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6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search - Google Beware

This past week the tech world was abuzz with news of Twitter incorporating search functionality into its site. What this means is that you can now easily obtain trending data for popular keywords, take a deeper look at the topics people are talking about in real time, and find answers to pressing questions that others have already written about. So is this really significant? It depends on who you ask. Some think that Twitter is a Google killer while others argue that Twitter isn’t even a search engine at all. Regardless of which side of the fence you stand, there’s no doubt that Twitter has a bright future with its eyes set on the search market. In fact, Twitter continues to receive millions in funding and recently turned down a $500 million offer from Facebook because of its planned business model of Q&A features and search ads. Who knew status updates could be so valuable? Meanwhile, Facebook has been adding Twitter-like features to try and keep up… So really, what’s the big deal about Twitter? Isn’t it just a social media site used to socialize with friends? Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, goes as far as to call it the “poor man’s email system”. But the people who really get it understand the huge potential that lies within Twitter. Not only is it a way to connect and interact with others, but it also represent a huge pool of information based on everyday human life that’s ready to be mined to extract real value. Adding search functionality is just the first step in this process. Not to mention that Twitter already has an impressive track record with various uses. For example, it helped President Barack Obama with his presidential campaign, got a student out of an Egyptian jail, documented plane crashes in real time, and made Dell a million dollars. Twitter has a huge cultish following and is promoted through a grassroots movement that we haven’t seen since…well, the beginning of Google. Despite all of the hype, Twitter is still in its infancy and it’ll be years, maybe even a decade, before it develops the technology to accurately display search results and put a dent in Google’s market share. But regardless of all that, the point I want to make in this article is that Twitter has what it takes to get there. In other words, Twitter represents the future of search. Still not convinced? Let me explain… 6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search 1. Takes social to a whole new level Twitter is essentially a continuous conversation that takes place online between millions of people. Imagine the insights you could gain if you were able to record and search through everyone’s conversations. Of course, it’s a lot less creepy than that but that’s the kind of tool Twitter is becoming as more and more people take part and share parts of their lives. Twitter search is the ultimate social media platform and will enable people to get the opinions of others and add context to relevant information. Searchers don’t just want facts. They want to learn more about the experiences of real people they can relate to. For example, rather than doing a search in Google for “best restaurants in new york” and getting a bunch of review sites, you can do a search on Twitter to see which restaurants people are talking about in New York. If you don’t like the results, you can easily ask your network and get personalized answers in real time - which will then show up in future searches on the same topic. Compare that to Google. They’ve been unsuccessful thus far in implementing social factors into the search results via Search Wiki. If you do a search in Google and can’t find what you’re looking for, what are you going to do? Probably ask around on Twitter. 2. Combats information overload With millions of new web pages springing up every day on the Internet, who has the time or attention span to read through it all? We need filters, and that’s what Twitter provides in 140 characters or less. Twitter is great for searching for quick information and even if you’re looking for long articles, there are plenty of people who post links to relevant pages they like. 3. Real-time content In this day and age, nobody wants to wait for anything. We live in a society where we get everything fast and can’t stand for anything else. The same applies to information and news. Until recently, we had to wait for journalists to write up reports and publish them online. Google would then index the pages and show them in the search results, but not after at least a couple of hours. Good, but not good enough. Twitter displays real time streams of news and information. There’s no need to wait, and short of actually being there to experience the events, it’s the next best thing. Twitter has been a great tool for people to broadcast news live from their laptops and mobile phones (e.g. plane crash rescue in the Hudson River). 4. Represents the masses Twitter levels the playing field and gives everyone a voice online. In the “Twitterverse”, information is a lot more representative of the masses rather than of big corporations and personalities who manipulate people with their ideas. Power is transferred from the controllers of the web (e.g. Google, big news companies, powerful Wikipedia editors, online publishers) to millions of everyday social media users. We’d be able to rely less on big news sources and drill down to the micro level (i.e. experiences of individuals rather than just in aggregate). 5. More trustworthy results A big advantage Twitter has over Google is that it has the potential to be both a social media platform and a search engine. Users have the option of getting answers from their network of people who they actually trust. On the other hand, Google gives you a page of links compiled by their quality algorithm. Sure, Google returns pretty good search results most of the time, but they’re impersonal and sometimes irrelevant to what you really want. Getting in touch with your network via Twitter is the best way to get reliable information you can trust. For example, if you had a question about life in the NBA, would you rather ask Shaquille O’Neal on Twitter or type a question in Google? 6. Better targeted for location How does Google know whether or not a page is relevant to a local geographic region? Unless the page is labeled correctly, Google has no idea. Twitter, on the other hand, can easily tie content to a location by using user profile settings or GPS (as technology advances on mobile phones). This in turn means more relevant information and ads in Twitter search.

Questions Questions Questions

QQQ

Questions, questions, questions. I have sent you here because you have been asking questions. No sin in that. We grow wise by asking questions. The right questions.

Twitter is defined by the tweet, a word used to describe the up to 140 character postings of its users. Tweets answer the famous questions that Kipling maintained should be answered by any piece of journalism (and micro-blogging of the Twitter kind is no exception): who, why, how, what and where? Tweets tell us who the tweeter is, why they are tweeting, how they are tweeting, what they are tweeting about and where they are tweeting from.

Take the following tweet sent by @squalid_but_goodhearted_student which you spotted on the Public Timeline.

