How did you find this post? Was it through a RSS / Atom feed, Google search, my status message on Google Talk / MSN / LinkedIn, my Twitter post or through a real time Twitter search? Twitter's search offers a unique approach to search - search in real time.
What is real time search? I was on a plane about to land in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago when the Turkish airline plane crashed. We got half way through the descent and then shot up and diverted to Rotterdam. What was going on? Searching Google gave no results but Twitter was a flurry of activity to find out what was going on. The same with the recent snow in London - where do you go to get the latest information - various transport sites were struggling to keep up with the flood of user activity, Twitter provided a body of people sharing their knowledge and experiences on Twitter, it was like having eyes and ears all over London- http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23uksnow. So for all of your real time questions Twitter offers a fantastic solution. Using TweetDeck or other user interfaces for Twitter can help to visualize the results and this is bound to be a growth area to improve the contextual information for the search and its relevance to your search, i.e. getting rid of the noise so that you get the information that you want.
So should Google be scared? Well we know that disruptive innovation can destroy trusted approaches in the same way David can beat Goliath. Look at AOL, Yahoo...
Will this solve the Twitter money making problem and help Twitter make money through ads or by being bought by Google... Unlikely? The last time something like this threatened Google they were bought. YouTube is now a major player in the online search arena, some have their share as high as 25%. When Google bought YouTube it appeared they were moving into media but they also realised that video search would be another string to their bow - blurring the line between search, browse and navigation.
As the conversational aspect of the web grows (Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc), the drive will be for what is going on in the real-time part of the web. Google must be thinking about getting into this space, what would a Google and Twitter combo look like? Well it has been done and you can find out how to do it here - you need Mozilla with the Grease Monkey addin, worth a look:
As always comments welcome,
John
twitter.com/brookmyre
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