For the past several weeks, plenty of my friends have had the new Twitter interface featuring both Search and Trending Topics on the main page, but I had yet to see it. Today, I log in to see that I’m finally special enough to get it as well — only to learn that it’s now officially been rolled out to everyone.
Say hello to the new Twitter.com, it’s a lot like the old one, but with the two important features. Search works great because it’s all done on the page without any reloads. And perhaps the most useful feature is that you can save searches that you do over and over again. Also included in the right hand sidebar is Trending Topics, which keeps track of the hot items people are searching for across Twitter. Not surprisingly, right now Swine Flu takes up the top two spots, with Mexico a little below it.
As Twitter co-founder Biz Stone writes, “Every public update sent to Twitter from anywhere in the world 24/7 can be instantly indexed and made discoverable via our newly launched real-time search.” And he goes on, “With this newly launched feature, Twitter has become something unexpectedly important—a discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now.” Some of us have been saying that for months, if not years, of course, but Stone is right that with Search and Trending Topics now right on the main page, both are more powerful than they’ve ever been.
And it all looks exactly as it should. It keeps Twitter simple, while adding some very key features. And if you don’t like the way they look, you can collapse them for a more traditional, minimal Twitter look.
I wonder if this will affect some of the third party Twitter clients that have been built? After all, these are two core features that people wanted on the site, and now they have them. I know I’ll be tempted to use the site itself even more now. And that’s something Twitter would no doubt be happy with — especially if it keeps putting new sponsored links in the upper part of the right sidebar.
Now if only there were a way to group users together and/or filter them on the site…
nice
Nice, but I’ve been a loyal user of Yauba’s real time search … even before Techcrunch France profiled the French version of the service today http://fr.techc...ite-avant-tout/
This baby pretty much searches twitter + everything else imaginable
Typical TechCrunch… oops!! TwitterCrunch…
How come you guys didn’t write about the lack of user loyalty???
Here’s the link from CNET.com
http://news.cne...0229342-62.html
And here’s a brief:
Some interesting data from Nielsen suggests that Twitter, despite the hype and meteoric growth, appears to have a user loyalty problem, an issue not suffered by Facebook or MySpace, the two behemoths of social networking.
Considering the viral nature of Twitter, I was a bit surprised to see that users weren’t more loyal. On the other hand, sites like Facebook and MySpace offer a lot more functions that facilitate communication on many levels, not just through messaging.
Currently, more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent. For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention.
Is this Twitter’s Achilles’ heel, where there aren’t enough reasons to come back to the service, or, is audience retention naturally lower because Twitter only offers one thing to do in comparison to the other services?
BTW, search for keyword: “twitter crap” on twitter…
and you will find how many people love twitter … Ironic isn’t it????
Google just buy them already. Pleasssseeee
I agree.
you can have a look at http://www.tweetag.com search engine and specific filtering : http://europatweets.eu/
The trends are the most interesting part of Twitter. It’s probably what scares Google the most. Good writeup. Wait till you see my new Twitter + Google search startup
I anxiously await that Andrew
Andrew, you are way too late.
The twitter + Google search startup is already here … it is called http://www.yauba.com.
Completely underwhelmed by yauba. What a waste of a click.
Yauba rocks. I’ve used it ever since it was profiled in the Wall Street Journal India when the late alpha version first launched.
Their alpha is better than most startups’ full releases.
Yauba is superb. As the dude above says, it -in its alpha state – is certainly better than many full releases….
Saw hello
Is it me or is search much faster now ?
they give new meaning to the concept of “eventually consistent”. Seems twitter is still struggling with the architecture of the system. it is “faster” because it is clearly not searching the same index space. i tried a few obscure searches that still pull up results in search.twitter.com but will very “quickly” return nada in the new interface.
btw, the design is very nice. stick that in your spreadsheet Marissa
)
Hah. Happy to have this in Twitter also, MG is funny.
Also, commenting on TechCruch from Tweetie (iPhone) is difficult and it pisses me off everytime I click a link and want to comment. No one to blame, just bitching.
Is it impossible or just difficult?
It will be ditched if it is difficult. So, difficult *is* impossible.
Save search too
I agree with Andrew. Twitter is definitely seeing a tipping point. It will be interesting to see what happens.
the interface guy is doing awesome work there. i like this new addition saves me a lot of hassle of going to another page.
They’re stepping up!
Wow, I was just wondering why there was no post on Twitter today in TC. Now, here you go.
Jokes apart, I simply love Twitter. But I don’t really see the real use of twitter search that searches the tweets. Rather, Twitter should search web pages that are shared in those tweets. That’ll be the ultimate real time search. I believe many players do this, and my favorite is http://www.boilingpage.com. They show the hottest pages on the web based on how popular they are in Twitter. Neat.
