Monitter is a tracking tool for Twitter that enables you to enter multiple keywords that you want to monitor and then to watch any tweets that mention these words in real time.

Here’s how it looks with four words that I just plugged in (click to enlarge):

Potential Uses for Monitter

While there are other tools around that track keywords there is a lot to like about Monitter and I could see it being useful for many applications such as:

Vanity watching – you can see that two of the words that I’ve entered are ‘problogger’ and ‘twitip’ – words that are associated with my brand. Watching words like these are important if you’re interested in monitoring what people are saying about you and your business, brand, products etc.

Networking – interested in networking with people talking about a topic that you’re interested in? Enter a keyword associated with that topic and watch who is using the word. It might take you a while to find the right word (for example my ‘twitter’ column is updating so fast I can’t keep up.

Business Opportunities – I write a blog about digital cameras and how to use them. When I enter the word ‘digital camera’ I’m immediately tapping into the conversations of thousands of people talking about their cameras. Already in watching those keywords I can see people talking about how their cameras don’t work, asking how to use certain featured etc. A smart business would be using tools like this to interact with those people.

Enlarging Your Twitter Community – I just did a quick experiment and added the words “first tweet’ to a column. Within seconds I saw 10 people leaving their first ever Twitter entries. All it took was me to reply to them with a ‘welcome to Twitter’ and to follow them and I had three new friends.

I’m certain that there are many other ways of using a keyword monitoring tool like Monitter – I’d like to hear how you use them (and what other tools you use).

Monitter Features

• Monitter by Location – in the top left corner you can add a location and specify a distance from that location that you want to monitor tweets from.
• Language – in the bottom left corner you can switch to a number of languages
• Add Keywords – in the bottom right corner you can add or subtract columns to monitor.
• RSS – want to monitor keywords via RSS instead of on the Monitter website – no problem – once you’ve added a keyword you’re given an RSS feed for that word.
• Widgets for Your Website – want to show your blog or website reader what people are tweeting about a keyword? There’s a widget tool that enables you to add real time monitoring of keywords to your site.
• Advanced Search - you can search for @problogger to find references to a twitter user, “enclose your search in quotes” for exact phrases, search for one term OR another, search for terms mentioned with links and more (see the ‘help’ link in the right hand navigation area.

One thing that I’d like to see added to Monitter would be the ability to reply somehow from within the page. At the moment when you hit reply you’re taken to Twitter to reply.

Overall I think this could be a useful tool. I won’t use it all the time but I think it’d be particularly useful during a conference or when lauching a project.

Interested to hear what others think of Monitter and how you’d use it.

© 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips.



Monitter – Real Time Keyword Monitoring of Twitter