Is Twitter the much-talked-about Google Killer that all the technology experts have speculated about for a decade now?
Some of the blogosphere was awash in its own drool on Friday as it noticed that the San Francisco company has made a few additions to its site for some users that seem to take a shot at Google.
One blogger noticed that Twitter had added search functionality for some of its users.
The addition drew comparisons to Google and even caused some to wonder if the micro-blogging site was making "baby steps" towards a battle with Google.
Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, made headlines earlier this week when he called Twitter "poor man's email."
Adding functionality and a page that analyzes twitter trends started out as a test, and may now be added to the rest of the site. Clicking on trends brings up a twitter search page. The searching function also allows people who have looked up the same things to connect with each other.
In "kunocreative's" blog entitled "Why Twitter is Better than Google," the author makes a bold claim that Google is too "big and unwieldy to withstand Twitter's community of citizen info-givers.
"Don't get me wrong, Google is still the King of meta data. Google is like a sitemap of the entire Internet," he said. "The problem is, it's too big and unwieldy. You do a search, and maybe you look at the first or second page of results chosen for you by a robot. Now you have to click through to see what's inside, and 99.9999% is junk. Wouldn't it be nice if there was an army of professionals like you out there doing all this work for you and sending you only the best of the best? Enter Twitter. That's exactly what Twitter can do."
Andrew Keen with Internet Evoltuion, in his blog "Did I Just See Eric Schmidt Blink," openly wonders himself if the Google CEO is nervous over Twitter's rising popularity. He calls Twitter something new: "tmail."
"But how does tmail, Schmidt’s 'poor man’s email' (boy, that remark is going to come back to haunt him), threaten Google? The problem for Google is that Twitter could emerge as a rival network to the Internet," Keen said. "As Twitter goes from its current 6 million users to 60 million and even eventually to 600 million, it will begin to compete with the Internet as an informational ecosystem. Not only might this be a real-time and self-correcting informational resource, a Wikipedia on steroids, but Twitter -- which acquired the Summize search engine last summer -- will also have the capacity to become an all-knowing search engine of its users’ knowledge."
Poppycock -- say all the people who note that the Bryant Street company (Twitter) has not turned a profit and until recently had no business plan. On its web site, the company counters those claims.
This is on Twitter's site under "What's next for Twitter?"
"We continue to follow user behavior and pay close attention to feature requests. We launched our mobile site, m.twitter.com after getting lots of requests for this feature. However, we are also very much guided by our philosophy of keeping things simple and intuitive so we like to restrain ourselves with regard to features. That being said, people seem to be calling for more interesting ways to share feedback with one another and organize themselves and their updates into groups--we're paying attention to these requests.
We plan to build Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business."
