I am trying to create a web application which have a similar functionality with Google Alerts. (by similar I mean, the user can provide their email address for the alert to be sent to, daily or hourly) The only limitation is that it only gives alerts to user based on a certain keyword or hashtag. I think that I have found the fundamental API needed for this web application.

https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1/get/search

The problem is I still don't know all the web technologies needed for this application to work properly. For example, Do I have to store all of the searched keywords in database? Do I have to keep pooling ajax request all the time in order to keep my database updated? What if the keyword the user provided is very popular right now that might have thousands of tweets just in an hour (not to mention, there might be several emails that request several trending topics)?

By the way, I am trying to build this application using PHP. So please let me know, what kind of techniques I need to learn for such web app (and some references maybe)? Any kind of help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance :)

Regards,

Felix Perdana