But Twitter is no Google
Twitter’s real-time search capability has great appeal to anyone wanting to get the pulse of what people are actually tweeting about. Media entities are taking note; companies are using it to deliver fast customer service responses. But I’m still not using Twitter search for my news and information. When I search for news, I stick with Google (and starting to experiment with Bing).
Google generally finds what I’m looking for and I don’t necessarily need “real-time” search results. I do want quality over quantity. Microsoft’s Bing might give me more of what I want. But I’m still not motivated enough to start using Bing with any serious regularity. But what about Twitter? Twitter search seems destined to improve with new Twitter search tools coming out such as Twazzup, OneRiot and icerocket’s twitter search engine. All of the apps seem to deliver similar search results when I used them but I like Twazzup’s interface the best. You can easily see who tweeted, their profile stats, including number of followers.
Scoopler recently made its debut. It neatly splits your search results into two columns, the left showing real-time search results and the right column showing results from blogs and websites, including links to videos and images. You can “peek” at the story and share it via so many of the social media tools we’ve come to know and “love:” Facebook, Digg, Reddit, etc…Check it out!
I know I’m not the first Tweeter to remark that one of the most interesting uses of Twitter is the more unusual links tweeters post which you might not otherwise come across in a Google search. In that fashion, twitter search certainly adds social and news value. But as explained by Mark Jackson of Vizion Interactive in this informative video interview, Twitter’s search functions can still be easily manipulated, making it very unreliable, not to mention the SPAM factor which Twitter is still not yet capable of combating effectively.
Twitter search does have a way to go if it wants to seriously compete with Google. But as we’ve seen with the coverage of the recent Iran election, Twitter has made a significant impact on the value of real-time search. And Google, along with a few other contenders, while playing catch-up, has time (and money) on its side.