
Twitter Ain't Search  - trs90
http://www.marksonland.com/2009/03/twitter_aint_search.html
======
AndrewWarner
Next time there's breaking news in your neighborhood (like an earthquake) try
your search on Google and on Search.Twitter.com and see which has the news
faster.

Twitter is instant. Google has to wait for someone to publish an article on
the news and then Google needs to index that article.

Plus with Google, the article's headline doesn't give you the whole story.
It's a tease. You have to click over to read the story. On search.Twitter.com,
you get the whole thing at once.

~~~
bobbyi
Did you actually try your example? If I search on google for "earthquake san
francisco":

<http://www.google.com/search?q=earthquake+san+francisco>

the most recent earthquake it tells me about is 3 hours ago (as of this
writing).

The time, place and links to maps are all right there at the top of the serp
where I expect.

If I do the same query on twitter:

<http://search.twitter.com/search?q=earthquake+san+francisco>

The most recent result is 19 hours old and then I have to start clicking
tinyurls in people's tweets to find more info.

~~~
dandelany
Obviously, this is a poor example. It was a magnitude 3.1, so no one felt it,
and it was 100 miles north of San Francisco.

The last one anybody felt was on Feb 21st at 11:01 AM, and the first (non-
automated) tweet was at 11:21 AM
(<http://twitter.com/indiaknight/statuses/1234962301>). This example is
similarly bad, since it didn't really affect anyone in a big way. However, for
instant reactions to _notable_ events, Twitter can't be beat. If today's
earthquake had been "the big one," you can bet twitter would have been flooded
with information, missing people reports, locations for aid, firsthand
accounts and so on.

~~~
baddox
Or you can bet twitter would go down ;)

------
sjs382
"I don't understand a concept, but I'm going to try to debunk it anyways."

~~~
jwesley
Good assessment of this article. Although I do agree that Twitter search is
being overhyped right now. Big time. It's basically the only thing left to
hype so TechCrunch et al are milking it for all it's worth.

Twitter search is useful as an opinion poll or for updates on breaking news,
but only so much depth and value can fit into 140 characters. More than
anything, I think Twitter thrives off vanity and narcissism. It's millions of
people saying "look at me" and it's even easier to main and establish
popularity than a blog.

~~~
sjs382
I was interested in a (very recent) event that Twitter offered the absolute
BEST coverage for, all via search.twitter.com: the NHL trade deadline.

Traditional news sources, blogs, TSN.ca, ESPN, Globe & Mail, etc all were slow
on updates and commentary about prospective trades and evaluations of minor-
league talent. I used search.twitter.com and searched for "#nhltrade" and
"nhl" and had a constant stream of news and information. And by subscribing to
the very best sources of news I could find there, I was notified of trades via
SMS.*

Sure, it isn't "search" the way most people think about it, but its the best
search for a specific use case.

* A side note: this allowed me to stay up to date while being slightly more productive at work. I wasn't constantly refreshing pages or listening to talk radio.

------
rubymaverick
Has this guy heard of search.twitter.com?

~~~
vyrotek
Is their search anything more than finding text in a tweet? They seem to be
more about finding the most recent tweet containing your keyword. I would
rather see the results weighted by retweets or something to help find
'relevant' tweets.

~~~
paulgb
It's essentially text search, but there is also a surprisingly useful
near:[location] keyword that is good for local searches.

------
njharman
Twitter's real-time search can't be a Google killer cause unless I hadn't
noticed Google doesn't have a real-time search product.

The other way round is plausible, Google comes out with a Twitter killer. That
is a real-time search product. But, why bother... Besides Twitter is more than
just real-time search and Google is much more than just search.

------
Flemlord
Why can't Google index Twitter posts just like it does everything else?

~~~
wallflower
Google does not have access to the XMPP firehouse (all tweets, the public
timeline). More importantly, Twitter posts do not neatly fit into the page-
rank concept (# of followers does not always equate to authority). Summize got
around this problem by not even trying to address it - e.g. most recent tweets
are first. Twitter is probably more easily gamed and adding Twitter results to
their standard search would probably dilute average AdWords CPC.

Of course, the flip side of this is Twitter tweets won't be monetized as
efficiently as Google keyword-based ads.