I feel so stupid. My cat got more questions right on Millionaire than I did. Always feel dumb the night before an exam. Help, I’m drowning. Sent five minutes ago via Tweetdeck

We know why that was sent – @squalid_but_goodhearted_student feels stupid and nervous and wants to share the fact in a silly, faintly amusing, studenty cri de coeur. We know who sent it – @s_but_gh_s. We know when – five minutes ago. We know how – via Tweetdeck. We know where (if we choose to check out @ s_but_gh_s’s user profile) Bottleby College, Sillyshire. And of course we know what the body of the tweet was and we can interpret it as a silly message sent by a drunkard, an act of showing off, a genuine message to friends, a piece of introspective meandering … the possibilities are many and various.

Naturally Twitter has other applications: plenty of people use tweets to sell some ghastly life-coach ‘tool’, ‘technique’ or ‘philosophy’ (why do ninety percent of people use the word ‘philosophy’ when what they really mean is ‘self-delusion’, ‘con’ or ‘laughable piece of drivel that’s so self-evident it makes your nose bleed? Well that’s for another day). Good luck to them and those others who regard Twitter as a kind of sales opportunity. It’s not for me to tell anyone how Twitter should or should not be used. The founders of the service will tell you a tweet is there to answer the question “What are you doing?” – the other Kipling questions are incidentally answered by the technology and the ‘why’ will always be subject to interpretation.

For most of us Twitter is a fun (almost to the point of addiction) new, ever-changing wave that it is a bewildering and exhilarating pleasure to ride.

I am aware that I am something of a special case. Because of the number of followers I have and because I am someone who pops up on screen and in print there has been a tendency for a lot of new followers to arrive and start asking me questions. It’s fine to ask questions. But this is the digital age and Twitter is a digital instrument. Before you charge in and ask me what I’m doing, where I am, why my avatar is blacked out, when I’m coming back to Britain and a hundred other questions of that kind, stop, ponder, ask yourself one or two questions. Firstly whether I might have already answered your question in my timeline – that is the list of tweets I have already posted, found by accessing http://twitter.com/stephenfry. You can use the search facility at the bottom of the twitter webpage too. If you use a Twitter client for your mobile, smartphone or computer it too will have ways of allowing you to search. Or if I have in a post used a title, phrase, name, reference or word unfamiliar to you, can it not be looked it up using a search engine, online encyclopaedia or other resource? In other words: use your initiative: don’t ask me questions for the sake of it, or just as a way of getting a reply or direct message from me. If you are on the road with a mobile only and no access to the full range of internet search instruments then ask yourself this: is your question really so urgent that it can’t wait till the next time you’ve jacked into the matrix and can find out its answer yourself?

Why does any of this matter? Well, I’m happiest if my Twittering is reciprocal, as it should be. I tweet what I’m doing, thinking, feeling, wondering, hoping etc and you do the same. Twitter should make us equal. I know I lead what appears to be a blessed life of travel and excitement, and I’m happy to share my experiences, thoughts and adventures with you, but I’m also honestly and genuinely interested in you and who you are, how you’re thinking and what you have to say. I’m uncomfortable feeling as if all I’m supposed to do is sit in an audience chamber being endlessly petitioned and questioned while getting nothing back.

I know that asking me a question looks like the most obvious way of getting me to respond to you, but if that is the only reason you’re tweeting and the answer could easily be found out by other means, don’t you feel a bit silly asking it? A good question will delight me, but I think it’s only human to be frustrated by endless lazy ones. It’s not your fault. It’s scale. If I got only one question a day asking me why I was in Mexico, when I had already posted extensively the reason why, well fine. But fifty an hour all asking that question rather sours the whole experience…

I am not trying to humiliate you or make you feel guilty. You are probably new to Twitter and are still feeling your way forward. Every driver was a learner once. My first few tweets were three hundred characters long. I didn’t know how to follow people. I didn’t know how to send pictures or update my profile. We all learn and with such a rapidly growing service, we are all still learning all the time. I offer this blog to you to help you consider better and more enjoyable ways of using Twitter. Please don’t take offence or worry that I think less of you. I’m just trying to help us all. After all I could simply have ignored your tweet entirely.

So next time you want to post a question – stop, think: search the timeline or look it up.

Having said all that, don’t run away with the idea that I am insisting all Twitters ending with a question mark are invalid. There are plenty of questions that will amuse and stimulate me and all those following my timeline. A bit of thought is all….

Thanks for dropping by. See you in twitterland…

x

Stephen

© Stephen Fry 2009

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Find Out the Most Influential Users on Twitter with the ReTweetability Index

March 3rd, 2009 | by Jennifer Van Grove5 Comments

Dan Zarrella, Mashable contributor and self-proclaimed viral marketing scientist, is applying his science of retweets to a newly launched site, the ReTweetability Index.

The ReTweetability Index isn’t just a list showing the top Twitterers or the ones with the most retweets, but a formula carefully researched to better get at the most retweetable and influential users.

The formula measures and ranks Twitter users based on the power of their tweets, which takes into account retweets per day, average tweets per day, and total followers. The final output is a ReTweetability index number, with higher numbers indicating that a user has a higher percentage of being retweeted.

Using the site, you’ll quickly be able to pinpoint any users’ retweetable rank (including your own), and you can search for the most retweetable users by topic.

For example, my ReTweetability score is 2403.94 (current rank 5,556) which is calculated using the formula above and multiplying that number by 10,000.

When doing a search on social media as topic, you’ll find that the Mashable Twitter account ranks the highest (overall ranked 3) with an index of 790,870 (nicely done, Pete!). The numbers may seem a little complicated, but once you start playing around with the site you’ll start to get a feel for individuals with the most overall and subject matter influence.

Zarrella explains a little more of the science behind the ReTweetability metric in his own blog post on the site launch, saying “The ReTweetability metric I’m using for the index right now is based on the natural logarithm of both the follower and tweets-per-day numbers. This is done to compress the range of variation in those two variables while acounting for the power law shaped graph displayed by the distributions of both.”