Yahoo! Sideline is a desktop client for Twitter searches

Yahoo! has launched a new application that lets you keep track of trends and search terms in Twitter from your desktop. While Yahoo! Sideline is based on Adobe AIR, it's not a full fledged desktop client for Twitter like Twhirl or Tweetdeck.It doesn't let you send messages or keep track of tweets from your friends. Instead, Sideline lets you enter search terms and see messages from all Twitter users using those terms.

You can also create Search Groups with multiple terms. For instance, say you wanted to track everything said about Download Squad. You could create a group called Download Squad and then enter "download squad," "downloadsquad," "bradlinder," "leematthews," "film_girl," "grobertson," "strutting" and other terms. Sideline displays messages matching all of those terms and refreshes the search at regular intervals.

There's also a Trends area where you can see topics that are popular across the Twitter network at the moment.

Overall, Sideline is kind of cool, but it doesn't feel like something that needs to be a desktop application. You can create the same searches using Twitter's Advanced Search tool. I suppose if you really, really want real-time notifications alerting you whenever someone mentions your name, your web site's name, or a dozen other search terms, Sideline can come in handy. But for the rest of us, a normal Twitter client that lets you send and receive messages seems more useful.

[via TechCrunch]

Tags: adobe-air, freeware, search, twitter, yahoo-sideline