I would love to be able to search my cached timeline from within Tweetie and then save that search. An addition to this would be the option of saving this search to the sidebar with a custom shape/icon. This would reduce search api calls and allow for more refined filtering of users even adding grouping of friends.

The advantages of searching locally means the following:

• There would be no limit to the number of characters in a search. Right now Twitter limits search to 140 characters. No limit means that you could save as many friends/followers into a search as you would like. Being able to save that search would effectively make subgroups a reality.


• Currently Twitter's search api does not return tweets from protected profiles. If you could search in your own timeline you could see all protected tweets. This would allow you to group/search protected tweets and tweeps.


• An internal search of the Tweetie cache would return results faster and would update your saved searches whenever your timeline is refreshed. There would also be no need to be online to filter or group tweets (though none of us ever want to be offline).

This is what it could look like.



The back image shows what normal search to the twitter api (search as it is now) would look like.

The front image shows that the search is searching the cached timeline of that user. The front images also shows what the saved searches would look like to show you if the saved either api searches or timeline searchs.

I know that custom sidebars have been discussed thoroughly but I do feel this is a powerful option. For more info on what I feel is the best option for saved searches in sidebar see this post (Saved Searches in left Sidebar. I think soprani has the best idea.