Discovering the Power of Twitter's Real-Time Search
A-ha moments often come when the conventional method lets you down and you need to try something new. That happened on Saturday when Gmail was unavailable to me for over an hour. The outage was long enough for me to have to set up a Yahoo Mail account to send an urgent email. I also used Basecamp to communicate with my ReadWriteWeb colleagues; through that, I learned that Gmail was fine for them. So I started my research online to see what was happening. Of course I started my search with Google, which was not of much use. Then I tried Twitter.
Google Search for "Gmail Down" Was Not Helpful
One of the queries I used on Google was "Gmail outage," but "Gmail down" is how most people report problems. You can see past problems reported on blogs and media sites. We have covered the subject before on ReadWriteWeb, and ideally we don't want to focus on failures of Gmail or the cloud.
Twitter Search Scores
Searching "Gmail down" on Twitter gave me much more useful data. And you can see the data in real time (using the layman's version of the query). When I searched, I saw results that were minutes old. But I looked further and got past 36 pages before I stopped.
Twitter is simply a better medium in which to report that "Gmail is down." It takes just a few seconds, and it is clearly not worth going through the trouble of blogging about it.
Twitter search does not have any built-in latency. Google has to index a page before you can search it. A little-known page that has just been updated will get missed. Twitter gives its results to you raw (not filtered by popularity) and immediately.
What was even more powerful was getting replies from people I don't know who had the same problem, or variations of the problem. It was like an instant uber-forum.
Is This an Isolated Case?
Was this just a fluke, an isolated case? Most of the "Twitter-is-useful" stories have centered on the social networking angle: people you know telling you where to get a great cup of coffee in a new city, for example. What was interesting about my usage was that the results did not come from my contacts. It was just like using Google search, but better.
Of course, this does not mean that Twitter search will replace Google. But this is the first time that I have used an alternative to Google for a general search term and found the alternative to be substantively, immediately better. That seems significant.
Is This Where Twitter's Elusive Revenue Lurks?
Most of the commentary on our Help Twitter Find A Revenue Model post focuses on the social aspects of Twitter and uses those as the basis of a revenue model. Those models, though, mostly feel like an intrusion on Twitter's primary function.
But is there potential in search?
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I use summize often for search. I assumed everyone did.
yes actually. It's the differentiating factor between facebook status and Twitter. The ability to connect real-time users is unique to life streaming services like Twitter. I can imagine an instant channel setup for pointing to a new ip in the case of a DNS switch for example...
I'm surprised to see a post about Twitter's immediacy. I thought you knew that as a given.
It proved itself with the Mumbai tragedy, providing news not yet available mainstream, including links to on-scene photos.
It even caught the BBC in a big error:
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/bbc-news-scares-the-hell-out-of-everyone/
And it's even more powerful when you plug the resulting RSS feed into a tool such as Notifixious : See this : http://blog.notifixio.us/post/62508923/monitor-your-company-on-social-networks
Guys if you really want some real-time search I would suggest you to see this:
http://www.livecrunch.com/2008/12/02/explore-the-power-of-tweetgrid-search-engine-for-twitter/
Its best search tool for twitter-real time I think.
The thing I love is the ripple effect that happens the moment some web service goes down. It's brilliant to watch that number go up asking you to refresh, showing the true conversation is really taking place!
Posted by: Josh Chandler
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December 8, 2008 2:12 PM
I created http://tweetgrid.com/ to solve this exact problem of real-time twitter search. It auto-updates the tweets so you don't have to constantly refresh the page, and it allows you to follow multiple topics at a ttime. TwitterFan in comment #5 linked a post that also talks about TweetGrid.
Try it out!
but didn't searching "Gmail Down" on twitter give you a bunch of people reporting it was down or asking others if it was down?
Where is the value there? It's down, I get it. Now why?
That said, I do enjoy using the search feature in Tweetdeck for Twitter. Great way to track things.
Just not so sure that there is great value in instant news like Gmail being down.
Try also twitter search for events, like "Palo Alto tonight" and you'll see where people are going.
Useful too for finding items for sale, like "MacBook sale".
Live events are the killer feature of search now.
I've just stated using search to deliver what the IM track feature used to, feeding queries back into a twitter account I subscribe to with my main account. Track for me, is back. :)
I want to begin by first stating the fact that Twitter is a close source application and as such members that give their content to Twitter so that Twitter can earn millions off it are locked in, and also more than likely since they are locked in will not be included in much share of any revenue that twitter will eventually earn on their content.
