Greplin: One-stop search through your social network stream and cloud data

Are you starting to have trouble tracking your information across social networks, the Web and into the cloud? If you're a power user who can't always resist a shiny, new, useful -- or just plain cool -- Web app, the folks behind Greplin are betting that you'd like to get a handle on all that scattered data.

The idea has appeal even for those who don't need to track a widespread social network across multiple services, but who do have several ways for storing information they access (and share) at home, in the office and on the road. In my case, some is in Google Docs, more has been saved to Evernote, and lately I've started using Dropbox to sync some local files so they're available to me anywhere.

Then there are my social networks. I've got useful connections on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn; but even with a desktop client like TweetDeck that aggregates networks, it's not easy to cull through multiple streams to find information on a particular topic. And none of that social media info is tied in with data of my own.

With your permission, Greplin will search through your data in up to seven different sites for free: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox and LinkedIn. A free account also comes with up to 200M of storage for the search index. (Paid accounts get more storage and a few more services, such as Evernote and Google Apps. More services, such as Basecamp and Google Reader, are in the work).

It's exceptionally convenient, but has one problem: Do I really want a startup with no track record having access to so much of my aggregated data? Even with a pedigree of $4 million venture funding from Sequoia Capital? Curiosity finally overcame my privacy paranoia, and I signed in after getting notified that Greplin had finally opened to more beta testers. (My exclusive status as a beta tester was short lived, though; the site is now public, Greplin tweeted).

Greplin's interface is simple, straightforward and speedy. You sign up for an account on Greplin.com and select which services you'd like included (see screen shots below). Wait for it to build an index, then enter your search terms. You've got the option of filtering search results by people, streams, messages and files, as well as by individual services. These choices are available from a dropdown menu next to the main search bar instead of having to click off to an advanced search page.

To start off, I added my Twitter account (public anyway) and Google Docs (little sensitive in there). With 3,152 documents indexed, including my 126M of storage and 500 or so files in Google Docs, I used less than 5% of my allotted storage.

My test searches executed extremely quickly, apparently fixing problems reported by earlier beta testers. Results are grouped by type (streams, files) and also indicate originating service (and file type where appropriate), with search terms highlighted in yellow.

The Twitter search is fantastic. If you use Greplin for nothing else, I'd highly recommend it for keeping up with your Twitter stream. I was surprised to see it pull up results from a tweet I'd done back in July, given that Twitter's own search doesn't go back nearly that far. It's a quick and elegant way to search the Twitter users you follow (as well as your own tweets) -- certainly better than I've found TweetDeck's to be.

Greplin's search results differed a bit from the Google Docs internal search. One major plus for searching within Google Docs itself: Google will index your uploaded PDFs, while Greplin does not. Greplin didn't find one term that was part of the title of a PDF, which is somewhat less forgivable than an inability to parse the actual PDF (it missed one PDF with the word in the title surrounded by dashes, but found another that used underscores).

It also appears that Greplin's search is more literal than Google's, which can be an advantage or disadvantage depending on whether you seek an exact match. For example, a search for "landscapes" scored results within Google Docs for documents that contain the word "landscape," but not in Greplin.

Interestingly, I got no matches on either Greplin or Google Docs when searching for one specific document -- until I remembered that the info was actually stored within Evernote. Which spoke to my need for a service like Greplin.

Bottom line? Before Greplin, I'd already started grappling with the dilemma of how to deal with important personal data I'd sprinkled across multiple locations. Greplin probably isn't the complete answer for that -- it certainly would have been better to have a coherent storage strategy at the start. And despite Greplin's appeal, it will be awhile if ever before I'd trust any startup with sensitive information such as e-mail (in fact, I still won't even trust Gmail with messages that must truly be private).

That said, though, the service clearly fills a need. In an era of Web/cloud services and social networks, it's highly unlikely any power user will store all important data in one place. Yet the data isn't as useful as it could be if you can't find what you're looking for when you need it.

Greplin appears to have some sleek technology behind it, and I hope its new round of venture financing helps it get even better over time. Meanwhile, I await more details on how far we can trust the company to keep information private and secure before adding too many more services to be indexed.

Greplin screenshots

Sharon Machlis is online managing editor at Computerworld. Her e-mail address is smachlis@computerworld.com. You can follow her on Twitter @sharon000, on Facebook or by subscribing to her RSS feeds:
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