Just about a year ago, Twazzup launched one of the more interesting Twitter search engines and one month ago, it became one of the first services to get access to Twitter’s full firehose stream. Today, the company is launching its first new service based on this full Twitter stream: Twazzup Insights. Insights is a real-time Twitter analytics service that displays a lot of interesting data about any given keyword, as well as a list of the most influential Twitter users that use this keyword. In addition, Twazzup is also launching its web-based Twitter client Twazzup Reader out of beta.

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Twazzup Insights

The new analytics service is still in private alpha testing, but a couple of teaser reports on the site already show the application’s potential. Besides displaying the number of tweets and retweets about a given keyword per hour, the service also highlights the top links about this topic, as well as a list of the top influencers, as well as the most often used hashtags and other keywords in these tweets. In addition, Twazzup Insights also performs a basic sentiment analysis on these tweets.

If you would like to get early access to this service, you can use the request form on Twazzup Insights, or send an email to info[at]twazzup[dot]com.

Twazzup Reader

Twazzup Reader looks similar to Brizzly, but offers a number of interesting features that set it apart from the competition. Besides offering all the standard Twitter features (lists, search etc.), Twazzup Reader also shows images and short text snippets from all the links that appear in your stream. In addition, you can also filter every stream, including lists and persistent searches, by posts with images and videos. Whenever you are feeling especially helpful, you can also highlight all the messages that include a question.

Overall, Twazzup Reader is a very capable web-based Twitter client and definitely worth a try.

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For power users, the Twitter website is often just a thing of the past. We’ve moved on to third party interfaces with multiple columns, special user list navigation, search, and so on. But what about the novice user that wants something more than Twitter.com?

For that, there’s Brizzly, a web-based Twitter client that today is announcing the release of its awaited iPhone app, along with a neat feature or two.

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The web-based version of Brizzly takes the Twitter stream and opens it up for the average user. It expands shortened links into full URLs, making it easier to know what you’re clicking on, and turns links to YouTube videos or images into just that – embedded images and videos. In a way, it takes the guess work out of Twitter.

Today, the company is releasing a full-featured iPhone app that was built off of the skeleton of Birdfeed, the company acquired by Brizzly last fall. The app is a simple and doesn’t offer some of the opening up of Twitter that you find on the website, but that would be difficult for an iPhone app to do, with it’s limited real estate. Links are shortened and images hidden behind links, but that’s as expected. Still, it handles multiple accounts, each of which you can view in its own stream. It also supports lists, mentions and DMs – all the standard stuff you would expect.

As we mentioned the last time we wrote about Brizzly, when the company added Facebook to its stream, the tool tries to make the experience of twitter simple for the non-geek. In that way, it interprets and explains Twitter Trends, the hashtags that are most popular at a given time. The Brizzly staff looks at hashtags and writes up a quick little blurb that explains what the Trends are that day and why. The iPhone app prominently contains these guides as a separate tab called “News”.

Brizzly is expanding on this trend explanation feature with its launch of the Brizzly Guide on its website. The Guide gives each of these trends its own page, which is a “permanent source for up-to-date information on topics people are talking about,” it says in its press release. In addition giving these explanations a permanent home, Brizzly has acquired WikiRank, a visualization web application based on Wikipedia data. It will be “integrating WikiRank technology into the Brizzly Guide” the company says in its press release. We can only wonder what will come of that, but it sounds interesting.

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Google Reader is becoming the online companion to and synchronization platform for NewsGator’s RSS readers including FeedDemon and NetNewsWire. Users have until August 31 to migrate to Google Reader, when NewsGator will shut down NewsGator Online.

To migrate RSS subscriptions, FeedDemon/NetNewsWire users will need to: 

1. Download the latest version of FeedDemon/NetNewsWire

2. Sign up for a Google Reader account

3. Associate the Google Reader account with the FeedDemon/NetNewsWire product (A step-by-step wizard is provided within the new version of FeedDemon/NetNewsWire

There are different instructions for other NewsGator products here. NewsGator says on the company blog:

Users of FeedDemon, NetNewsWire for Mac, and NetNewsWire for the iPhone will have 30 days to download new versions of these applications that can synchronize with Google Reader. Syncing will give you a consistent reading experience across your PC, Mac, iPhone, and web browser. For example, if you add a new RSS feed, organize your folders, or mark some stories as read on one device, the changes will immediately reflect across the others.  Users of NewsGator Go! can select from the mobile RSS reader options that synchronize with Google Reader.
 
The bottom line for you: we keep improving our client applications, and now you can sync with and use the web based RSS reader you’ve been asking for.  We’ve been working with the Google team to make these changes as smooth as possible, and they are thrilled to welcome all NewsGator users to the Reader family.

New versions of FeedDemon and NetNewsWire are currently available, and a new version of NetNewsWire for the iPhone will be available soon. Check out the FAQ page for more information about changes to NewsGator’s RSS reader products.