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I don't think Twitter realizes the value of their own search engine. If Twitter could dedicate more resources towards approximate string matching, and put Twitt

by majani 12y ago

I don't think Twitter realizes the value of their own search engine. If Twitter could dedicate more resources towards approximate string matching, and put Twitter search as the main attraction on the logged out homepage, it could drive adoption of Twitter among casual users. I should be able to search "new Mugabe meme" after hearing about it, and Twitter should show me pictures of his recent fall, with real-time updates. But as of now it's pretty much an exact match search, which is frustrating if you don't know the exact term you're looking for(in my example, the exact term is "Mugabe fall"). On to of that, it's hidden away from the logged out homepage. Rather than tackle this problem themselves, they've outsourced the heavy lifting to Google. What a MySpace move

tomphoolery 12y ago
I disagree, I think they did this in order to capture more users. Not everyone uses Twitter. I believe Twitter is shooting for the "everyone" demographic, not just kids, the media/artists and tech-savvy people who got into it "before it was cool". If that is true, that means they are attempting to leverage Google, which everyone's already using, in an attempt to boost their legitimacy as a source of real-time information and get more exposure. Twitter's a media company, after all, so they are looking for more and more exposure whenever they can get it. It wouldn't be surprising to see your strategy implemented at Twitter after this deal has come and gone, if Twitter is playing their cards right they will have actually used Google to steal at least some of Google's search traffic away from them. That said, I also don't believe Twitter's long game is search. I think they're trying to re-invent how we access information. Instead of searching for something, what if you could subscribe to a topic and just get information handed to you constantly?
- wutbrodo 12y ago
  > Not everyone uses Twitter. Twitter in particular is one of the cases where places like HN disappointingly fall for the fallacy of assuming that their observations are an unbiased sample (and thus that "most/tons of people use Twitter"). Twitter's numbers have always been shockingly low (compared to their influence); I remember finding out a couple years ago that active members of the narrowest possible metric of actual social usage of Google+ roughly matched or outpaced Twitter (this was before many of the integrations like Youtube which may have drawn more people to the G+ stream). That was the case for quite a long amount of time. It's probably great news for Twitter that their user numbers so badly lag their influence, since that means the potential for growth is very, very high (though it does raise the question why this gap exists to such an unusual degree).
  - jonifico 12y ago
    Definitely true! I think they're also going for other places where Twitter doesn't affect most people, talk South America, Africa, Asia... It's just this North American perspective that gets people out of context. The world's kind of a big place, y'know

by majani 12y ago

tomphoolery 12y ago

I disagree, I think they did this in order to capture more users. Not everyone uses Twitter. I believe Twitter is shooting for the "everyone" demographic, not just kids, the media/artists and tech-savvy people who got into it "before it was cool". If that is true, that means they are attempting to leverage Google, which everyone's already using, in an attempt to boost their legitimacy as a source of real-time information and get more exposure. Twitter's a media company, after all, so they are looking for more and more exposure whenever they can get it. It wouldn't be surprising to see your strategy implemented at Twitter after this deal has come and gone, if Twitter is playing their cards right they will have actually used Google to steal at least some of Google's search traffic away from them. That said, I also don't believe Twitter's long game is search. I think they're trying to re-invent how we access information. Instead of searching for something, what if you could subscribe to a topic and just get information handed to you constantly?

wutbrodo 12y ago
> Not everyone uses Twitter. Twitter in particular is one of the cases where places like HN disappointingly fall for the fallacy of assuming that their observations are an unbiased sample (and thus that "most/tons of people use Twitter"). Twitter's numbers have always been shockingly low (compared to their influence); I remember finding out a couple years ago that active members of the narrowest possible metric of actual social usage of Google+ roughly matched or outpaced Twitter (this was before many of the integrations like Youtube which may have drawn more people to the G+ stream). That was the case for quite a long amount of time. It's probably great news for Twitter that their user numbers so badly lag their influence, since that means the potential for growth is very, very high (though it does raise the question why this gap exists to such an unusual degree).
- jonifico 12y ago
  Definitely true! I think they're also going for other places where Twitter doesn't affect most people, talk South America, Africa, Asia... It's just this North American perspective that gets people out of context. The world's kind of a big place, y'know