In recent years, one of the biggest questions within the high-tech world is whether anyone can knock Google off its perch as the king of search. Lots of start-ups are trying but few, if any, have been able to grab a viable foothold mostly because most people are happy with Google and unwilling to change.
But Lew Moorman makes an interesting argument that Twitter could become a threat to Google. He believes Twitter could evolve into a powerful and effective search service because its content is powered by humans making recommendation about products and services.
“It is an engine that will build better results than any rules based index and has gotten millions of people super motivated to contribute for free every day (even though they don’t know it).”
As important, Moorman believes Twitter can monetize its search service in the same way Google has made a mint leveraging its search results.
As someone who is increasingly getting more value from Twitter, I think Moorman is definitely on to something. The one thing I wonder about is whether Twitter it going to cash in on search, or whether a savvy third-party developer will leverage Twitter’s API to launch a lucrative kick-ass search service.
3 Comments
I thought about this just last night – I know I've gained some followers and @ replies through Twitter search. I wonder, over time and as Twitter keeps heading toward mainstream, if more people will search for things relevant to their niche through Twitter instead of traditional search engines. Time will tell.
twitter is its own animal (no birdy pun intended). That said, I've declared twitter to be the biggest thing to happen to the Internet since….well…the Internet–only because it's the first Social Networking tool that simulates actually being at a real networking event (the kind that has a relaxed atmosphere, like an event at a neighborhood bar). twitter can't ever compete with Google. Google is too far ahead of the game and has way too many fabulous and free tools (did you catch that —FREE) that have helped people to make the Web a better world and our world a better place. Can twitter do that? I'm open to hearing your thoughts. Tweet me: @LoriGama
Google isn't simply a search engine, there are many more applications available from Google. Google Calendar, Docs, Maps, Reader, News, and many others, all neatly arranged and relatively integrated to offer quite a pack of features in comparison to Twitter. And don't forget about Android, the mobile platform which (for example) is featured in the new G1 wireless phone. Each of the Google applications I list above are directly integrated with Google's search. There is no way in hades that Twitter could compete with that.
Besides, when was the last time you saw a Google fail whale?
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[...] Is Twitter a Threat to Google? (tags: twitter google search) [...]
[...] Is Twitter a Threat to Google? | TwitterratiDet är en intressant tanke men det är ändå en väldigt hypotetisk tanke. Bakgrunden är att Twitter skulle kunna fungera som crowd-sourching och helt enkelt bygga på en bättre filtrering av sökresultat än en indexerad och automatisk sökmotor som Google. Problemet för hypotesen är att antalet sajter som kommer att finnas som länkar rent praktiskt alltid kommer vara färre, mycket färre. Jag tror snarare att såna algoritmer som Twine tillsammans med en intelligent indexeringsalgoritm kommer att hålla Internet länge än. Och jag har svårt att tro att Google inte lyckas med det. [...]
[...] Is Twitter a Threat to Google? | Twitterrati Det är en intressant tanke men det är ändå en väldigt hypotetisk tanke. Bakgrunden är att Twitter skulle kunna fungera som crowd-sourching och helt enkelt bygga på en bättre filtrering av sökresultat än en indexerad och automatisk sökmotor som Google. Problemet för hypotesen är att antalet sajter som kommer att finnas som länkar rent praktiskt alltid kommer vara färre, mycket färre. Jag tror snarare att såna algoritmer som Twine tillsammans med en intelligent indexeringsalgoritm kommer att hålla Internet länge än. Och jag har svårt att tro att Google inte lyckas med det. [...]