Following conference hashtag tweets in real time and saving them for later

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UPDATE 7 July 2011: Google Realtime is no longer with us. Initially it seemed to be temporarily offline while under-bonnet tinkering happened and it was assumed it would be hooked up with Google+ however it now seems that Google is no longer accessing Twitter's stream as the deal ended on 2 July 2011. This isn't great.

Also, see the more up to date post linked in the column on the right hand side, about a list of Twitter tools.

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All the fashionable conferences or events have a hashtag. This turns a mere word into a clickable link which takes you to a 'channel' of tweets all talking about the same thing.

There are lots of ways of following these tweeted hashtags, in real time, and you can also save all the tweets for later. Here are some ways of doing this.

Example hashtag is #scio10 which stands for Science Online 2010.

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EDIT: 7 November 2010 - for further investigation: "Tweetdoc" as suggested by @AISSMa
- it seems to create a rather useful and straightforward PDF for you, which is a plus.
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1. Twitter itself
http://search.twitter.com - type in #scio10 or scio10 and sit back and watch. You might have to press 'refresh' every now and again (I think this depends on your browser) but it's pretty good.
Realtime? Yes
Archive? Not long-term.
Keeps picture of who is tweeting linked to their tweet? Yes

2. FriendFeed
The official conference FriendFeed room is http://friendfeed.com/scienceonline2010 which incorporates hashtag mentions and official comment from the dedicated twitter feed @scio10

My only bleat is that FriendFeed tends to lose the details of who said what, something that some of the other services seem to be able to keep (see this pic which gives an example http://www.flickr.com/photos/jodiepedia/3977940848/).

For just the tweets containing the hashtag though, use this link http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%23scio10

FriendFeed does two things - it lets you read Twitter feeds, but it also lets you comment on them and write directly to FF.

See also - Cunning use of FriendFeed - find old tweets, yours or others - for more on why I really like certain features of FriendFeed.
Realtime? Yes, freakishly good - see http://friendfeed.com/public for terrifying proof.
Archive? Excellent, persists for a long time.
Keeps picture? Not for generic feed into room, yes for individual (if on FriendFeed).

3. wthashtag - What the Hashtag
Any topic that's trending will show up automatically in wthashtag. If a topic isn't trending, then the wthashtag needs to be set up manually, for which you need a (free) account. The advantage of this is not so much the real time view of tweets (I can't remember how good this is) but the ability to generate a transcript of the last day's tweets.
Realtime? I think so, yes
Archive? Yes, but limited and not permanent
Keeps pictures? Yes

4. Twapperkeeper
#scio10 Twapperkeeper feed
No account needed to set up a twapperkeeper, although account required if you want to do more with it I think. It's a while since I've used it but I was very impressed. You can even set up a filter so that the hashtag plus another word will filter into a particular folder - this might be useful where you have several sessions running concurrently.

For example, during the recent #scidebate (debate between Ben Goldacre and Paul Drayson) I toyed with splitting examples of good science reporting from bad by using !g and !b in addition to #scidebate. Technically it worked perfectly (but it turned out that artificially splitting articles in this way was a bit of a palaver so we all quietly forgot about it) and you can see that the tweets are still there http://twapperkeeper.com/scidebate/
Realtime? I think so, but honestly can't remember
Archive? Yes, awesome
Keeps pictures? Yes

4.5. Hashtag.org
Haven't investigated it yet but looks interesting. Hat tip @zeno001

5. Tweetdeck - iPhone app
Although I do have this somewhere on my laptop I only really use it as an app on my iPhone and so my experience of it is pretty much limited to that. This requires download whereas everything else here is web-based.

Tweetdeck lets you create a deck of tweets based on a hashtag, which you can watch in real time.
Realtime? Yes
Archive? Not that I'm aware of
Keeps pictures? Yes

6. Twitterfall
Very good, although a little bit fiddly. Type in your hashtag and it does the rest.
Realtime? Yes
Archive? Not that I'm aware of
Keeps pictures? Yes

7. Monitter
Very similar to Twitterfall, but with three 'decks'.
Realtime? Yes
Archive? Not that I'm aware of
Keeps pictures? Yes

I've watched or saved a lot of conference tweets in the time I've been on Twitter and have used Tweetdeck to interact when there, Twitterfall if watching elsewhere, FriendFeed for an augmented experience, Twitter itself as a back channel (and FriendFeed) and both wthashtag and Twapperkeeper to save it all for later. I think Twitterfall is used quite successfully by events folks to show the tweets live on screen.

These are just the ones I've used or heard of. Doubtless there are others...

