
It’s the end of Twitter search annoyances!
New Twitter.com Search For Timelines, Old Tweets, DMs…and More Buffer this
Once you activate it, you get a new (positionable) search box at Twitter.com. Or you can use a separate search page, if you prefer that instead. Once you activate the new search box, Twitter’s search becomes integrated with hyper-fast technology from search company CloudMagic.
This new blazingly fast instant search shows results while you type, even as soon as you type a single letter. Plus, it even lets you search offline! (No wifi connection for your laptop? No problem.)
And if you use Gmail…your life just changed. The same hyper-speed search for your emails, is optionally available. It can even search as many mail accounts as you want, all at once! And it’s free. (More about this at the end of this blog post.)
But my favorite use for the new Twitter search features is the ability to connect with any conversation from people I follow.
I know from experience how popular you can be by engaging with people: I have nearly 300,000 followers, and I built my entire community by connecting with people. Only now with the CloudMagic technology behind Twitter search, it’s so much easier to do!
Why Connecting With People Makes You MUCH More Popular Buffer this
You already know that Twitter can be fantastic for connecting with people about virtually anything. Professional development. Your favorite shows. Job search. Current events. Politics or religion.
But a hidden benefit is people who check you out can tell from your tweets if you’re a “connector,” and are much more likely to follow connectors. For one, being a connector proves you’re a real person, and not a robot! Plus people get to know you. They look forward to reading and retweeting your tweets (yup, being a connector gets retweeted more often too), and they tell their friends to follow you.
But finding real people to converse with can be a challenge. And the more followers you get, the harder it is. But now it’s simple again, no matter how many followers you have.
How To Use The New CloudMagic-Powered Twitter Search To Connect With More People Buffer this
First you need to activate the new search. That information is at the bottom of this blog post, but click here to skip to that section if you wish. Otherwise, read on.
While the new search can find all your tweets/retweets, direct messages, best of all is the ability to search tweets from people you follow (your timeline).
Think of this last feature, the ability to search your timeline, as the ability to see all your friends’ conversations. You couldn’t do this on Twitter.com before. Now I can immediately find anyone who is looking for help, for example, and tweet or DM them what they need.
This is what you want to do: Find conversations to contribute to and questions to answer. And because it’s a search, you can make connections with people when you want to, rather than needing to be online all the time, trying to keep up in real time. Relax!
It’s particularly cool for #hashtag chats: You can now see just the tweets from people you follow anytime you wish.
And the longer you use it, the further back it goes. (When I activated it, it immediately begin finding DMs for me from months ago, so I didn’t have to wait for results.)
Get 200% more clicks on Tweets
By Buffering Tweets, they are posted at optimal times giving you 2x more exposure.
How To Use Twitter’s Old Search Feature To Make Connections Buffer this
You can do something similar with Twitter’s existing search feature, if you know a few tricks. Find people you can help can help build your business, for example. Or find people who live in your area to connect with on virtually any topic.
People asking questions are most likely to be open to be contacted by someone they don’t know. Start by experimenting with this Twitter.com search:
[your word or phrase goes here] “anyone help” OR “you recommend” OR “anyone recommend” OR “anyone know” -RT -via (click to see this search on Twitter.com.)
(Remember when searching to change the search type from “Top” to “All” or you’ll miss a lot of tweets.)
This lets me find people that I can help with Twitter questions. Sure there are plenty of junk tweets, but a quick scroll always turns up someone I can help in a second or two.
Tips and Tricks For Using The New CloudMagic Search Features. Buffer this
First, you’ll need to know which search terms will give you which results. Besides the operators listed below, you can also use (in all capital letters) “OR” as in, for example: funny OR comedy OR humor …and you can place phrases in quotes, such as “anyone know” (If you don’t use quotes to search for a phrase, you will simply get all tweets that have the words you search for in any order.)
Click here to see CloudMagic’s search operators
for email and other non-Twitter services.
Once you get the hang of what to type, take a look at the search box options. Here, I started typing the words “anyone know” (without quotes) in the new box at Twitter.com, and then I clicked on one of the results to see the whole message:
Notice that even though this was the first time I used it, it was already showing me a message from months ago! (I’ve greyed out the exact message, because it was a DM sent to me privately.)
Experiment with the tiny icons in the upper-right corner: they let you see search results on a separate webpage, or expand or contract the search box. If you have set it up to search emails, contacts or documents, you can easily switch to one of those search functions.
How To Set Up Your New CloudMagic-Powered Twitter.com Search Features. Buffer this
First, you’ll need to add it to your Firefox or Chrome internet browser (sorry, Internet Explorer not supported yet). Click which ever link below is right for how you currently use Twitter.com:
CloudMagic is known for speed. It is already fast. But they say that changes they made when adding Twitter search makes search up to 100 times faster. Plus, Twitter is the first non Google service using CloudMagic.
Why Gmail Users MUST Try CloudMagic’s Built-In Search Buffer this
This is optional, but if you have Gmail I highly recommend trying it out. But you can just stick to Twitter-only search if you wish. You can turn on options to have CloudMagic instantly search any or all of:
- Gmail/Google Apps Email (this is awesome!)
- Google Docs/Google Apps Docs
- Google Calendar/Google Apps Calendar
- Google Contacts/Google Apps Contacts
It makes me so much more productive in Gmail I don’t know how I lived without it. You have to try it to believe it. For example, I can search for part of a name and an area code, and instantly find a phone number. And because I instantly see results with each character I type, I often don’t have to type whole words to find things. Incredibly fast.
