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.
]]>![[Post to Twitter]](http://informationknot.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
The pace of technological change is increasing. This week, as I read the recent news from Neilson about Twitter growing 1,382% over the past year, and I was reminded of Moore’s Law which says that the number of transistors that can be integrated into a circuit doubles every two years. These implications are far reaching and thought provoking, especially when I think about the myriad of new tools that will be invented for information to flow faster. I also thought of the ideas from futurists like Ray Kurzweil who predict a technological singularity or theoritical future point of unprecented technological progress. As far as information technology goes, it seems like that future is here. Brian Solis of P.R. 2.0 has even dubbed this era the Social Revolution. He says,
The business of information creation and distribution has driven and defined our global economies. In the last century, the increasingly rapid pace of innovation has globalized, localized, and streamlined the distribution of information, what we thought about, and how we processed, news, trends and current events – and in turn, influenced how our societies evolved in the real world….
…Towards the end of the 1990s, the Web, and its architects, forged the tools that would spark a renaissance of influence and empowerment. These tools would inspire people to build new interconnected platforms for content that would collectively and ultimately ignite a social revolution and usher a new exchange for information that has all the signs and economic potential of a modern day Industrial Revolution.
Just a year ago, we were asking ourselves “why would I want to post what I am doing right now” on some site and in 140 characters or less? At least I was. But it turns out there are many reasons to do so. And businesses think so to. Many businesses have embraced this technology wholeheartedly. Quickly evolving past status updates, businesses are using Twitter and other micro media tools to grow their brands and connect with others faster than ever. Ingrid Catlin of the Cheeky Marketeer explains on her blog that businesses are using Twitter to broadcast news and events, provide customer service, promote sales, build communities around their brand.
Twitter was founded in 2006 and in three short years, it has lodged itself squarely in the middle of our collective consciousness. If the medium is the message, Twitter is loud and clear even if the message is only 140 characters or less. My only question is, if Twitter can become this pervasive in such a short time, what’s next? I can’t wait for tomorrow.
]]>Germany’s Der Spiegel published an interview with Twitter CEO Evan Williams yesterday on its website, and Williams had a couple of interesting things to say. You can find a poorly Google-translated version of the interview here, which features Williams answering the usual, boring questions ‘professional’ journalists tend to ask about the micro-sharing service (the reporter opened the interview with the Pulitzer-prize caliber question “so does Twitter spark narcissism and idiocy?”).
]]>But Williams did share something worth noting at the end of the interview.
When asked about possible future features for Twitter, he reportedly said that one of the things being considered is an extension that lets people know what’s happening in their immediate vicinity. That would basically mean that Twitter could actively ping users about local events that are going on in their neighborhood, in real-time, based on the location they’ve indicated. As an example, Williams says users could be alerted to the fact a fire is burning a few streets away from where Twitter knows (or thinks) they are.