Apture and Twitter

Apture have snuck in a potentially big improvement to their blog enhancement technology. They are now integrating twitter. I have only played with this for a few minutes so it may be capable of a whole lot more than I have discovered.

The biggest potential as far as I can see lies in embedding Twitter searches into blog pages. This means that, say I was writing about a new Nikon camera I could embed a Twitter search but that that search would be always up to date. In other words what we really have is a very sophisticated mechanism for embedding feeds.

Here is an example: I have set the search for Apture + Twitter:

I am no expert on the tech front but it seems to me that much development by Twitter people is geared towards the search functions, some even positing that the mighty Google may be under threat. I don’t agree with that as the 140 character limit on Twitter is always going to prevent a merging. There are some things that require more than a sentence. Either way it is a very shrewd move by Apture to look to incorporate Twitter. I would hazard a guess that Apture may soon be at work on a interactive Twitter App where readers can set their own searches within their own container.

The Twitter container can also be linked like this search for Obama

Another very cool thing that Apture does is that it automatically recognizes Twitter homepage links such as steve_g2 my profile page. I have set this up as a normal web type link but if my hunch is right apture will recognize this and if you hover over it you will see my Twitter page. An added bonus- if you click on where it says Valparaiso a Google map will pop up so we have twitter and location comer to life with no work from me and very little from you. I like toys.

I really do think that it is the embedded search function that will turn out to be the game changer. Watch for a pretty sudden increase in the number of Apture enabled sites on the web.