How to Track a Keyword on Twitter

Twitter is a suitable tool for learning about the habits of Internet users. You can watch conversations or participate in your own on Twitter. You can watch the public timeline, trying to find people with similar interests. You can even track a keyword on Twitter to see what other people are saying about a given topic.

Instructions

1. Choose the keyword or words you want to track on Twitter. You can track as many keywords as you want, but you can only enter one of those keywords at a time.

2. Type "track WORD" where WORD is the keyword you want to track. You can type this from the Twitter web interface, your instant messaging program, your cell phone or even a third-party Twitter interface application such as Twhirl. If you want to track multiple keywords, repeat this process until you're tracking all the keywords you want.

3. Track your own updates by typing "track USERNAME" where USERNAME is your Twitter ID. You can also track other users' updates in this way.

4. Put "tracks" into the interface to get a list of all the keywords you're tracking right now.

5. Enter "untrack WORD" to stop tracking a certain keyword. You can stop tracking all keywords as well. To stop all tracking, type "untrack all."

Tips & Warnings

• Tracking keywords in this way only tracks when the keyword is entered from that moment forward. To search for previous Twitter posts using a specific keyword, you can use a service like Tweet Scan. Tweet Scan is available from the Tweet Scan homepage.

Resources

• Tweet Scan website