Search News: Does Twitter Represent the Future of Search? Or is it The Other Way Around?
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Written By Peter Hershberg | January 20, 2009 | Share This
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An interesting online debate caught my attention this past weekend.
It started with Danny Sullivan’s Why Don’t Google & Yahoo Offer Twitter Search? Danny’s point is that people are increasingly turning to Twitter — rather than Google and Yahoo — when looking for information on breaking news. This is a trend we highlighted in our 2009 predictions post at the end of last year. For proof of Twitter’s real-time search capabilities all you need to do is look back at last week’s plane crash in the Hudson to see where the news initially broke. People were talking about the event for several minutes on Twitter before the first mentions of it on Google News or any major media site, for that matter.
With that in mind, I agree with Danny when he suggests it’s important that Google and Yahoo develop ways to search Twitter. Where we (may) disagree is over exactly what that would look like. Danny seems to be suggesting that the engines develop search services that are dedicated to searching Twitter. My own take is that while it’s important for Google and Yahoo to consider how Twitter could compliment their broader search services, it would be a mistake to create something solely Twitter-centric.
Why Don’t Major Search Engines Offer Twitter Search?
For starters, that has already been addressed by Summize (acquired by Twitter last year and re-branded Twitter Search). Its search functionality hasn’t been integrated directly into Twitter yet, but anyone can use the site to search all Twitter updates. There are also third-party tools like Power Twitter for Firefox that integrate Twitter Search into the main Twitter page.
Beyond that, most people generally do not want to use several different search engines when looking for products, services, and information – they want different types of results (images videos, and yes, breaking news headlines) brought directly to them on a single results page. That’s the whole idea behind Universal Search. When there is breaking news Twitter updates could be treated just like news results which sometimes show up above organic listings.
Regardless of what the “right” implementation would look like, however, Danny’s larger question is why hasn’t this been addressed yet?
John Battelle’s take is that it’s all about competition:
“The reason there is not a “Twitter search” from Yahoo or Google is because both companies want to own Twitter, or at least, they want to own the phenomenon of real time search Twitter represents. If they were to create a Twitter search, it would validate Twitter and give the company way too much power. “
Also:
“And Google is likely viewing Twitter as a competitor, and is probably noodling the addition of Twitter-like functionality to Blogger (if it hasn’t already, I’m not following the service too closely). The reason? TweetSense. I am certain Google wants AdSense to be TweetSense, and I am equally certain that the Twitter team will want to build its own version of a scaled ad platform that matches consumer intent, as declared through Tweets and search, to marketers’ paid listings.”
While I don’t disagree with John’s POV, particularly as it relates to the potential advertising opportunity Twitter inventory could represent, I think it would be a mistake for both companies to try to develop Twitter competitors. Yahoo is moving in the direction of fewer projects and it’s unlikely they would put the adequate amount of resources behind the project. Google, on the other hand, is well-equipped to issue a challenge in theory, but they have a very questionable record on projects outside of search and it’s reasonable to wonder whether they could be successful. This is essentially what they’ve tried to do with Knol in response to Wikipedia’s popularity and the results have been mixed at best. Similarly, they haven’t put too many resources behind Blogspot which still attracts most of its users because it’s no charge to use it.
On the other hand, an aggregator of Twitter results similar to Google’s Blog Search or Google News functionality would have potential to be successful, as a way of filtering Twitter posts from universal results. Just as they checkmated Technorati with blog search, they could use the power of their huge number of users to overwhelm Twitter Search. So why haven’t they done something like this yet?
On a Collision Course
My personal view is that Google and Yahoo haven’t come up with Twitter solutions simply because they did not initially understand what Twitter represents from a search perspective. Twitter themselves may have failed to grasp this initially, before Summize came into the mix. It’s unlikely that either Google or Yahoo saw Twitter’s potential as a search engine. So, it’s only now that they’re probably starting to put adequate resources behind developing a strategy in this area, though I have to believe that it’s become a very high priority, particularly for Google. That’s where this issue gets really interesting – particularly for someone like me who views social media through the lens of search.
