Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter Ain't Search

marksonland.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 28 posts

Re: Twitter Ain't Search

#11

Post by sjs382 »

buugs wrote: post #9
AndrewWarner wrote: post #5

Next time there's breaking news in your neighborhood (like an earthquake) try your search on Google and on Search.Twitter.com and see which has the news faster. Twitter is instant. Google has to wait for someone to publish an article on the news and then Google needs to index that article. Plus with Google, the article's headline doesn't give you the whole story. It's a tease. You have to click over to read the story…

I don't know about an earthquake, never felt one, but in all honesty I would rather read an article the 140 characters would be a tease as much specifics couldn't be given. If you think about it twitter would be good for traffic or something like that, but only if a radio station or some larger element was relaying the message. The same goes for a natural disaster, I'm not going to go look and see about a tornado or…

Thing is though, you aren't viewing 140 characters at a time. You're viewing a page of 20 of the most recent 140-character posts from a variety of people (all with differing perspectives) at the same time. It's not better or worse than a news outlet, it's just different.

For my recent experience (a comment on this page): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=504849

Re: Twitter Ain't Search

#12

Post by paulgb »

vyrotek wrote: post #3
rubymaverick wrote: post #2

Has this guy heard of search.twitter.com?

Is their search anything more than finding text in a tweet? They seem to be more about finding the most recent tweet containing your keyword. I would rather see the results weighted by retweets or something to help find 'relevant' tweets.

It's essentially text search, but there is also a surprisingly useful near:[location] keyword that is good for local searches.

Re: Twitter Ain't Search

#13

Post by jraines »

AndrewWarner wrote: post #5

Next time there's breaking news in your neighborhood (like an earthquake) try your search on Google and on Search.Twitter.com and see which has the news faster. Twitter is instant. Google has to wait for someone to publish an article on the news and then Google needs to index that article. Plus with Google, the article's headline doesn't give you the whole story. It's a tease. You have to click over to read the story…

This is the standard counter-argument, and it is of course valid.

However this has got to be a tiny fraction of total searches and total utility derived from search.

Also, how often is there breaking news in your neighborhood that's worth following at that level? Even if it's pretty close, but not literally in your neighborhood, it seems you'd be just as good with cnn.com or something.

Re: Twitter Ain't Search

#14

Post by yosh »

AndrewWarner wrote: post #5

Next time there's breaking news in your neighborhood (like an earthquake) try your search on Google and on Search.Twitter.com and see which has the news faster. Twitter is instant. Google has to wait for someone to publish an article on the news and then Google needs to index that article. Plus with Google, the article's headline doesn't give you the whole story. It's a tease. You have to click over to read the story…

Earthquakes are a poor example. http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/latest.htm is going to give you more timely and accurate data than someone's random tweet.

Re: Twitter Ain't Search

#16

Post by wallflower »

Flemlord wrote: post #15

Why can't Google index Twitter posts just like it does everything else?

Google does not have access to the XMPP firehouse (all tweets, the public timeline). More importantly, Twitter posts do not neatly fit into the page-rank concept (# of followers does not always equate to authority). Summize got around this problem by not even trying to address it - e.g. most recent tweets are first. Twitter is probably more easily gamed and adding Twitter results to their standard search would probably dilute average AdWords CPC.

Of course, the flip side of this is Twitter tweets won't be monetized as efficiently as Google keyword-based ads.

Re: Twitter Ain't Search

#17

Post by pjhyett »

yosh wrote: post #14
AndrewWarner wrote: post #5

Next time there's breaking news in your neighborhood (like an earthquake) try your search on Google and on Search.Twitter.com and see which has the news faster. Twitter is instant. Google has to wait for someone to publish an article on the news and then Google needs to index that article. Plus with Google, the article's headline doesn't give you the whole story. It's a tease. You have to click over to read the story…

Earthquakes are a poor example. http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/latest.htm is going to give you more timely and accurate data than someone's random tweet.

That doesn't update every second of every minute of every day. Verifying immediately that you did in fact feel an earthquake is a perfect example of twitter's power. As a San Francisco resident I can tell you this definitively.

Re: Twitter Ain't Search

#18

Post by whughes »

AndrewWarner wrote: post #5

Next time there's breaking news in your neighborhood (like an earthquake) try your search on Google and on Search.Twitter.com and see which has the news faster. Twitter is instant. Google has to wait for someone to publish an article on the news and then Google needs to index that article. Plus with Google, the article's headline doesn't give you the whole story. It's a tease. You have to click over to read the story…

Next time you have a problem with your machine or with some code you're writing try your search on Google and on Twitter Search. Next time you want to buy something try Google and Twitter. Next time you want to look up the population of Tanzania try Google and Twitter.

Twitter provides "real-time search," but that is just a small, almost miniscule subset of Google's capabilities. You can in some cases get real-time data from social aggregators and Facebook; I think those are the real competitors to Twitter.

Twitter is not even in the same league as Google. They don't cover the same areas, they don't have the same business models, they don't have comparable numbers of users, they don't offer the same services. There is absolutely no competition here.

Re: Twitter Ain't Search

#19

Post by yosh »

pjhyett wrote: post #17
yosh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earthquakes are a poor example. http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/latest.htm is going to give you more timely and accurate data than someone's random tweet.

That doesn't update every second of every minute of every day. Verifying immediately that you did in fact feel an earthquake is a perfect example of twitter's power. As a San Francisco resident I can tell you this definitively.

Uhm, yes it does. It's realtime data.

And since it's backed by actual scientific instruments, you can tell immediately if it was a magnitude 3 in Berkeley, or a magnitude 6 in Parkfield, which is better than some tweet of "I just felt an earthquake".

Re: Twitter Ain't Search

#20

Post by bobbyi »

jwesley wrote: post #6
sjs382 wrote: post #4

"I don't understand a concept, but I'm going to try to debunk it anyways."

Good assessment of this article. Although I do agree that Twitter search is being overhyped right now. Big time. It's basically the only thing left to hype so TechCrunch et al are milking it for all it's worth. Twitter search is useful as an opinion poll or for updates on breaking news, but only so much depth and value can fit into 140 characters. More than anything, I think Twitter thrives off vanity and narcissism.…

> only so much depth and value can fit into 140 characters

If someone can't fit their whole message in 140 characters, they use a link to point you elsewhere (e.g., their blog).

The worst case is that you have to click one link for each search results to see all of the content, which is the same as with google results.

Post reply on HN