We've already taken a look at how to find currently popular online stuff from different sources, but there's no denying the magnitude of content that can be found in just one place - on Twitter. There are countless ways to filter through the noise, and find the tweets about stuff that matters to you, whether it's based on a specific topic or based on popularity.

In this article, we'll take a look at search Twitter for the most popular stories by the number of retweets or favourites a tweet receives, as well as how to find specific kinds of interesting information on Twitter.

Search Twitter For Information Based On Popularity

TweetMeme

There are a variety of services for finding the most retweeted blog posts, stories and articles linked on Twitter, the most popular and influential of which is TweetMeme. Stories on TweetMeme can be browsed by the most popular from all categories in the past 24 hours, the past 7 days, or by specific categories including Entertainment, Comedy, Gaming, and Technology amongst others.

Content can be further broken down by News, Images and Videos. TweetMeme also allows you to keep up to date with the content on their site by subscribing to their RSS feeds. TweetMeme is also searchable if you want to find the hottest stories on specific topics.

twitter search

Logging into TweetMeme with your Twitter account will then enable you to retweet the stories that you want to share with your followers directly from within their website.

twitter search

TweetMeme also have a few extra goodies for users including a bookmarklet, a retweet button or chicklet for your blog posts, and plugins making it easy to incorporate the button on your blog.

DailyRT

DailyRT takes a similar approach to TweetMeme, by ranking the most popular Tweets in the past hour, 24 hours or 7 days. The difference however, is that the content is not limited to blog posts and articles, but also includes the most popular tweets in general.

twitter search engine

This does have its downside of course, as the most popular tweets are not necessarily the most informative. Using their search feature however allows users to harness the information found on DailyRT and get the most out of it. One interesting feature found on DailyRT includes the ability to search for the most retweeted items from specific users.

twitter search engine

Logging in with your Twitter account allows you to retweet directly from the website, but gives you no choice in the wording, and each retweet includes a direct link to the DailyRT homepage. DailyRT has a list on Twitter of the 50 most retweeted members on Twitter.

Thoora

Thoora is another site that plugs into the information on Twitter letting people know what the most popular stories are, but it also gets its statistics from the number of blog posts and news articles covering a certain topic. Each article is accompanied by the number of retweets as well as the number of articles or blog posts found online.

twitter search engine

Information is broken down into categories including Business, Controversy and Sci/Tech, amongst others. Stories can also be browsed by the newest developing stories, stories that are currently popular and by those that have been popular for the past week.

Signing up for an account allows you to share the content on Facebook, Buzz, Twitter and via Email, and discuss the stories on the website. Opening up any given story is where Thoora truly excels in comparison to other similar sites. It provides users with statistics on the story, recent tweets about it, links from blogs and official news sources.

Finding Tweets With The Most Favourites

Favstar

Another method of tracking popularity on Twitter is keeping track of how many favourites any given tweet has. Favstar does just that. This might not necessarily lead to a wealth of information and links, but it's interesting and funny nonetheless. The website gives users a way to pass some free time, reading jokes, interesting witticisms and commentaries on current affairs, and you'll even find the occasional link to an article or video.

search twitter keywords

Tweets are divided into popular, rising and new. Signing in with your Twitter account allows you to quickly follow interesting users featured on Favstar, add tweets to your favourites, and even retweet. Favstar should however come with a warning that it is not at all PG. Favstar also has a three lists worth following - Tech and Social Media Tweeters, Celebrity Tweeters and Funny, Entertaining or Insightful Tweeters.

search twitter keywords

You can also search Twitter for specific users to see which of their tweets have received the most favourites. The website is available in English, German and Japanese.

Finding Job Listings

Micro.Vois

Micro.Vois features tweets relating to freelance work. Tweets listed on the site are divided into users looking for freelancer work, and users who are looking to hire freelancers - and it does so in a very simple way. Micro.Vois uses Twitter's hashtags to label the tweets, using #havework or #wantwork to distinguish the tweets from the rest of the chatter online.

search twitter keywords

The listings can also be further narrowed down by profession, with web development, programming, graphics, writing and miscellaneous jobs.

TweetyJobs

TweetyJobs is another site that features job listings mentioned on Twitter. One main difference between Micro.Vois and TweetyJobs is the fact that the latter is searchable. You can search for a specific job title in a specific city or zip code, and filter the results into either listings from corporate sites or Twitter.

Finding Items for Sale

TwitShop

TwitShop is another listings site that uses Twitter's hashtags to aggregate its information. If you have an item for sale, appending the hashtags, #forsale, #4sale or #auction, will ensure that your tweet shows up on the site.

TwitShop is searchable, so if you want to buy something in particular from another Twitter user, it's easy to find.

CheapTweet

CheapTweet, like TwitShop, aggregates items that are for sale on Twitter. It features listings in a variety of categories including Tech, Food and Home & Family, amongst others. Not only does it provide you with listings, but users can also vote on how good a deal each listing is.

We Are Hunted

We Are Hunted [Broken URL Removed] is a slick site which combs Twitter, along with other social media sites like Facebook and MySpace to give you a list of the 99 most popular songs at the moment. If you want to listen to all 99 songs, simply start at number 1, and it will automatically play through the entire list. You can also limit the results to only the songs that are popular on Twitter.

It also allows you to share any given song on Twitter, Facebook or via email. If you want a more extensive list of what music is currently popular on Twitter, check out David's article on using The Hype Machine to do just that.

In the the future, we'll take a look at more ways to search Twitter to get the most out of the content, including finding out what new movies are popular on Twitter, how to find personalised content for you, and sites that list all the information available on specific topics.

How do you find the content that matters to you on Twitter? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: Dave Smith