Site: Search.twitter.com
Category: Editors' Choice; Look out, Google
Twitter itself is fun. Twitter Search, though, is another thing entirely. Twitter Search provides real-time search results on timely issues and news that even Google can't touch. It's this feature, not the Twitter social network, that could end up being Twitter's true path to revenue, as well as the feature that knocks Google off its peg as the master of all search.
Even Google execs have acknowledged that dealing with real-time search is one of the company's most important challenges. Twitter has stuck a pin in Google, and it's hurting. Twitter could, of course, simply choose to monetize its search engine using Google's own advertising technologies. But Twitter is getting big enough that it might not need Google for that. So what will Google do?
Twitter Search shows what the Web is thinking before Google does.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)Site: Twitter.com
Category: Social & Publishing
Twitter is an online service that lets you broadcast short messages to your friends or "followers." It also lets you specify which Twitter users you want to follow so you can read their messages in one place.
Twitter is designed to work on a mobile phone as well as on a computer. All Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, so each message can be sent as a single SMS alert. You can't say much in 140 characters. That is part of Twitter's charm.
Since launching in 2007, Twitter has seen tremendous growth. In early 2009, Ashton Kutcher became the first user to gain more than a million followers. Oprah Winfrey then gave the microblog a plug and caught up to the million follower mark within a month's time. In late May, the tool also received its first use from space, courtesy of U.S. astronaut Mike Massimino. The tool was also an instrumental PR tool for presidential candidates in the 2008 U.S. election.
(Credit:
CNET)
Twitter is an online service that lets you broadcast short messages to your friends or "followers." It also lets you specify which Twitter users you want to follow so you can read their messages in one place.
Twitter is designed to work on a mobile phone as well as on a computer. All Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, so each message can be sent as a single SMS alert. You can't say much in 140 characters. That is part of Twitter's charm.
In 2007 Twitter didn't come out with as many new features as much as other developers found way to use the open data API to create their own specialized applications. The result is a wealth of tools and services that take Twitter beyond its original intention, and make it something bigger.
Winner: Twitter (Twitter.com)
Category: Publishing
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