Twitter Search is great, but you have to be on Twitter’s site or one of the third-party apps to use it. This requires an active approach; you must enter terms and load or reload the results to get what you want. That’s why Twitter’s old “track” feature was so great, it would ping you every time a keyword you were searching for came up. Unfortunately, as growth exploded, Twitter had to axe the feature. But third parties have slowly been bringing it back. And a new one offers a pretty nice way of doing it.
Exclaim Track is a very simple service. It’s Twitter track over IM. Right now, it works with Google Talk, and all you have to do is follow exclaimtrack@appspot.com. Once that name is on your contact list, simply IM it with “track <keyword>” and it will IM you all Twitter mentions of the term you put in.
