Search box starts popping up on Twitter

(Credit: Twitter, screengrab by ReadWriteWeb)

The industry buzz is that searchability is one of Twitter's killer features, and indeed, it looks like the microblogging service is starting to put it more front and center. Some Twitter users have reported that the toolbar in the right-hand corner of Twitter.com is now displaying a search box and access to a list of "trends"--fast-rising terms and topics that members are chatting about. It looks like the company is either testing it out or doing the gradual rollout thing.

I unfortunately don't have access to it yet, so I can't take a direct screen grab or test things out for myself, but some lucky blogger over at ReadWriteWeb has the magic search features enabled already and took a screenshot.

Twitter's focus on search started when the company acquired Summize, a search tool built using Twitter's developer API (application programming interface) and turned it into the Twitter Search feature.

What's interesting is that Twitter may also have another motive: driving homepage traffic. Many prolific Twitterers choose to use third-party applications like Twitterific, TweetDeck, and Twhirl to access the service. That's led to occasional ambiguity regarding Twitter's traffic and usage, because traditional Web statistics don't take that into account.

If Twitter, which still hasn't unveiled its shadowy business model, were to start rolling out advertisements, it'd be to the company's advantage to give members more reason to actually use the Twitter.com site. Making it more feature-intensive is an obvious option.

That said, all indications we've seen have pointed to a non-advertising business model for Twitter--especially given the downturn in ad revenues stemming from the current bleak market conditions. More likely, it'll offer some sort of paid plan for corporations that want to capitalize on the buzzworthy service in one way or another.

This post was updated at 10:55 a.m. PT.

[judsoncollier]

According to Fred Wilson (I think?) 1% of users can see the searchbar, unless they have started to roll it out more.

[WeCanDoBIZ]

The Google beating power in Twitter is not in the search, but in the ability to get immediate answers from trusted people, plus they tell you about neat stuff before you even think to search.

Search is nice to have on Twitter, but the ability to ask and read live content is the killer app.

Ian Hendry


[CNET editors' note: Prohibited content deleted.]

[BrickandClick]

I have the new search box (http://Twitter.com/BrickandClick) and just noticed that when I plug in a search term, a single 'Suggested User' - NYTimes in this case - was displayed prominately in the upper right, like it was a paid search sponsor. Interesting.

[experienceadvertising]

Ya I think search is how Twitter is going to start dominating even more! Thanks for sharing Caroline!

[tonyadamseo]

I saw this yesterday and posted about it on my blog, detailed out the information and all. My opinion is that this is going to lead into a monetization strategy. Here is the post for you to check out: http://tonyadam.com/blog/twitter-integrates-search-into-main-site

[gculpin]

Real-time search over Twitter is most useful. Btw if you haven't yet stumbled upon MicroPlaza.com, you'd definitely want to try out this new Twitter social search engine which provides Tribal Search = the most popular and hottest stories about any topic talked about on Twitter and their related conversations.

Greg
http://microplaza.com

[SuperDave4eva]

Just a side note that the #bozexplod hashtag shown in the Twitter search image above concerns a devastating gas explosion that occurred in downtown Bozeman, MT that took out a city block! Images, video and a map of the effected are at http://tinyurl.com/c74uol

The use of #bozexplod was the best use of Twitter I have ever seen!

[InIsolation]

Does anyone know if the size of a single search word is likely to be increased? I post with the hashtag #followanindiebandwednesday but the twitter search will only work without the preceding hash. It's a bit of a pain. Thanks.