On Wednesday, January 18th, 2012, tens of millions of internet users around the world protested against SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) in their tweets,  Facebook updates, emails and blog posts.

Within 16 hours of the blackout, some 2.4 million SOPA-related tweets were submitted on Twitter (surpassing the 2 million tweets related to Occupy Wall Street on November 15). By itself, the #WikipediaBlackout hashtag constituted 1 percent of all tweets made on that day.

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In just five years Twitter has become a massively important tool and resource for the way that hundreds of millions of people share news, stories, thoughts and updates with friends, colleagues, family, brands, peers and clients around the world. Thanks to retweets, replies and direct messages, this information spreads at an incredible speed.

Over on the official Twitter blog, there’s a new look at this global pulse, and the way it moves and grows, particularly in light of the role that Twitter plays in coverage of major world events such as the 2010 World Cup, the royal wedding and the March 11 earthquake in Japan.

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I’ve written in more detail about Twitter search before but the service has a neat feature that allows you to use emoticons (aka smilies) to filter your results, and I wanted to touch upon that in this article.

Let’s use the recently-launched iPad 2 as an example. At the time of writing, here’s a search for positive mentions of the device.

And here’s a search for negative.

Quite a difference. The item being searched for is identical, but because we used in the first search, and in the second, Twitter looks at the database with two kinds of eyes, and we end up with very different results.

What’s clever about this emotional search facility is it recognises similar smilies in the results – for example, will also return tweets that use and . Hence, it’s less that Twitter search is looking for specifically, but rather is interpreting and applying that as a kind of sentiment filter.

This is obviously of huge benefit for brands and marketers, especially around new product and service launches. Celebrities and producers could use this service to track reactions to movies, TV shows and pop albums. Politicians could gauge the response to bills and speeches. Restaurants can use variations on this search to keep dibs on their customers… and how well that new (and very expensive) head chef is working out.

The best part? In my experience it’s really underused, so it’s a fantastic (and free) way to grab an important advantage over your competition. And PS: You can track reactions to their products and services, too.