Twitter is starting to test ways to put its real-time search front and center. It is just bucket-testing the change right now with a few randomly selected users, so you might not see it. But you should expect it to be rolled out to everybody eventually. The search and trend features, which currently exist on a separate page, are being placed on the home page of the test accounts.
Twitter’s search technology comes from its acquisition of Summize, so its integration into Twitter is taking time. But it is a major plank of Twitter’s business strategy. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone writes:
Searching over Twitter messages is like a filter for what is happening right now—it’s an interesting look into the real-time thoughts of people and organizations around the world.
It is more than interesting. Real-time search is a potential game-changer. I tried to explain this in a post on Sunday, “Mining the Thought Stream”. Here is the gist of that post:
What if you could peer into the thoughts of millions of people as they were thinking those thoughts or shortly thereafter? And what if all of these thoughts were immediately available in a database that could be mined easily to tell you what people both individually and in aggregate are thinking right now about any imaginable subject or event? Well, then you’d have a different kind of search engine altogether. A real-time search engine. A what’s-happening-right-now search engine.
In fact, the crude beginnings of this “now” search engine already exists. It is called Twitter, and it is a big reason why new investors poured another $35 million into the two-year-old startup on Friday. . . . For thoughts and events that are happening right now, searching Twitter increasingly brings up better results than searching Google.
By making search more central, Twitter will capture even more of those what’s-happening-right-now searches. I wonder how many Twitter users right now even realize that you can search it. The search feature is not easy to find (it is a link at the bottom of the page). This is an obvious move. It will open up new ways to explore Twitter for users and train them how to do real-time searches on a regular basis.
Nice… it will be great to have that and the search input on the main pages… phew… can’t wait till that’s rolled out.
maybe that is why their site is running slow as a turtle for me.
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It’ll complement google search. maybe that’s twitter’s strategy in the end, selling out, they certainly have the cool factor that youtube did have.
It’s really cool to complement search with twitter, not only you get the current, but you get involved with people related to what you’re looking for, that makes it really useful.
finally. besides posting, searching is the 2nd most useful tool, IMHO.
yup, looking forward to it. the only flip side is that i’ll now spend more time at tweeter
The average ‘knowledge worker’ already spends 30 min to 2 hrs. day trying to find relevant information
Now with real-time search on Twitter you too can have more wasted time to sort or scan through a lot of chaff to get some wheat.
Terrific productivity tool !
i barely use google anymore. i have multiple search feeds included in my feedreader to follow trends and mentions on subject both personal and professional. rightnow search is far more useful (albeit a bit less refined) than the old methods.
I think this is the key to making Twitter profitable. Imagine if they built an Adwords-like system where advertisers could place ads for particular keyword searches. Advertisers have the best chance at an ROI when purchasing long tail keyword phrases. This could could be a game changer for Twitter the PPC industry as a whole.
Very true. I’ve had thoughts of this for quite a while. Its beautiful.
whats twitter?
lol
Erick, Twitter has only a small small fraction of the real time conversation data and that too is fairly person-to-person communication or marketing oriented. There is a MUCH larger set of real time conversation data happening in real time on millions of forums and comment systems. Twitter search is good for twitter but its far from being a true real-time NOW web search.
test
Now if Twitter can somehow present link data in a digestible way, it might almost leapfrog Digg and similar sites in some ways. It’s going to feed itself lots of return traffic as people use the search functions more, too.
Interesting to see how the new/upcoming Twitter search integration will affect Technorati’s traffic, or maybe Google Blog Search’s traffic.
so .. as one who’s never used twitter..
can you look at messages without having to search, or login??
the basic page implies that you can’t…
thanks
To capture thoughts in real time will turn out to be a windfall for Twitter once they finally monetize it. Just product reviews that you know are coming from real people are going to be huge.
When I go looking for a product I search Twitter first to see what is being used by other people before I buy something. Most of the time I end up with a better quality product based on users suggestions.
Folks that are concerned with privacy aren’t going to like that very much – capitalizing on their thoughts.
Scaling real-time search will make scaling Twitter seem like a piece of cake.
You can search twitter right now with monitter.com. You can search three words at a time. Or if you have a twitter account you set up your own twitter newspaper with http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/. The search button is at the top.
Enjoy.
Being able to search conversation and comments in real time has always been the true power of Twitter. Sure its fun to follow your friends, but all the tweets mashed together provides an INCREDIBLE insight into what’s going on, what people like, and what people hate…RIGHT NOW!
