Real-time discovery of Twitter images with Hashalbum

One of Twitter's greatest strengths is the sheer wealth of data that it produces. Like the Internet itself, though, without search engines, that data is all but inaccessible. Few would argue that Google defined the Internet that we use today, and likewise it is only through ingenious indexing that the Twitter fire hose will ultimately become useful. Which brings me neatly onto Hashalbum, a site that simply searches Twitter for a hashtag (like #tsa), and shows you all of the images contained in that data set.

It's a stupidly simple idea that instantly exposes a treasure trove of funny, poignant and timely images. Supposedly the albums update in real-time, but I can't confirm that -- and I also don't know how much of the Twitter fire hose Hashalbum actually parses. Other than letting you search by hashtag, the site does nothing else.

Of course, because the results are unfiltered and the engine is completely 'dumb' (there's no analysis of the images themselves), the quality of the searches isn't very high. Just like Twitter, Hashalbum produces a stream of random, stream-of-consciousness images -- it's still down to you to pick out the interesting bits, but hey, that's Twitter!

Real-time discovery of Twitter images with Hashalbum originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 06:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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