Twing

Twing is a vertical search engine specializing in internet forum content. While vertical searches focus on particular types of content, such as web, blogs, images, and so forth, Twing in particular is a forum search service that seeks out communities based on common forum formats.

The Twing robot, (called Twingbot), is optimized to understand the particular formats of Internet Forums, (a.k.a. bulletin boards or discussion groups.) While the Twing product was open to the world in January 2008, the Twingbot robot had been observed 'in the wild' at least several months earlier.

Besides creating an index specifically suited to forum search and content, Twing is attempting to utilize interface concepts such as faceted search and filtering in the search engine results pages, (SERPs). These are advanced search methods that attempt to assist users with their information foraging efforts by keeping them on an information scent trail.

Category filters, based on the directory taxonomy, are one of the filtering methods available. This is an attempt to solve the generalized search problem of ambiguity that often occurs in search results as well as forum search results. For example, a search for the word "bass" on would return a disambiguation page to determine if the phrase in this case means a musical instrument, a company name, part of a place name, a beverage, or other possible meanings. While adding key terms to a search may sometimes collapse ambiguities, doing so can also exclude things of value. So category filters can help solve the problem of ambiguity in search engine results, whether such search engines are forum search specific or not.

Twing: the company
Twing is a start-up division of Accoona Corp. The division operates under its own management, yet leverages the resources of the larger parent company. The company is located in Jersey City, New Jersey and operates data centers in multiple locations around the world.

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