Looks like BoilingPage has introduced a widget that can be placed in any page to stream the hottest pages on the web. Quite a powerful idea. Here’s the widget:
Hmm .. looks interesting, I like their search results. I searched for ’swine flu’ and pretty interesting links showed up: http://boilingp...earch=swine+flu
And here’s the widget link (what Willy left incomplete): http://boilingp...ex.php?p=widget
Funny how Twitter’s redesigns are even bigger than Facebook’s now. Trending Topics & Search now brings Twitter one step closer to being the dashboard for the Web’s true pulse, and it turns them essential to the Twitter experience.
I think this will definitely reduce my TweetDeck use a bit. I will still use it for its real-time alerts and being able to update to FB but this update is definitely a good one.
That’s fabulous, I like it.
Now this is something that really changes search as we know it and Google better step up. Google still has a huge foothold in the industry but this will bring Twitter as a leader in search “real time”.
And imagine if/when they bring ads! With Twitter being real time, imagine if ads can change which can be more specific and targeted to a personal profile or to a person snippets of tweets.
It’s good for the advertiser because their ad spend is used according to their chosen keywords. And if Twitter has a system to reward a “tweeter” much like Google rewards webmasters and gives them a cut. Then everyone wins…. ahhh, if only… (maybe I’m stepping ahead of myself).
Maybe, Google really need to buy Twitter – or vice versa. Or they need both.
Just my two cents,
Twitter: @ArmandAguillon
I really like it. They’ve been testing it for awhile at different times and I’m glad it’s finally released.
The changes to the interface are definitely sweet, as is the ability to save searches. My only suggestion for improvements would be built in filters for even more targeted searching. I wrote about this recently in relation to Twitter vs. Google search.
Unless you like lame or racist jokes, you need to add a lot of filters, such as -bacon -mexico. What works even better is adding words like cancel or “school closing” to see the real affect on people’s lives.
Ba ba ba ba ba….I’m lovin’ it!
About time! I’ve been waiting way to long to get this feature!
Where on Techcrunch are they discussing the latest analysis from Nielsen Online on Twitter usage patterns? I haven’t seen the post
Seems like an appropriate discussion for one of the daily Twitter articles from T.C.
Yes, I have been seen this feature on and off, you can also get it automatically by getting GreaseMonkey Script too, also check out the new real-time Twitter stumbler StumbleTweets.
Wait til they monetize on trends.
yeah its great!!!
follow me at twitter.com/austin908 and I will follow you back
breaking News: Twitter’s valuation has just risen to 13.2 billion from 13 billion
Web 2.0 not a bubble. http://iamned.com/blog/ keep buying stocks and make money
They are very careful about the feature set, obviously. But this one is nice move, I think.
It doesn’t work properly. I tried a search for a post I made less than a month ago and it’s not there. Even the two posts I made two days ago are not found.
All this talk about the new Twitter search might be useful if it actually worked properly, but it doesn’t, so I classify it as a lame system that still doesn’t work.
How about an EXPLANATION from Twitter telling us why it doesn’t work, and what its expected limitations are supposed to be when they actually get it working?
Well since twitter.com doesn’t even load half the time, I will stick to search.twitter.com which manages to avoid the fail-whale and load 100x faster. I also find myself searching friendfeed a lot more now.
right on, and hope iPhone apps will follow along.
great application and utility that actually creates value. now we can cut through the litter that’s all over twitter, or so I hope.
WOW! Did Twitter read my blog post comments?
In a recent article, I stated that Twitter had jumped the shark. In the comments section, I further noted that for Twitter to bring use and relevance back to it’s universe, it needed to be able to bring focus and scope to the information.
“For Twitter to focus our signal, it must decipher the care and concern of the captured collective community. Bubbling up the thought of what most concerns us, to what is most useful for our concern.
Twitter simply gave us a simple platform to distill our thoughts into a direct and simple form. A focused form. A dose of our thought, highly concentrate.
Twitter, if you’re listening, listen to Phil. Listen to your people. Capture the collective consciousness, give us options as to what filter of focus we want to see the world through, and deliver the truth and relevance hiding within your pages.”
Well Twitter, you listen.
You can read the full article here:
http://www.brad...ne-for-twitter/
Right now twitter is negotiating with google to be it’s exclusive search advertiser. The deal is worth almost $1 billion in revenue to Twitter over 2 years. Google has the advertiser relationships while twitter has the momentum. Google is also using negotiations to determine a valuation for Twitter and won’t acquire but take a minority interest in Twitter.
I have thrown my hat into the ring of improved searches with my search service at searchmotive.com. I’d welcome feedback from anyone regarding what could be done to make the service more useful for all. Thanks!
- Jason Gregory
@jag959
searchmotive.com
Completely underwhelmed by yauba. What a waste of a click.
right on, and hope iPhone apps will follow along.