Twitter content on Google Search results

I had the privilege of again meeting with Alec Hogg today from MoneyWeb fame ;-) I always find our conversations an exercise in cross-pollination; in exchange for my limited knowledge of tech, he expounds on economics, finance and the general state of the world union -invaluable!. (Buy his latest awesome book here) As have many execs over the past few months, Alec asked me about Twitter versus Facebook versus MySpace versus every other social networking "thing"... Anyway, due to that conversation I thought I'd blog about Twitter a little...

I picked this up a few days ago and played with it for a couple days before commenting...and...I like it ;-) Not only do you get Google indexed context related to your keyword or search string...you get real-time present activity, via Twitter, related to it also. To enable the Greasemonkey script click here

Twitter has published some commentary on their search plans - check it out here. Quote; "Searching over Twitter messages is like a filter for what is happening right now—it's an interesting look into the real-time thoughts of people and organizations around the world...Twitter Search adds a new layer of relevance" - they mention that more than 90% of users opt to be openly accessible...my advice; careful what you twitter, when you twitter, etc.

(Imagine the trending over time? Imagine injecting that trending into an ad engine? Imagine a future employer able to pick up what you "presence" state of mind is? Imagine a medical and/or general insurance company knowing this? ...mmmm! Reminds me of Ray Kurzweil's Singularity...we're feeding so much of ourselves into the ether...building an understanding of what we are...enabling prediction and ultimately self awareness - ok, enough doom & gloom!)

I'll be commenting some more on realtime data indexing versus/and legacy web content indexing... I see the two as symbiotic...you cannot possibly own a search engine and not expect your users to demand "present time search results".

This is so much more interesting than the whole debate about social networking search engines and the indexing of social graph activity..."yawn" ;-)