Ask HN: When do you use Twitter or other real-time search?

5 points by gpp 14 years ago | 5 comments

Before I purchase something online especially Amazon, I noticed I use Twitter search for promo/discount code to get fresh and working code. Google usually returns old and not working promotion code for discounts.

I was wondering when or what do you use Twitter or other real-time search for?

seanmccann 14 years ago |

One time I was in San Francisco and we felt a fairly big shake. We were in an old building and were not certain if it was an earthquake. A quick search on Twitter showed that it was in fact and earthqake and tweets mentioned specific details about it. I looked on sfgate.com and they still didn't have anything posts (since it was just second after it happened).

revorad 14 years ago |

I use Twitter to check for breaking news and also doing one-on-one market research.

delip 14 years ago |

To find out what people are saying about any specific topic/ product/ service.

virmundi 14 years ago |

I use Twitter to tell if Netflix is down or if it's just my connection.

diolpah 14 years ago |

Whenever we have a service outage from one of our providers( dns, payment gateway, AWS, etc )we check twitter to determine if it is widespread to more than just us. It is almost always more timely than the providers' own status pages.