How Twitter has evolved as a search engine
September 8th, 2009 by Andy Merchant
We all know that Twitter has come a long way in a short space of time. Below are my thoughts on how Twitter has progressed as a search tool.
Stage 1
Due to Twitter opening up its API at a very early stage, third party Twitter apps have became a large part of the Twitter phenomenon. Twitter search tools were among the first to appear and were used primarily to monitor conversations at relevant events. Quotes were taken from the events, which helped to create a quick and easy blog summary.
Stage 2
Moving on from conversations, Twitter became a real-time breaking news service, with searches showing the latest information on news events of all types, a good example of which being the earthquakes in China and Mumbai bombings.
Twitter Searches were evolving from pure conversation to a hunger for instant real-time news. Twitter is now quicker than any news station when it comes to breaking news.
Stage 3
The next stage of Twitter was for it to be used as a real time help and recommendations search tool.
Example:
Can anybody recommend a good SEO partner?
Does anybody know of the best budget hotel to stay near central park NY?
These sorts of questions would lead to numerous people sharing experiences and sharing of links, especially when TINY url came into play.
Stage 4
Other searches started taking place in Twitter focused on Jobs, local events, classifieds, trends, sports scores and information, gig guides and events.
Stage 5
Finally the Celebrity search. Celebrities are often searched and quoted for sound bites in national and local papers via Twitter searches on their personal profiles. Celebrities also use Twitter as a quick fire response and personal promotion tool, for example: most celebrities on Twitter tweeted in response to the death of Michael Jackson.
Final stage
As more people use Twitter the search possibilities will grow, but for now Twitter is the premier search engine for real time news searches and quick recommendations. Search engines are now being built with Twitter searches in mind, e.g. Microsoft’s Bing has its search results sitting alongside its Twitter results for keywords.
A threat to Google?
Tags: search, search engine, search tool, twitter
