If you start to view Twitter more as a real time or human powered search engine it takes on a new persona, like a chameleon changing it’s color to adapt to it’s environment. With new service tools popping up everyday, the functionality of Twitter is growing into something way more powerful than just another place to exchange information.
As Frank Watson of Search Engine Watch explains:
Twitter’s rapid growth and pervasive presence — mentioned in newspapers, on TV and just about everywhere you look — has opened a new information source. “Real-time search,” “social search,” or whatever you want to call it offers an alternative.
There are no databases (not yet anyway) except those in each user’s brain. We share what we know and that accumulated knowledge tops the search engine databases.
Twitter is capable of more than meets the eye and one tool that exploits its potential and illustrates a “real time” search example is Mahalo Answers. Send your questions here. [@answers] and, answers are delivered back to your Twitter account each time there is an answer from a Mahalo user, making it akin to a asynchronous, human-powered search engine.
But what of authoritativeness? This is what news organizations and librarians would argue. Having information delivered to you is great but how do users know if primary information accurate. New users should be educated as to what a human powered search exactly is especially, if there is a chance a user might be misguided. Will users think that there an implied authoritativeness?
Back in the days of Web 1.0, we had to train users to look at the URL’s of search results. Sources ended in .gov or .edu could be counted on as accurate and vetted more so than a URL ending in .com which follow the mission of the company. Missions vary from company to company and should be investigated individually. Some sites are biased and some are not on any given topic.
As users need to become more sophisticated, tweeters will gain reputations for accuracy like many bloggers have done. And tools like Digg have made this easier. Sure, information is being delivered faster than ever before and now with a human powered search engine you don’t even have to search yourself. You just ask a question and a bunch of answers from real humans come back. Being able to know the source is the next step.
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