There may in fact be a sort of online game of chicken happening between Google and Twitter. As Battelle points out, Google wants to be the one to serve ads on Twitter’s platform if indeed that is the monetization direction Twitter decides to follow. Twitter understands this, but they would like to develop and reap the potential profits from what Battelle calls “TweetSense” themselves. The bet from Twitter is that they will continue to pull the audience for breaking news away from Google quickly enough so that Google will have to capitulate to stay competitive. Google would like to keep this audience but their bet is that Twitter wants the big boost in users that Google search results would bring and would be willing to share some of the ad profit to do so.
This may be what keeps Google from enacting a version of Twitter Search soon. Why build up Twitter’s platform only to see them monetize it without Google’s involvement? Keep in mind the above is all pure speculation.
Open the Fire Hose
Twitter’s growth has already been pretty phenomenal – its recent use on CNN and mentions on ESPN.com and in the New Yorker would seem to indicate that it’s beginning to go mainstream. Still, relative to the 200 million plus people currently online in the U.S. , Twitter’s user-base is relatively small – recent estimates suggests there are around 6 million people currently signed up for the service, with most of them only ever sending out a handful of updates. Most of the “tweets” even active Twitter users send are only viewed by their “followers” (the occasional retweet notwithstanding), so at best, a user’s most popular updates are viewed by tens of thousands of people. More likely, their updates are viewed by dozens or possibly hundreds of people.
Showing Twitter updates in search results by the major search engines means that users will no longer have to exclusively rely on a large group of followers for distribution of updates – Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft will effectively become distribution valves for Twitter conversations (much the same way as Twitter has represented a distribution source for content created in other areas on the web through link dissemination). It’s at that point that Twitter usage will really begin to tip as people without Twitter accounts discover useful and interesting information in these results.
From a marketer’s perspective, this means that companies who have been successful using Twitter as a standalone social media strategy will need to recognize that those efforts will need to evolve so that they’re part of a more integrated effort – one that likely includes Facebook fan pages, corporate blogs, branded YouTube channels, etc – that ties back to one overarching corporate goal. Social media properties continue to dominate search results pages – for better or for worse, the amount of presence a marketer has in those results oftentimes represents the aggregation of the company’s social media efforts. SEO will become a core component of a successful Twitter strategy.
It’s worth noting that this is a development that has significant relevance to recent debates about Twitter and authority. To this point, the “Twitterverse” has pretty much been living in a bubble – one where all updates are made and consumed within Twitter and its associated applications alone and where some believe that having 10,000 followers means that you are an authoritative or influential figure. While I believe that is, in fact, the case for some (and I won’t diminish the value in having a large following), the volume of traffic some individual Twitter updates will receive from organic search will dwarf what they are typically able to generate from Twitter alone. It also means that Twitter accounts with fewer followers – but with something important and to say on a given topic – will start to see some increased attention as well. Much like many of the early bloggers did. And when that happens, the whole question of influence and authority will once again be turned on its head.
Topics: Google, Media Convergence, SEO, Search: Innovations, Search: News, Search: Vertical, Social Media, Twitter, Yahoo! |
Peter,
Very well written article. You bring up some good points with regards to the battle that might happen between Yahoo/Google with the search function.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. I personally think with the way the outside economy/markets are for advertising budgets, etc. Twitter has plenty of time to decide what to do with their monetization and future. The Twitter community won’t be going anywhere, it is turning into the #1 News source online.
It is amazing to me that both of the plane crashes that occured in the US (Denver and Hudson River) there were individuals with Twitter accounts and photos posted. Imagine a entire population with access to this technology, perhaps we should be thinking of a way for users to become ‘the news’ in turn profiting from posting a photo like the one from the Hudson. That could be a interesting scenario.
Cheers,
James Eliason
Founder/CEO Twittad.com
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