Despite its incredible hype, Twitter has experienced its share of negative news lately. From it's dismally high attrition rate (the Twitter quitters) to the less than positive Harvard study on Twitter trends, it's brought the skeptics out of the woodwork....myself included. Sure, there are lots of true believers and Twitter is making an impact as a marketing tool.
Yet, its long term viability and significance continues to be questioned.
If there's anything that's going to change the value equation for Twitter, it's the introduction of real time search. As this blog post from Ben Parr indicates, Google has been working on a real time micro blogging search engine. The main beneficiary of this good work will be Twitter, of course. By indexing real time data, Google will transform the way we view and use Twitter. Conceptually, Twitter goes from being a closed live feed, accessible only by "opt in" subscribers to an open, accessible, repository of transient information.
In short, the future of Twitter is search. Despite my nay-saying tendencies, I think this will be huge for Twitter's long term viability. What do you think?
(HT: @goodwordediting)
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