beyond 140 for @lewmoorman

Lew - nice post. As you know, I am a huge believer in the power of Twitter, and similar social media. Glad to see a real world example of how it's changing perspectives.

Lew, very well put, IMHO. I think you are spot-on.

I agree that Twitter Search has massive potential. Since Summize is the only Twitter-related product Twitter has bothered to acquire, it seems the guys at Twitter probably agree.

If organic search+search advertising was the "first big thing" on the internet, it's now almost too obvious that something like Twitter Search will form the basis of the "next big thing" (once it's monetized). Although I'm not sure I think it will be as wildly profitable as Google has been..

Your post gave me some ideas about how the Twitter Search serps could be improved.. maybe some kind of amplification (Techmeme-style) or grouping of retweeted URLs or sentiments.. a faster visual indication of how important a particular twitter meme is.

Interestingly, no one's really talking much about FriendFeed search, which is maybe even more promising.

anyhow, it'll be fascinating to watch this stuff materialize.

Lew, great post. I posted a somewhat contradictory viewpoint here: http://tinyurl.com/da3zmz

I don't think this will kill Google, but I do I agree with you that this is best way for Twitter to make money, if it doesn't want to charge users. It's a good method because, the same as with Google, when people search for something that is what they want - Google style adwords would work well I think.

I often use twitter search to get people's reactions to a current event - for example the other day I was looking for reactions to the Tennis final between Nadal and Federer (Nadal won). Though they could do with improving the results a little. For example they could identify people who are experts (i.e. people who twitter about tennis a lot) or by summarising the main view points with a tag cloud or highlighting tweets from notable/famous people.

One problem maybe that some other company will do this across several services including Twitter - though if the Twitter data is important enough to have, then Twitter could just charge a fee to other company to access to it's real-time API.

Thanks for the comments. Few additional observations:

1. No way twitter kills google. Google is synonymous with search. It is the generic. That will not change. The issue is twitter has the power to siphon off some share and information to improve google or power a competitor.

2. Twitter is also the generic and ensuring they remain the generic and create MASS adoption has to be business plan goal #1. Without it there value is limited. But, I think they are a long way down this path and i don't see many other services competing well (even friendfeed).

3. How does Twitter monetize this? Now that is a good question. Twitter search is what it is. They can advertise there and make money. The real value is in the human powered index they are creating. They have a few options: compete or power (ie sell the data to someone). I would lean to the latter - I bet ballmer would overpay!

I agree Twitter will be the real-time version of Google. One advantage they have is that they are both the search engine and the platform.

"The system of followers is a market based system that guarantees integrity. If you simply use twitter to sell your agenda, it won’t be long until you have no followers."

Unless spammers can figure out a way to create Twitter accounts using their botnets. Just pointing out that the Twitter search engine will have similar challenges of separating wheat from chaff.

Someone who gets the value of the twitter feed data. I've been preaching this very thing ever since I ran my first search on summize (now search.twitter.com). The data in twitter is absolutely priceless.

Good point. That's exactly why we will be launching Zcapes next Sunday in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress. People know better then Google. With Zcapes you will be able to make mobile mini blogs for objects and events. And include, amongst others, the twitter stream, the rss news and flickr feeds. When you explore all the Zcapes you will find information that is relevant for your context. Exactly why you are using twitter search next to google search. People know better the Google. Our beta is at http://m.zcapes.com see it on yr mobile. More to come next sunday.

If search.twitter (not Twitter) become a threat, google shall turn to demonstrate tweets in its results page. Twitter don't have the guts to block the Google-bot.

I agree with you. Twitter was at first a trivial tool. when they launched the search page, everything crystallized. I just wish they would promote search page a little. there's no way a newbie would find it

It's all about sourcing: You source where the information you need can be found. Some people place information in places because the interface is better, the results faster or simply because they're lemmings and others do it. Twitter is an "it" but it's too soon to know if Twitter is THE "it"...

Nice article, I only wrote an article yesterday on the same thing. But do you really think Twitter could ever compete with the Mother Google? http://blog.freshegg.com/is-twitter-taking-away-business-from-google_657/

Couldn't agree more with this post. The power of Twitter search is something that Google is missing. But what we know about Google is that they are just smarter than everyone else when it comes to dominating search. So... once Twitter really does become a viable option for search, Google will gobble them up.

