Microsoft builds mini Twitter analytics app for Excel 2010 and PowerPivot

Microsoft has released a tool called Microsoft Analytics for Twitter that lets users build their own mini Twitter analytics engine for the Excel 2010 add-in PowerPivot.

This free add-in lets users query Twitter from within Excel 2010 and then build their own dashboard of Twitter statistics with the PowerPivot analytics plug-in. The application has been designed to let users track up to five concurrent search queries including #hashtags, @mentions, keywords, usernames, or any of Twitter's Search Operators, and analyze them with PowerPivot, which includes the ability to gauge the "tone" of a tweet (whether it's favorable or negative) based on customizable parameters.

Though a very cool use of PowerPivot, there are a number of limitations to this application, mostly due to limitations of the Twitter Search API itself. For example, historical search queries are limited to the last 4 - 7 days, and the maximum number of tweets it can list per day is 1500. One particular limitation that could prove to be frustrating is the fact that the Twitter Search API limits traffic rates from machines or domains that are doing a high number of queries during heavy traffic times.

Download Microsoft Analytics for Twitter 1.3.0 in Fileforum now!