Like I promised on my last blog post, today I will reveal the secrets behind why Twitter will replace search in the year 2015.  “Search” here I mean like Google, Yahoo, and all the search engines that currently use an indexing system and other ranking systems such as the PageRank.

You see, a lot of friends are surprised to hear me say, “Twitter is the next Google.”

It’s quite rather simple though and let me talk you through it so you understand what is at stake here.

Search is probably the biggest online business today, it’s the one single thing that get people searching, clicking, and buying stuff.

What you have not realized about twitter is this single fact of life I have realized about a week ago while being addicted to Twitter:

Twitter is the best “real-time” search engine available today, period.

The domain Search.Twitter.com brings users more relevant “real-time” search results than anything else in the world, including Google.  Google also has pretty fast updates on news from the big media and big sites but it’s not real-time, there’s at least 1 minute delay for even the most world-breaking news.

On the other hand, Twitter search can give the user real-time responses, which are pretty much search results in 140 characters or less.

The 140 characters or less philosophy of Twitter works PERFECTLY because search engines like Google and Yahoo have been doing that for DECADES as evidenced here:

Every Tweet is actually a search result. (or could be)

Every tweet on Twitter can actually become a rather meaningful search result, just like Google, except it’s real-time and human-based.

Even Google has been working on human-input and have added user wiki features where users can rate the search results themselves.

Twitter goes far beyond that model by having pretty much 100% of human inputs. (or tweets)

Challenges Ahead for Twitter

Twitter search is still in its infancy and noone might start using it often until Twitter optimizes and makes their search engine more usable for the general public.

For example, I could type “golf” and get a LOT of results on golf related tweets but that might not be too helpful if the search results are displayed by time.

Twitter search needs a new option where people can also search for the most popular tweeter article in the last 24 hours, sorta like Digg.

This functionality will bring Twitter search to a usable search engine by the masses while still allowing real-time search engine results.

How did I come to this conclusion?

The fact of the matter is, internet is “owned” by search engines, simply because people love to “search” and end up in vicious-cycle of searching on Google all day.   Even myself, as a blogger, have been researching new ways to optimize blogs through search-oriented blog themes. (and also writing a book called “Search” later this year.)

Just give it another 5-10 years and I think  Twitter will start racking up a big portion of the search market share, or at least majority of “real-time” search market.

A search engine is nothing but a website that helps people find what they are looking for, if Twitter can do this faster than Google, I don’t see why people won’t start using Twitter more, especially for more time-critical information such as world events and sports.

I could be wrong but if I am right, we are looking at the birth of new Google and this is probably an understatement.

Tags: business today, decades, domain search, even google, fact of life, human input, indexing system, infancy, minute delay, one single thing, Pagerank, real time, search engines, search result, stake, time responses, time search, tweet, Twitter

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Twitter, search engines.