Something I wrote on Twitter a couple weeks ago:
Today, Four Reasons Why Twitter is the Next Google writes:
“Not only has Twitter inadvertently taken crowdsourcing to search, it has actually taken it a step further into friendsourcing. In fact, it has created the first personalized and trusted search engine in the world.” – Mr. List
The interesting bit is that Twitter doesn’t even offer ‘search’. Search engines like Summize (how I tracked down my above tweet) et. al, are building search atop Twitters API.
Steve Gillmor was absolutely right to cut off Dan Farber. Pasting text ads (a la Google) onto Twitter is boring. That’s why we haven’t seen it. And won’t.
As more vendors like H&R Block, Joyent, and even Comcast start to invest themselves in Twitter, we get much much closer to a VRM world. A world where both customers and vendors are smart people speaking intelligently to each other.
The usefulness of Twitter search, I think, depends on how many followers you have. On the other hand, assuming you have fewer followers but they’re all people you know better, it makes for more trusted recommendations.
And while it’s all “search”, there’s kind of a distinction between looking for recommendations and using your gigantic Twitter following as lazy web because you don’t feel like Googling something yourself.
(Also, now following H&R Block. Fascinated.)