That’s what a lot of people have been talking about recently. Since twitter recently became stupidly popular, lots of people have been considering the potential of real time search. That’s in contrast with Google, which searches things that have been said. Sometimes it’s even within the last day, or week, or month, but always in the past tense. Search on twitter is what is happening right now.
I don’t like twitter. If I want to write something, I’ll write it here – I have that outlet. And I really don’t care if other people read it, so twitter really has nothing to offer me. Even so, I made an account a long while ago (’07?) to see what it was about, decided I didn’t care, and left it. What saddens me is that it seems like the bad habits of social networks have made their way to twitter: followers as currency. The more friends you have, the more popular you are, etc. And there’s the unfortunate practice of people friending you in the hopes you’ll friend them back. Even though I’ve explicitly stated “don’t follow me” in my bio, I’ve had two since I started using it again. A friendly “who the fuck are you and why are you following me?” took care of that.
Oh right, I had a point. Facebook is in on the game too. Not direct competition to twitter, but they’re both doing the same thing (yes, that works). You can search twitter to see what people are saying about a subject right now, and you can check Facebook to see what your friends are doing right now. I don’t think either is going to revolutionize search, but it is interesting to watch.