Cunning use of FriendFeed - find old tweets, yours or others

EDIT: 5 June 2010 - It seems that Google is developing a Twitter archive, currently from Feb 2010, but which will stretch back to the first tweets in 2006. More here
All The Old Tweets Are Found: Google Launches Twitter Archive Search
http://searchengineland.com/all-the-old-tweets-are-found-google-launches-twitter-archive-search-39962

The post below does rather assume that you already have a FriendFeed account of course...

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If you have a FriendFeed account and your Twitter feed is on it, simply use the following syntax to find your old tweets - I've found my first ever tweet on there (Jun 08) so it seems the tweets persist for a while.

keyword1 keyword2 from:yourTwittername

eg FriendFeed from:jobrodie will find any of my tweets (or posts I've made to FriendFeed) where I've mentioned the word FriendFeed.

There are a couple of people I'm following on Twitter who often post really useful interesting links that I might want to catch up with later. Favouriting individual tweets is one way but it's not that great a method for searching them retrospectively, but FriendFeed is.

If that person (or automated RSS feed, eg from a newspaper - it doesn't have to be an individual) isn't on FriendFeed, but their Twitter feed isn't locked - then you can add them as an 'imaginary friend' and follow them on FriendFeed that way. Then you can search their tweets.

Here's how (it assumes you have a FriendFeed account!) - mine's themed in 'Steampunk' colours.

1. Go to http://www.friendfeed.com, log in, and look for your Friends list
2. Click on the Browse/edit friends link, highlighted in lime green below.



3. Click on the Imaginary friends link (highlighted in magenta below).


4. Then click on the self-explanatory button - Create imaginary friend.


5. You are then asked to name the imaginary friend - I've called mine "DiabetesTrials" - and then clicking 'Create' will do precisely that.


6. The next page gives you an option to add different feeds - it could be Flickr or pretty much anything that is RSSable, but just click on the Twitter button (highlighted in orange below) to add a Twitter feed.


7. Add in the name of the Twitter feed - in this case it's DiabetesTrials and press 'Import Twitter'.


8. The new Twitterfeed appears in the 'Active Services' (highlighted in lime green below) and you can add more by repeating the process. If you want to see the tweets that @DiabetesTrials has posted, click on their name, highlighted in magenta in the pic below.


9. Ta-da


10. To search for an old tweet use similar syntax to that above - the significant difference is that 'DiabetesTrials' is not on FriendFeed and so you can't use the from:DiabetesTrials bit.

Instead you need to use friends:jobrodie eg:
pioglitazone friends:jobrodie


Note the circle in green in the pic above, it's highlighting a padlock, which is next to any imaginary friend's feed - these are locked.

Anyone other than me will not be able to see the posts from such a locked, imaginary friend feed, it's only visible by me. Though there's nothing to stop you creating an imaginary friend for DiabetesTrials yourself (and I won't know about it).

Please help me make my FriendFeed room for 'Diabetes Twitterers' better

Shortened link for this post: http://is.gd/2CMKp

A while ago I dipped my toes into creating a FriendFeed room, really just a test of how to do so, in which I added myself and some other Twitter feeds to form a small collection of people who tweet about diabetes - I made it closed so that it wouldn't bother anyone. Then I forgot about it for a while.

Diabetes Twitterers
http://friendfeed.com/diabetestwitterers

Recently I logged on to FriendFeed to find 40 people had requested membership and since I opened up the room it now has 52 people, all of whom are very welcome.

However the room sucks (no offence to the people whose feeds I've used, including my own).

There are two problems that I can see, though more experienced FriendFeedsters might spot more.

One is that each tweet is divorced from its owner - there's nothing to say who said it, it seems as if all tweets in that room are being said by 'Diabetes Twitterers'. I'd like it at least to recognise (ideally with the right photo) who it is that's said the tweet.

Secondly, I have added myself (and others) who talk about diabetes. However I also talk about lots of other stuff and it's currently scraping every single Twitter utterance from my feed (which isn't unexpected but I wonder if it can be improved upon).

Having said that, there are five 't' icons for five twitter feeds and mine isn't among them so I'm not sure how I've managed to appear anyway...

Can I filter my own feed and those of others so that only the tweets we make that mention #diabetes will be picked up by that room? I don't mean just a #diabetes query search being threaded into the room, I do mean filtering my tweets, and those of others whom I've added.

I don't really want a #diabetes search feed in the room as I've seen the output of this on Tweetdeck and there's far too much blether about herbal remedies, raw food and alkaline water and my intention is to keep guff to the minimum ;)

So... can I fix either or both of these problems? How? Having played with the settings I don't think I can, but I'm not that expert yet with FF so all help gratefully received.

Thank you :)