#realtime

#realtime is a visual search engine I made with a friend. Our goal was to give people access to #realtime buzz on topics they care about. We were inspired by how social media is driven by trending news and the possibility for an optimized search engine that recommends articles based on trends. Regular search engines only give information with a direct link to the input - we focused on connecting people to peripheral, yet equally important topics. We pursued Twitter's API given Twitter's news-like nature.

The Twitter REST API is used to gather tweets associated with a user's hashtag of preference. We then aggregate all the other hashtags used in these tweets and present a D3 visualization of these hashtags based on their frequency (and therefore relevance). The user can then click on the visual to search Twitter for the different phrases, thus finding relevant, trending news. They are exposed to information they care about, but might not know about.