Twitter’s Search Feature Had Its Own ‘Hockey Stick’ Moment
You don’t have to be a sports fan to get what they were talking about on TechCrunch in Nov ’08 when they said Twitter had experienced their “hockey stick moment.” The micro-blogging tool had really started to catch fire around that time – even CNN had started promoting it on air. The Twitter user base has simply exploded since then. But Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com) - Twitter’s built in search feature – which is getting a lot of attention these days, was (and is) having a hockey stick moment of its own. This time you can’t afford to ignore it.
The basic business-minded question surrounding Twitter has been “how will it make money?” You probably care more about how you can make money on Twitter – we’ll get to that. Although there’s no proof of financial prosperity over in their SF headquarters yet, a lot of people (1, 2, 3…) have speculated that the key to the company’s ability to monetize all that traffic they get is going to be their search feature – through ad revenue on their search page, to be specific. Google’s done ok with that model…I’d say it has merit.
Ok – now to the part you care about: Twitter, and by extension Twitter Search, are arguably the most relevant social and business websites on the internet. Yes – business websites. Your customers, your competitors, your colleagues – a good chunk of them are using this tool to discuss your industry, new business trends, opinions about your brand, etc. And you have access to that information in real time through Twitter Search. That’s real, current, potentially valuable information. If that doesn’t make Twitter Search a powerful tool, I don’t know what does. And I’m not alone on this one, folks – as evidenced by the trend line you see in the chart below, Twitter Search is having a boom of its own.
The ‘Twitter Search’ Hockey Stick Moment
See the blue line in the first greyed out graph? There you see the trend (according to Google) of popularity of the two search terms “Twitter” and “Twitter Search.” What appears to be a little red blip on the radar, in the bottom right corner, is really Twitter’s smaller – yet equally important – hockey stick moment. The second chart shows the “Twitter Search” trend scaled up, and there you can see it’s just as dramatic as the first trend.
Ok, maybe these charts don’t speak to everyone – I know. But you get the point. Twitter Search is something worth paying attention to. Even if you’re not using Twitter (tweeting) yourself. The relevance of Twitter’s search results, due to their real-time and user-generated nature, is unrivaled…and that is something you, as a business person, can use to your advantage.
If you’re feeling a little behind the ball, and haven’t jumped on the Twitter bandwagon quite yet, don’t worry, you’re not alone. After poking around on it for nearly seven months, I just started seeing the point of it all around January, 2009 – well after the hockey stick moment. My advice – just try it. It doesn’t take much commitment, and it might even be good for business.
