Making a case for Twoogle

The greatest thing about Twitter is the speed at which it gathers information, a feat which even Google struggles to match (the collective Twitter hive-mind woops Googlebot ass any day ). Since 2008, Twitter has grown to become the world’s most powerful real-time search engine.

What is it about Twitter that makes it so fast? Beyond complex algorithms and raw processing power - I believe the answer is simply, people. The more people propagate word-of-mouth, the faster information travels. Twitter is the World Wide Web at the speed of thought, and its phenomenal growth is the only reason why services like Jaiku and Pownce ceased to survive. The world doesn’t need different types of micro messaging platforms - just one that works well enough.

And with competition out of the way, Twitter can only get faster.

Chart: Twitter’s natural monopoly (Source: The Business Insider)

If Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”, they must surely need Twitter, despite what Eric Schmidt says. Without Twitter, search will continue to miss a huge piece of the action – keyword relevant information embedded in tweets (Google’s challenge right now is to filter the noise, sort the useful ones by relevance and integrate them into the SERP in a meaningful format)

I still think it’s a matter of time before Google moves in for Twitter. And if the heavily speculated partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo goes ahead as planned, that time will come sooner.