Twitter's been around since 2006. If it was a kid, Twitter would be in 2nd grade, and totally grounded for having such a potty mouth. But trying to search through old tweets is a major frustration, because Twitter's built-in search function favors messages it thinks are newest and most relevant. Topsy changes all that, with a robust search setup that, as of today, has indexed every tweet ever tweeted.
How many pieces of content is that? Approximately 425 billion, counting things like pictures and links. Searching through the dustbin of old tweets is free — Topsy makes its money on subscription-based analytics capabilities aimed at marketing and media types. And while you may not want to relive the Twitterverse's reaction to the VMAs (sorry to bring that up), it's really interesting to dig in and see how we use social media to react to serious events. [The New York Times]