Best bet would be for Yahoo or MS to buy them first. Will be VERY hard to replicate what Twitter has. Google has the best product today, which is why people use it. Facebook has the people; you can't really leave Facebook anymore and switch unless all your friends to. Combine those two things (in concept, not numbers) and you have Twitter. It has a hard switching cost and has a search component that is relevant. Powerful.

L'il Twitter a threat to the "G" Borg? Indeed!

For mois, Twitter, plus FriendFeed is the "live web"..only gets better everyday. Comment found and created "inside Twitter". eom.

Speaking of the gold data, Google track clicks on its search results to take advantage of the crowd wisdom and make its results more relevant.

Twitter should be tracking the clicks on links included in the tweets. In fact I'm amazed that they don't.

Also, here's a great companion article by Bernard Lunn of ReadWriteWeb who was prompted by "gmail down" search on Twitter vs. Google:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/discovering_power_of_twitter_search.php

Cheers,

-d.

Dmitri Eroshenko
Founder and CEO, Relenta

http://www.relenta.com

I read lots and lots of blogs everyday at work, and I was realizing this morning that I have started to look at my twitter communities posts first for news and interesting articles, rather than my blog reader. It's becoming a much better and quicker way to get the days top stories. Interesting take.

Lynne
www.snapstream.com/enterprise

Actually, you make a better case for Google buying Twitter, and using it as yet one more way to grade links.

I will say this is one of the more intriguing Twitter biz model suggestions/predictions I've seen to date. There's a lot of truth to what you're saying. However, I see a glaring hole...

Data will skew toward whatever Twitter's audience is, and more importantly, whatever Twitter's highly-active audience likes. In other words, we'll have a Digg-power-user-esqe skew in the results, in which we can expect people like Scoble, Arrington and their legions to lord over the search results.

This may not matter for 'major' news, but when you get beyond the highly active topics the service will likely be splitting hairs. Link-A got 2 tweets and 1 retweet, Link-B got 1 tweet and 2 retweets, etc. I can see relevance falling off very quickly (*ahem*Technorati*cough*).

None the less this is good info. For breaking news I will admit Twitter can be useful, but a credible threat to Google might be going too far.

I don't know if Twitter is a threat to Google, but I do completely agree that Twitter is a powerful search tool. I use Twitter search to determine public opinion of my various clients on a daily/weekly basis. When consulting with big corporations who have not dabbled in social media at all- it's a fun exercise to pull up Twitter Search and show them what people are saying- in real time.

On that note- Twitter shows public trends in opinion. Right now. Google doesn't serve the same function. It might be comparing apples to oranges. It will be fun to see, though- what does Google do with/about Twitter? I think you're onto something there.

I use them side by side - Google and Twitter Search.

Twitter's search is amazing, but also powerful is the way people work to answer questions - research done freely for each other.

I don't think Twitter has the staying power that google does. It seems like a bigger deal than it is, because of your own personal internet social circle, but Joe the Plumber types probably wouldn't get the hang of it anytime soon.

hey makelemonade, that is the beauty. the value of the information can be used completely independently of twitter. i am not suggesting twitter search in its current form is a competitor to google (although it does siphon off a bit), I am saying that the information they are generating gives you a lot of what you need to build a BETTER search engine. That is something no one has been able to even come close to doing.

I agree about the data Twitter is collecting is gold. In fact I wrote an story about last week, Analysis - Twitter’s Business Model & Sector Sentiment. http://www.marckboucher.com/social-networking/analysis-twitters-business-model-sector-sentiment/ And while Twitter might a good example of a real time search it's not a deep web search. And even in the case of real time the data set is still too small to be considered an authority IMHO.

I recall saying the same thing about Google, about a decade ago.

solsystem,

agree, they are not there yet. but the rapid spread of twitter is creating a huge potential. and, again, i am not saying search.twitter.com as it exists is a google killer. i am saying they are collecting the data that could be used to create a general purpose search.