Open Source can give a bit of a guarantee that members are included in the revenue discussions as well as revenue sharing because members have a choice and are not locked in. If members want to leave the service and create one that meets there needs they are free to do so. This puts members in control of the value they bring and create. Twitter is closed source so members will more than likely be outside of revenue generation discussions as well as any revenue share.
I also want to understand why it is assumed that Twitter and its founders are the smartest guys in the the room. Are Twitter and its founders and managers the only people in the entire world that can build a micro blogging service with a revenue model. To me this is the arrogance of closed source.
We have an Open Source Micro Blogging service that already has some of the features that you have mentioned in your blog.
I use twitter search as well. I do get the message above that states (Gmail is down, I get it), but for other tweets like "Remove trojan.zlob.g" with a link -- I think you can see the usefulness. However, I don't see how twitter would add a revenue model to search.
Hi,
very intersting report. Thank You :-) And it highlitghts the risks of the current usage of Web 2.0-Services again to me: What will happen to heavy Web 2.0-users if the service are down or they will change their bussines-model? At the moment we are using so much for free, putting our information and data inside and trying to build bussines or eg. eLearning with it....
Well, i dont have an answer yet. Sometimes i do a backup of all but not regularly and just go with the flow.
bests
Interesting, really. The problem is that in search you need advertising, right? Where would you advertise? Unless you built a website that would search Twitter and used ads on that.
I find twitter to be great, especially for being the first to read something. Most blogs take a little while for the RSS feed to update, but the bloggers will send it out on tweet. Now I know why there are always 20 comments before I get somewhere...
Excellent use case, Bernard!
Twitter just lets you connect with other people and get real answers to your problems, in a human way.
The same thing when implemented in an organization creates a broadcast channel where anyone can post a question to the entire organization, without worrying about typing out a formal email or disturbing others by calling them. Microblogging creates a real-time communication channel.
We've implemented microblogging into cyn.in (http://cyn.in) so that businesses can benefit from these features. Microblogs in cyn.in keeps the context of the content within the organization and hence work related. 80% of our customers using cyn.in agree that the statuslogs feature has doubled adoption and contribution to the system. I think its the easiest way to start discussions!
You may want to check out http://yonkly.com
First niche microblog to ever integrate with Twitter
I can't help but think that it should be possible to make some money on a good search API. At least if they had not launched an average one first. Surely a lot of apps could be built around it, the challenge would be to charge money for the API keys - it would need a very carefully carved out licensing strategy.
That being said, the ones who should really be paying Twitter are the broadband providers (especially cell-providers). The money they make because it must be noticeable.
I don't think Twitter Search is monetizable (because most people access it through RSS, and feeds have really low CPMs) but the discovery experience of Twitter is monetizable.
OK, here is another use case. Today I wanted to search about breaking news on Bain buying Reed. This is big news. Googled "reed bain" = nothing. On Twitter, lots of good sources.
Real time search could be big and Google is not a player. This is significant.
I wish Twitter had search up top and prominent.
Adding paid contextual search ads would not be hard.
I dont anderstaind whay?
I dont anderstain whay is that?
In case you want real time info then Google search is passe' Twitter search is the IN thing...
I find it interesting that this article doesn't make any reference to John Battelle's post on the shift from static to real time search.
http://blogs.looksmart.com/thought_leadership/2008/12/shifting-search.html
Maybe it's just a Zeitgeist moment and lots of people are coming to the same conclusion.
I did see Battelle's post after writing this. Different focus, same theme. I am looking at specific use cases and how habits change. It is what I call a personal tipping point. Same happened to me when I switched from Outlook to Gmail. Now I search Twitter on late breaking stuff BEFORE I search on Google. That is a big deal - for me at least and for the market if other people are doing the same.
Look at the late breaking news about Reed Elsevier selling (or not selling RBI) and look at both Twitter and Google searches - same time/same term:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=reed+elsevier+rbi
http://www.google.com/search?q=reed+elsevier+rbi&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Google does OK when it is official. The Bain story was unofficial and - as it happens did not become official.
Try also twitter search for events, like "Palo Alto tonight" and you'll see where people are going.
Useful too for finding items for sale, like "MacBook sale".
Thac corect