Often I like to read tweets on a particular topic in the form of a hash tag, especially a live event I am attending or watching. I find this to be one of the most useful things about Twitter. To do this, I have two requirements: realtime stream without having to refresh, and text big enough to read from a few feet away. Tweetdeck is up to the task on the first requirement. You can have lots of columns open on different searches, receive notifications and even see your main feed and Facebook updates. But there is no way to enlarge the text size in the Tweetdeck client (there’s a particularly flamey thread on their support forum about that right now).
Yesterday I stumbled upon Monitter. It’s a website that let’s you define up three realtime twitter columns based on search, and since it’s a website, you can increase the text size to your heart’s content. Another great thing about it is that you don’t even have to have a Twitter account to use it. You can be a total voyeur and just listen to the conversation without joining in. Another nifty feature is that it uses location – you can search for tweets a certain nunber of miles/kilometers from your location. I think Monitter is worth a look.
Update: I totally forgot about TweetTabs when I wrote this post. It is similar to Monitter in that it allows you to have multiple auto-refreshing columns open based on Twitter searches. It also displays clickable Twitter trends at the top of the page. It does not have the location-based search that Monitter does, which I really like. But it does have the advantage of displaying more than three columns (as many as you want, actually) and has a search feature.