Then I think google will buy twitter

Twitter Search is incredibly useful, and I've begun adding it along with Google News and Blog search on my telecom company profiles pages.
http://www.telephlux.com/at_t-company-profile.html

I use search.twitter for everything now. I ask my my followers on Twitter their opinions on new movies before I go to Google or even Answers on Yahoo... Twitter is rapidly growing for real time results and answers. The information you see on your feed beats television or Google hands down...

Great article. I've been trying to convince people of the point you make at work. If people are micro-blogging at work it would become a great Knowledge Management tool: http://davidmastronardi.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/is-twitter-knowledge-management/

I have just started using tweetdeck today, really cool marketing tool! I just had my reflection today too: http://janetching.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/what-is-the-equation-social-networking-vs-blogging/

am def seeing a shift in my usage of twitter search vs, google. its the contextual, real time or "just-recently" time sensitive stuff that twitter delivers better then google. just last week i tweeted this:
"needed to find presentations from a conference I heard about last week, google search = fail, twitter search= got it."

http://twitter.com/MistOne/status/1187466064

Pero puede Twitter superar la barrera idiomática? Creo que por el momento no, para superar a Google, necesita más.

How many of the reader's of this post are connected in some way to IT or new media? Twitter has done a fine job of attracting that crowd's brain space--and neatly packaged it in an easy to digest format. It is content that is relevant to us that has been aggregated.

Much as the news voting sites have branched into numerous communities with different values, I think twitter is just a smaller community thats part of the trend that text messaging has seeded--and the archival nature of the web has watered.

I haven't thought much about this (and can only think of Facebook as another site doing this). Does anyone know of any other sites playing this game?

Twitter is getting broader than you think. I just did a search on "knitting" to test my theory. Some pretty good info in the results. Links to sites. Community of people talking. Etc.

Obviously I have strong motivation to see Twitter succeed, but Lew - this is very insightful. More and more I find myself opening my Twitter feeds first thing in the morning - before going to email, my blog readers and such. Real-time search on current conversations by trusted people is changing the landscape.

I have been telling peolpe the power of Twitter since using it (about 3 weeks ago!). After using Tweetdeck app. I lost it on the potential. SEO friends think I have gone Mad. p.s. Twitter please DO NOT sell to Google at ANY cost...they are sniffing.

Thanks for the comment to my blog. I guess my point is that, yes, there are some instances where twitter searches are great - but that's not the standard/typical use case. Rather, twitter consumption is/ will mirror blog consumption - i.e. driven by social behavior (referral, links, following etc.).

Mike, I agree with you today. My point is they are collecting data that is potentially much more powerful than traditional indexing. The only way Google will be touched is with a WHOLE new approach. I simply disagree that twitter consumption will mirror blog consumption. Yes, it is a micro blog, but they are used in very different ways and the amount and value of the info is radically different. We will see, but all signs are pointing to search being a core component of the model.

So to come back to this topic now that Twitter=Search has become the new social media meme of the moment, I just had a thought on its ability to compete with Google.

First, I still agree that Twitter can carve out a niche here...but it depends on massive user adoption. Not just 'being on Twitter' but actually having massive user participation.

Traditionally this hasn't the case - for almost all social media, a relatively small percentage of users generates a disproportionately large amount of the content. And with much of the content being trivial, how will Twitter separate the gems from the rough?

Then I thought, what about Technorati? Did it not attempt the same thing with blogging, which in its nascent days was sort of the Twitter of its day? Remember all the talk of conversations, user feedback, etc? Was nearly the same.

Technorati never achieved real-time search, but it was more or less the same concept of searching the collective consciousness of the blogosphere (and it could pick up posts reasonable quickly).

And if monitoring brand feedback and whatnot is the goal, does a delay of X minutes really make a difference? I can't imagine any company needing to respond *that fast* (and if they did it would probably be knee-jerk and foolhardy).

Hi,
I totally agree with that, twiter is different world, its deal entirely different sort of information. Most important its grwoing with rapid speed.
Nice post

GOOGLE! TWITTER IS POINTLESS!!!

Well put and very much in line with my own perspective on the power of social media in knowledge & content management posted here: http://bit.ly/18mhEL - welcome any opinion on @phasselsmonning

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