An Awesome Real Time Image Search Engine Twicsy!

In addition to twitter and facbook, here is another great social media site who has played an important role to get people of Haiti and Iran to get their voice out. The site is twicsy, a startup right here in Washington, DC.

What’s unique about twicsy that others missing, is their bad ass real-time image search which has got me glued to them since their launch back in June of last year, shortly after disputed presidential election in Iran where no media were allowed in the country.

. Real Time image search for Haiti
. Real Time image search for Iran

For anything you query, they pull up related images that have been shared on Twitter. You can sort them by time or by relevance. The results are awesome – pretty solid! Instead of using Twitter’s search API, they grab the images from twitter by indexing all tweets with image links and populates them from that.

The site features a main page with all image shared over Twicsy with the default images from top trending topics for Pics on Twicsy. The images shown on the homepage are based on contextual tags and user analysis which is one of their main advantages over any site I have ever experienced.

Speaking of Haiti, I implore you to help out by donating whatever you can.

Those of you still looking for a trustable source to donate money, here are a couple of suggestions that I personally investigated their legitimacy:

Via Text:
You can donate $10 to the Red Cross by texting HAITI to 90999 and text “YELE” to 501501 to donate $5 to Yele Haiti’s efforts

Via Online:
. Haiti Earthquake Relief – World Vision
. Haiti Earthquake Relief – Doctors Without Border

. If you are a non-US resident click here.

Still don’t trust any of them? If you live in DC, you can drop supplies and money at the Embassy of Haiti this Sunday. I’m sure those at the Embassy would be encouraged to see a lot of us come, and it’s a great way to observe the birthday of Martin Luther King.

Our best wishes to the victims of such devastating natural disaster, the Haitian people and their families.