You don’t search Twitter. You follow trends. Searching usually ends with an end point. Then you’re done. You don’t do that search over and over again. When you search Twitter, thats exactly what you’re doing. Checking to see what people are saying about your “product” a few times a day.
We builtSummizer specifically to capture these things within seconds of opening it. The entire point is that you save your search terms to check over and over throughout the day. Its amazing what you can learn.
I can’t see Twitter becoming a “mainstream” search engine for two reasons:
1) Scalability (As another comment also touches on)
2) Competitiveness outwith the Twitter platform
Potentially, if more and more sites integrate Twitter into their userbases, then possibly it could evolve into the mainstream. I think it will come down to Google, naturally, as to whether they try to acquire or compete against real-time social updates.
In Twitters about page, they say that it only took them a short while to build their system. With only 25 or so people in their business, can you imagine if Googles executive staff suddenly told their engineering and marketing teams to build a “Twitter” that scales?
There would be no more Twitter.
About time they made this more obvious
So now theres the manual searching via twitter… or the queued / automatic searching via http://www.twitterhawk.com
Get ready people, Twitter is about the breakthrough.
http://twitter.com/cliffdailey
I want it. It’s a pain to change the pages for searchs.
Before I knew about Twitter search, I found Twitter useless. Now, with search, I really get the potential of this app.
Twhirl has a good (not great) search integration.
agreed – real time search can be a game changer.
Searching tweets can also create a human level to general search results. The key will be to filter out uninformative or misinformed tweets.
um…what about people like me who used twitter for a week and found it totally annoying and a complete waste of time? I’m *sure* I’m not the only one. As such, those that use twitter will fit a particular profile, rather than something like google, where its use is virtually ubiquitous. That will skew the search results. Not saying the concept isn’t impressive, but it will have its own limitations.
Here in lies the difference between Twitter and Google. Google is designed more towards the mainstream internet user, and Twitter is designed for the folks in the Bay Area. That may be a little limiting, but facts are facts… Twitter is not a mainstream application, and its mainstream usability sucks.
There are many people like you who can’t stand Twitter… in fact, mainstream people represent the majority here. This is the reason why Twitter has $55 million in funding, and not $500 million. It will still be awhile before Twitter goes mainstream.
We’ve been working on a site called Twackle.com that organizes and makes it easy for users to follow tweets about sports leagues, teams, and athletes without having to do a search.
Take a look and we’d love to hear any feedback you may have.
Waiting for that feature on my account!
Hopefully this comes out soon, I love their search feature.
Never been a great fan of Twitter myself. But, this might just start make me more interested. Here’s what I can see with this:
1. Give me triggers on real-time events. IOW, let me put some keywords/search-strings and trigger me when a certain threshhold or key indicators kick in.
2. Show me in real-time who else is talking about something related to what I’m up to right now = self-organizing human activities based on the activity, in real-time, not the human.
Who needs the NSA?
this is a great end user optimisation move by twiiter to keep their current users happy and also their potential users.
a few more moves like this will see twitter be the google of social media!
… and that’s exactly where it will stay – social media. It won’t move beyond Facebook, and it definitely won’t move beyond Google. It’s not a mainstream service.
I hate to be the one with the trident bursting people’s bubbles, but this is not the next Google… it’s not simple enough to use and understand for the mainstream internet user.
While it may not be “mainstream” as of yet, you cannot deny that Twitter has moved out of the silicon valley echo chamber.
I use Icerocket.com to search twitter b/c I can also see all the blogs in real-time. Their blog search is the best out there.
I used twitter for a week then it got boring, i would rather do something instead of saying that i am doing something.
Inconceivable!
We have put twitter on our new web site.
Allen
I donnt see it. wen is the roll out date planned?
With all the time that’s spent trying to encourage people to do searches and play with gimmicks is any effort or time invested in actually tweeting original content?
Great idea. Can’t wait until it is implemented.
Rich Mesquita
IT
http://www.mype.../ThePublicWorks
Great additiona. Can’t wait until it is implemented.
Twitter should stay with their unique model. It is doing well. Putting up a search engine demands a lot. Pay up your core strength
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I think Twitter Search has enormous potential.
But before they materialize this, they have to work on Japanese support.
Right now, running a Japanese search on Twitter is a big headache.
You can’t use Japanese characters in your hash tag; it won’t display in your search result.
Japan is Twitter’s second largest market. And they have a big investment from Japan, and they can’t ignore Japan.
If they launch the service in the US and then, try to work on Japanese, the problem will be too difficult to solve; they must first solve the japanese support problem and then move on.