Monday, April 20, 2009

Who's Talkin' about you? Or me? Or something you care about?

I ran across the Who'sTalkin web site yesterday while reading Twitter (I think - it's gone, can't find it... that's the problem with following four hundred twits!).


What in the world is WhosTalkin? The "About Us" page says:

"WhosTalkin.com is a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations surrounding the topics that they care about most. Whether it be your favorite sport, favorite food, celebrity, or your company’s brand name; Whostalkin.com can help you join in on the conversations that you care about most.

"Our goal is to deliver the most relevant and current conversations happening in the world of social media."


Let me give you an example - I input "randy seaver" in the search box on the home page above, and clicked "Search." The result is shown below:


This took over 15 seconds to search the web for matches.

In the left sidebar is a list of all of the social networking sites that WhosTalkin.com searches - Blogs, News, Networks, Videos, Images, Forums, Tags, and Options. There are sub-categories within each major subject.

In most of the screen is a list of blog posts (from all of the platforms listed) that satisfy the Search criteria. Twitter is included in the Blogs list.

If the user wanted to see the found material on a specific blog platform, you can click on the blog platform and see the content, as shown below when I clicked on "Google Blog Search":

But there are many more categories to look at. I clicked on Networks in the left hand column, and many social network sites are searched by WhosTalkin. I clicked on Facebook and saw this list:


When I clicked on the Images category, and the Flickr site, I got this screen:


At least I know that there are no risque images of yours truly on Flickr!

The search possibilities here are endless, it would seem!

Practical applications for genealogists might be:

* See who has referenced you in a blog post or on a social network site
* Search for your friends (or enemies) names in social networks or news
* Search for an ancestor's name (and perhaps location)
* Search for images of specific places or people

It's not clear to me how it ranks the matches in the different categories. It looks like it finds items by date and time posted.

So, it appears that WhosTalkin is sort of a Google for social networks.

I like this site. It's simple, works fast, etc. Enjoy!

2 comments:

Joe Hall said...

Randy,

Thanks so much for talkin about WhosTalkin! ever since i launched the site in January, i have been pleasantly surprised to see the many uses that people have!

Untangled Family Roots said...

Randy,

Thank you for telling us about this. This is a very useful tool to a blogger especially if you want to respond to people who are writing from your memes and encourage them.