As new forms of technology and
social media arise, we sometimes realize that we need new methods to discover
and find them. Using a standard search engine such as Google or Bing might not
always be the best way to search for hashtags or discover new apps. That is why
Quixey and Hshtags were developed.
There are many ways to find an app
that you already know about. And all the app stores have general categories.
But what if you want an app that does something specific, but don’t know of
any. That is where Quixey comes in.
Quixey’s main function is to allow
you to search for a feature that you want in an app, and it will pull up apps
that have it. Before you search you can select the type of mobile device you
use. Then type in any search, for ex. “learn coding” and a bunch of apps will
come up, with the free ones first. You can click on the name of the app to
learn more about it or download it directly from Quixey. Other features include
tabs for:
- Trending – see apps that are
trending
- Browse – Browse apps in a
variety of categories
- Sample – You want to try out
this search engine but your mind goes blank and you can’t think of a
query. Here you can find sample queries to try the engine and there is a
good chance that you may stumble onto one that really does interest you.
You can also set up an account in
Quixey. Then, if you find any apps that interest you but you don’t want to
download them right away, you can bookmark them right in Quixey.
Back in the day, when hashtags were
only used on Twitter, it was possible to do a hashtag search through Twitter
search and come up with fairly good results. However hashtags have spread their
wings and are on almost all social media channels now. Hashtags was created so
that you could do a hashtag search and find results from social media sites far
and wide.
You do not need an account to use
Hashtags, but you do need one to save your results. Once I saw the results I was
getting, I highly recommend setting up a free account.
My first search was #DowntonAbbey. I
got results from Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Vimeo, YouTube and Flickr that
fill up a page. This page is now saved and I can go back to it and watch the
videos, read the tweets, etc when I have time. I am also shown other hashtags
that are used for Downton Abbey, in case I want to search them also, and
amazingly, my saved list is constantly updated! I found this great video on my
page so I wanted to share it with other Downton fans:
This is an amazing tool. In addition
to having fun with it like I did with Downton Abbey, Hashtags can be put to
great use for research. Students, reporters, and anyone researching a topic can
search for it with a hashtag in the Hshtag search engine and quickly find materials
that it might have taken them hours to find otherwise.
Give these two new specialty search engines a try. They are both free, fun and give you great results. I highly recommend both of these new search engines for apps and hashtags, Quixey and Hashtags.