Auslogics Blog

Like most people out there, I tweet and love it. But Twitter is proving to be more than just fun – it’s a great way to get most recent information too. And it’s new search sounds like a very promising thing that can be a potential threat to Google. Let me explain.

Not long ago Twitter announced the launch of its new real-time search. Now every public Twitter update from anywhere in the world will get indexed instantly. According to Twitter blog, with this newly launched feature, Twitter has become something unexpectedly important—a discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now. Basically, with the new Twitter search you’ll be able to get the most timely results for your search phrase.

And that’s where, in my opinion, lies a threat to Google. Of course, Twitter is not trying to beat Google and become THE search engine (Microsoft is a great example of failure there).  Twitters goal is to give the most timely results – Google doesn’t do that. Come to think of it, Twitter can be a serious threat to RSS too – I hardly check Google reader for news any more – I just go to Twitter and get all the info I need. But this is another story.

Anyway, let me give you an example on how good Twitter is when you want to find out about most recent events. Some time ago there was a small earthquake in Melbourne. I was at home, relaxing and tweeting. Suddenly there was a tweet from Problogger that Melbourne is being shaken. I instantly tweeted back saying that there is nothing where I am. Literally two seconds later the house shook – the earthquake reached the suburb where I live. I mean, can Google be  that efficient? And now with everything on Twitter getting indexed… sounds promising!

So it’s not surprising why Google and a lot of other companies are interested in buying Twitter. And trust me, things will get very interesting over the next couple of months!