Would we ever Twitter it?
Because Google has such a monopoly in search, and it makes so much money, and it has so much money, and it buys lots of clever small companies, and it looks to provide services where Microsoft have previously dominated, and it is slowly taking over the world…we’re all consumed with the idea of something else toppling the big G.
As things stand, we all use Google – and the other search engines, of course – for most of our information gathering, whatever we want to find; or at least in the first instance. We ‘Google’ everything. The simple platform and sophisticated algorithms have ensured that Google has become the leader in search and has opened the internet up to the masses. However, are there any other options for search?
Many suggest that Twitter could become a search engine in its own right. Its live, real-time updating stream can provide information which is so current that it is almost inadvertently more powerful than a standard search engine.
The question is whether people would ever use the service as a search engine? At the moment, it is probably not really considered as anything like, and most users will not consciously carry out searches that they would normally ask Google to perform. Obviously there are many differences between Twitter and a search engine. It is not, after all, actually designed to be a search engine…or so we think.
If users did start using it for search it’s quite possible that many would be quite surprised by the results. It is especially good if searching a news topic which has recently broken and is being discussed and spread virally.
It would take one hell of a service for people to move away from the search engines that we know and love, but it could happen. And maybe, it is already is.
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